Disgusted at profits of care homes going to senior management only

[Aromaticcandles]

From a very close relative who was so disgusted he left his job...

New accountant job taken on for a national care home provider and within a month advised to put in £10 into shares. Of course he did this, all in the team just did it so with the promise of a none risk payback.

He received £136 000 from this investment and as a newly employed senior accountant this was pennies in comparison to the manager/owner who got more than a million! Sadly facts.

Were the people who worked in the homes taking care of the clients around the country offered this opportunity? No, they were grateful to have a £100 bonus at Christmas and/or a box of chocolates.

Was this fair for paying thousands of pounds a week expecting the best care for loved ones and the best quality of food? In reality the management was employing accountants to ensure the lowest cost for food, when short staffed they had to work harder as was calculated feasible to do so.

My cousin was over the moon with the bonus but his morals were more important and he couldn't carry on in a role that subjugated vulnerable people to sloppy tasteless food, employees who were taken advantage of and management who reaped so much profit at the expense of them all. One part of the home was dementia patients and the attitude from meetings was that they didn't know what they were doing/eating/being hydrated and properly cared for.

This is absolutely disgusting and he has filed a complaint about the inequality, moved into another sector for a charity based company with less earnings.

Yes, and taxes are investments in good preventative services. Top quality healthcare especially public health and general practice saves money and misery on more serious conditions, allowing people to work more and longer, and pay more taxes...which can be invested in preventative services. And so on.

I'm not saying I disagree, I'm saying I'm not sure the appetite from the population is there.

Care home company structures are usually byzantine.
Someone I know tried to get money back after a relative died shortly after being moved to another home in the same group (first home was closing). Relative had to pay in advance, and effectively paid twice for the same month, so asked for a refund. The company dragged its heels, so he looked into going to the small claims court, but the structure was so opaque that he couldn't be sure who to claiming against. Turns out this is normal in that sector. So massive payouts to top management doesn't surprise me.

As a young teen I worked in a very posh nurse ring home (pushed into far more than I wanted to do and should have done )

The residents were regularly served cold food and one day an argument broke out with the "chef " it's cold soup. He moaned that there was no way was he going to make more washing up for himself by re heating it.

The lady that complained was told to sit alone and was called a trouble maker and upsetting the other residents.

Every single corner that could be cut was cut including having some dangerous and seriously mentally unless patients there with staff stuffing to help them with no training.

They are the wild west.

My brother used to cycle with a home owner and he would joke about having nothing else to do that weekend except for re spraying his super cars.
He was always on holiday. My brother was impressed by that. I was disgusted.

The problem is unless you've seen the other side you have no idea what goes on...smiling staff taking a residents favorite snacks from loving relatives...popped into the fridge where they stay until they are chucked out.

How would anyone know.

The elderly in there are totally stick and vulnerable !

And you can have all wonderful staff and one bad apple that makes life hell.

It's the same for any setting where the customers are non verbal and vulnerable.

There’s literally no way a £10 investment made £136k

Some companies that offer services of social benefit are run on a not for private profit basis.

When it works, costs are covered, staff and suppliers are fairly treated and the end users of the service are happy. If a surplus is made it is ploughed back into service / infrastructure improvements or expansion.

More accurately, a lot of the UK population are too dim / shortsighted to understand.

So no shares etc? I don’t think that applies in this case in op.

As a rule, if as an adherent of a particular political belief system you find yourself saying “if only the people weren’t so stupid they would see things my way” then one can safely say you have lost the plot. It tends to be left wing people who fall into this trap but occasionally the right also indulges. Read some Orwell for a fuller discussion.

Private care homes are cheaper to run than public care homes because they pay their workers less and put them on insecure contracts that would not be allowed in the unionised public sector. This is why care home workers tend to be paid less and have worse pensions than equivalently qualified people working in the NHS. Politicians and civil servants are well aware of this which is why they don’t try to open up many public care homes. Labour politicians are just as aware as Conservatives and have equally little desire for the system to change, because they know they would have to put up taxes.

There are some charities who run residential care homes, a couple of which I am connected with. The charity I’m most closely linked to is trying to get out of providing residential care because it’s so heavily regulated and incredibly risky: if someone makes a mistake and the organisation gets sued or prosecuted the whole charity could be destroyed. Given this I’m fairly confident that we are not going to see large numbers of charities stepping into the space.

I am completely baffled as to why you would find this unreasonable, or even worth mentioning! Do you think every Sainsbury's employee should be entitled to share in the profits as Sainsbury's as a whole? This is the reality of capitalism: wealth is not shared equally, and this is true if pretty much every company out there. Care homes are no different.

Not for profit models exist, but in this case, there will be considerable capital investment involved in set up and significant insurance liabilities along the way. I doubt many people are prepared to stump up all that money and take all that risk without any expectation of profits.

UK politicians have abdicated their responsibilites towards the general public, one party in particular being in thrall to capitalists and the firms that lobby on their behalf.

People have been sold the lie that private enterprises are more efficient and offer better value for money. They are not - they are leeches on society and are stealing taxpayers money as well as stealing the savings of the old and vulnerable.

Vital services should never be in the hands of companies that operate for profit and who are legally obliged to act in the best interests of their owners and shareholders. This applies not only to care homes, but also to the water utilities and many other vital services that have been allowed to become a capitalists' dream - a virtual monopoly on a vital service.

This BBC report is 5 years old, but not much has changed:
Care homes: Following the money trail

Really sorry to break it to you but this is how capitalism works

I used to see the accounts for some local care homes and they certainly do make some tidy profits. If government/s can't manage the health service received by patients who live independently, I can't see how we're ever going to be able to sort out social care for the elderly and infirm who can no longer live independently.

We are nowhere near 5th we were in the 30s last time I read .

They aren't made aware of this and work on minimal wage.

Exactly this, being higher up and in control of finances is a position of power to only reward themselves and not the workers.

Exactly! No one knows what goes behind the scenes unless having witnessed themselves. The pressure on management is filtered to the care staff, the ones who scrape out poo from residents and give bed baths, feed them budgeted slop.

They know it's unfair but when you need the job you learn complaining means you're replaceable.

Do you understand how companies work? They are owned by their shareholders and profits are distributed as dividends to shareholders. You can’t get dividends if you aren’t a shareholder. Companies are not run for the benefit of their employees, they are run to make profits for shareholders.

Of course, it’s often possible for employees of a company to buy shares in that company. As your cousin did.