To think carers are classed as unskilled but expected to be skilled when things go wrong.

[JonasBogeys]

Maybe it would be a good time to look at the skill set needed for care work and PAY THEM MORE MONEY.
Most carers I meet through my job seem exhausted by working the amount of hours needed to get by.
They receive inadequate training at times.
They get punched and abused (a lot!)
Is it any wonder things go wrong?

One of the things that annoys me the most about my job is the amount of responsibility I have for 29 pence an hour above minimum wage. I have to be in charge of medications and dispense them accurately. Only nursing staff can do that in hospitals. I get no sick pay only SSP and after I was attacked seriously at work I got no company sick pay. My hours are not guaranteed. I have no idea what I will earn next month. The rota’s can change in a heartbeat. It’s a job I do for love but I’m sick of working under the threat of serious harm and I am now actively looking to leave.

No but then they also complain about the cost of private care. Then once people actual need high levels of care their kids are more focused on the inheritance then paying their parents carers properly.

Yep, but this all fed by the idea that some people are getting the same or a similar standard of care from the state for free. So why would you willingly blow your life savings or your inheritance on care in this context? Especially when in all likelihood you paid more tax than the person receiving the free care. It's not ideal and might be cutting off your nose to spite your face to some extent, but it's totally understandable why care is completely devalued when it is essentially free for some people. It's the same reason people don't value healthcare in the country.

It is odd isn't it. Yet the same thing doesn't apply to education. Sadly you don't get the same status saying your paying for your parents to be at "post private home" as you do saying you kids are are "Harrow".

I don’t object at all to the cost of DPs care home, it’s their money and I am so relieved they had it for their care when it was needed.

I tried for about 9 months to augment their state carers ( in Scotland) and keep them at home which was what they wanted and was of course the cheaper option, but with physical frailties and both with separate forms of dementia it proved impossible.

I do find it odd - galling, irritating, upsetting- that despite paying £1900 per week each, the care home seems to be mostly staffed by people who can’t speak much English so can’t interact with residents who generally have hearing difficulties and clearly aren’t that interested in caring. Oh and despite visiting 2-3 times per week I have never seen the care home manager outside her office and walking around seeing how things are going or indeed speaking to the residents and their families.
I feel that the same level of care could be delivered with less staff if they were better trained and more highly motivated which also equates to being better paid. I gravitate with any questions towards the good carers and I bet everyone else does as well, but under the current system probably just ends up with the, being burnt put through too much demand on them.

yanbu

as with mh support workers the expectations of their knowledge and what they do in their role has greatly increased. so often training is online to meet requirements and this allows employers to add responsibilities to their role

I think the problem is most couples need both to work full time to pay the mortgage, regardless of whether they have children or not; and how many people (mainly women) could afford to give up work and live instead on about £83 pw carer’s allowance?

Then there’s the sandwich generation like us, still working part time (over 66 with state pension), caring for disabled adult DC and helping working DC with child care of DGC, when needed - where is the time, energy and money to support elderly parents as well?

The NHS does nothing really to help carers, which makes life even harder. Why bother?

Why bother indeed? Because they're your parents and if you can't be bothered to help them then why on earth would you expect strangers to want to do it? If nobody cares enough to actually provide the care then maybe we just need to be honest and up front about that rather than pretending that the state can step in and care for an ever growing number of old people without family support and with insufficient money to pay for their own care which could potentially be needed for decades and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Where does this money come from? Have they paid enough tax to fund this plus all their healthcare etc over their lifetime? If not, it's pretty easy to see why the system is completely unsustainable.

The problem is that care is outsourced to private companies. Recently had a care package put in place for a child that cost £15k a week for two x 24/7 waking night carers. Probably £2k of that was wages. This is profit being made from public funds via the local authority.

Thank god you understood what on earth they were talking about

The cleaners are paid minimum wage.
I’m paid 20p more. That works out to £8 a week more.

The essential roles of caring for other, more vulnerable people are always far too low paid for the level of responsibility expected. These roles are usually very hard work and yet they don’t ever seem to be respected until someone needs the care themselves or for family.

Probably growing in the back gardens of the foreign owners of these chains of care homes.🙄

I don’t think that it’s the case that we don’t want to care for our elders, it’s that we don’t have the capacity to do it.

My elderly dad has had 2 operations in the past 6 months and I’ve had to emotionally and physically look after him. I’ve DC still living at home doing school exams. I work FT.

I’m exhausted to the point of being ill, not spent any time with my DH or children for 9 months and whilst I’m looking after everyone else my own MH and wellbeing is being eroded. I think at some point, the sickest person in the family will be ME.

I was not referring specifically to parents there; but actually when you have had carer breakdown twice as I have, and DH has had two heart attacks over the stress of two disabled DC, you realise (and get told by doctors) that the stress is killing you. I was told not to put any more stress on myself, and DH was told to control his stress. Everyone is worse off, if you end up dead in the near future.

DH paid £40,000 in tax pa for 30 years. His earnings went down during Covid, because self employed clients with no work themselves, couldn’t afford to pay him. He’s not well enough to work full time now.

The NHS was the big source of stress for me with regard to DD1, with a severe life threatening condition. A clinical nurse specialist told me, she had left the NHS, after 17 years experience, because it was too fragmented for patients like DD1 and it is.

We have live in carers and pay the agency between £1700-2100. Mostly funded by the LA with a contribution from us.

The carers receive just under half of the money. It’s a bloody scandal how much the agencies keep.

Some people who go into care do so because they can’t get the posh olive serving job. Their face doesn’t fit, they interview badly, their English isn’t good, their education is low, they don’t align with the retail ethos… lots of people do care work because they can’t get other work.

Obviously some people do it because they’re loving, caring individuals who see it as their vocation. But more often than not it’s an industry people join because they desperately need work and care is always hiring.

Having observed the incredible work that my dad's carers did when he was in a care home - not just their kindness and diligence, but also their ability to deal with emergencies and the level of responsibility they had - it enrages me that they're paid so poorly.

People are being very rude and condescending against care workers on here and it's really disheartening to see.

Could you have afforded to top up their pay? Could your father? Genuine question. Who do you think should pay?

It feels like it's often similar to being a nurse. Maybe an RMN. But the pay is utter shite. I guess nurses don't even get paid enough!

I work with vulnerable adults mostly non verbal. I am always covered in bruises and scratches. I went to the doctors the other week and was asked if I was a victim of some abuse because of the state of my arms and my husband regularly gets the side eye when we are out poor bugger.

I moved into care 3 years ago. My only qualification was having been a parent. I’ve done the care certificate but it’s online and multiple choice so not too taxing.

I go on all the training courses that my company offer but have declined to do my nvq 2 or 3 because I don’t want to do it online which is my only option.

I enjoy my job. I find it very satisfying and it has huge flexibility. Management and colleagues are incredible. We get paid above minimum wage because we are acknowledged to be a very challenging environment.

Their employers of course. Do you know the profit people make from care homes? It astronomical. It's how Duncan Bannatyne made his fortune.

My daughter’s care home is a charity. There is no profit. They charge LAs or ICBs what the placement costs. The problems arise, when for instance Rachel Reeves raised employers’ NI and the NMW, but didn’t support care homes. Funding authorities refuse to pay the necessary uplift in the fees.

Top up fees are expressly forbidden for people on NHS Continuing Healthcare Funding anyway, which my daughter gets.

We sent her to a care home, because we couldn’t cope with the stress any more, as per my previous post - especially from the NHS.

I know someone who owns a care business. They own multiple lovely homes and drive top of the range cars so 🤷‍♂️

Thats where the money goes. I’m not saying they don’t deserve to do well, they’ve worked hard but as long as people can profiteer from carework then wages will be low and charges high.