Hello, first post, asking on behalf of my parents who are trying to avoid going to a care home.
They have employed two girls in their 20s as housekeepers / nurses to look after them. They are looking for 24x7 cover but they only have two spare bedrooms. They therefore ask each girl to work 42 hours a week by day and be on call 42 hours at night, during which time their time is their own (watch TV, sleep etc.). So between the two girls all the hours in the week are covered. In practise they work a 14 day rota.
Each girl gets paid £7.50 per hour for the 42 hour week (that's £315 per week) and they get free rent, council tax, electricity, gas, water, broadband, TV license etc. So they are fairly well off. If they were to get called out, or if the other girl is off sick, they would of course get paid overtime.
However, in the 6 months since this has been in place, one girl has been called out once when my mother went downstairs for a drink and set the alarm off.
One of the girls has come to me this week saying a friend of theirs says they should get paid minimum wage for the hours that they are on call (including the time that they are asleep). Is this true or not? In any case my parents could not afford this as it would double their wages.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.