Hi,
I work as a carer in the community and use my own car to go to service users houses and provide care for them,
Most service users are elderly although we have some palliative care cases, disabled and learning difficulties. I love my job and have real satisfaction going to work but one thing gets me,
I work for a private sector care company and we do not get paid petrol per se. We do get paid for the amount of time it takes us to get to calls but often this time is set and is unrealistic e.g. getting paid for 10 minutes when it actually takes 25-30.
I was just wondering if this is common amongst private sector care companies and how fair people think this is. I am lucky as I live with my partner and do not have to pay rent but I've seen many collegues really struggle to survive on the pay and have to leave to find better paid work.
I have found myself putting £20 worth of petrol in a day with the knowledge that I'll get less than £5 paid back to me. We are paid £7.00 and hour
Many thanks, Sarah
Hi Sarah,
I too like you am a cummunity home carer working for a private company. However we do not get paid for driving time. We only get paid for the time we are at the service users home. Which can be anything from 15 minutes to a hour. We do get milage which is 40p a mile. However to our first and last client we do not get milage. We get paid £8 a hour and £10 on the weekend. If you have your NVQ then its £10 a hour and £12.50 on the weekends. Before I joined this company I was with a company that paid no milage! I had to leave after a short while as like you it was costing me about £20 a day which was more than my wages!
My advice hun would be too check out other care companys in your area, and make sure you ask if they pay milage.Here in Oxfordshire nearly all pay milage. It can be between 25p to 40p a mile, but non of them pay driving time !
Hope this helps.
Rita xx
Dear Sarah
I suggest you put this to the authority who commissions the service provider as I am sure they would be interested
It would also be worth taking to the DWP or ACASS to ensure you are being paid the minium wage when taking the lack of petrol payment into consideration. There was a similar situation with wiating staff whose tips were being included to make up their minimum wage
Finally, I would suggest that their are other providers in your area who probably take a more appropriate reponse to employees and I would
think about moving to another agency
It is bloody outrargeous. Complere exploitation of people who perform a really valuable role.
Smisle: Dear Sarah I suggest you put this to the authority who commissions the service provider as I am sure they would be interested It would also be worth taking to the DWP or ACASS to ensure you are being paid the minium wage when taking the lack of petrol payment into consideration. There was a similar situation with wiating staff whose tips were being included to make up their minimum wage Finally, I would suggest that their are other providers in your area who probably take a more appropriate reponse to employees and I would think about moving to another agency
are you sure the authority would give a monkeys? I know that in my team it was the authority that continually questioned and reduced the time allocated for each call - and that was before the austrerity cuts.
The minimum wage thing is interesting - I tried to work it out and it would seem it works out as less than the minimum wage but Id guess theres some way they can weasle out of it. How many hours a week do you actually get paid for and how much do you pick up a week before tax?
Just as a side note, make sure you do your tax thingy to ensure you get every penny you are entitled to re: your mileage. Think the tax man allows up to 45p per mile for the first however many miles and he will kindly pay the difference from what you get paid and the 45p (and the lower rate bit).
Thanks everyone, I will take up these suggestions! Its such a shame because I love all our customers and do enjoy the job its just that I struggle to make any profit! I'm going to study nursing next year at university but feel that something should be done to help protect carers and stop them getting exploited,
Thanks Sarah xx
I would suggest joining a union, getting as many of your colleagues to join as possible and asking the union to look at it, particularly regarding the minimum wage issues.
Care Agencies do not pay mileage – they come to an arrangement with the IRS to pay Care Workers X pence a mile up to a maximum of 45p.
Whatever amount the Agency pays Care Workers it is reimbursed to them by the IRS.
As stated by “Andy Pandy” It is the IRS that allows you 45p per mile – You can claim back up to six years.
I am surprised your employer did not advise you on this – you can also claim a laundry allowance for washing your uniforms.
sarahd81: Thanks everyone, I will take up these suggestions! Its such a shame because I love all our customers and do enjoy the job its just that I struggle to make any profit! I'm going to study nursing next year at university but feel that something should be done to help protect carers and stop them getting exploited, Thanks Sarah xx
This is what's wrong with the whole way care is provided. Quality, dedicated staff are pushed out of the sector. Pay and conditions have for a long time been so bad that I remember colleagues in commissioning fretting a couple of years back that the opening of an Ikea branch would cause an exodus of carers in the same way a new shopping mall development had a few years before that. They said themselves shop work pays more and is much nicer.
How quality care is meant to be achieved when there is a total unwillingness to pay for it is anyones guess, though like you mention it is often carers, those in most contact with service users, who end up using their own resources to make up the shortfall.
I have an elderly (80s)relative in council sheltered housing who out of her basic state pension of £125 pays £18 per hour for 2 hours home help per week.
The carer gets £6.90.
So basically her entire income would purchase less than one full day of the lowest paid workers time.
The carer would get £45 and the company/agency would get £80.
There is a three cornered cycle here.( )
The company would say it's overheads, employer's national insurance contributions; sickness and holiday liability Insurances; cover for shortages; and admin costs mean it can't charge less. And cant pay the Carer more.
Clearly the anomally is that a pensioner is expected to live a week on less than the cost of one days cheapest labour.
How can the carer ever be on a position, on that wage, to be better placed to provide for themselves in their own old age?
They also will be living on basic state benefits.
In terms of people being willing to pay more for care.....who are these " people" ?
It can't be those of us in work can it?
We are paying our taxes and our national insurance, and 20% of our earnings actually to get to work.
We will be paying around 12% of our earnings over and above that, in order to get the average Local Authority Pension of £4800 per year, to add to our (average 2011)£4900 state pension, at the age of 68.
But that extra local authority pension will serve to exclude us ( by income threshold) from the extra pension top-up benefits, that would have brought us to nearly the same level anyway, if we had never worked at all.
So we will be in exactly the same position ( well...similar to be fair..and especially after a few years of retirement when inflation has lowered the value of what little we had.)
Are we expected to pay some more taxes, community charge; insurance premium today on top of everything else just to put a little more into the hands of the care provision agencies?
They wont pass on the extra profit to their employees unless market forces and a shortage of labour forces them.
Either that or a significant hike in the legal minimum wage levels.
So ....as Robin Hood said in the famous Monty Python Sketch;
" Hmm, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought!"
As soon as we decide to take from the rich to give to the poor, there is suddenly a political redefinition of how much you can earn and still be " poor" .
Take the pleading over the Child Benefit exclusion for higher tax rate earners, and the doe eyes on the adverts pleading for symathy for those threatened with a tax on their homes valued over £2 million. ( Benefit claimants can be forced to move from their lifelong rented home in London to the provinces to save the government a few thousand in housing benefit, but someone who OWNS their £2million home is a worthier cause for exemption.)
So....who ARE these people who need to pay more for the care of our vulnerable?
The answer my friends...is blowin in the wind..........
I really think that Means-Testing is the only answer. I would base it on actual Income rather than Assets though.
I also believe that any benefits received due to age / disability ought to be able to be fully accounted for - and not viewed just as 'additional' income.
The private company I work for do not give us sick pay and we all chip in with the paperwork as supervisors and assistant managersdo a couple of hours a week of the paperwork- I believe they are on around £7.60 and still go out and do rounds too. The overheads for this company cannot be very much. We had to pay for our own CRB checks too.
The turnover of staff is ridiculous, most do not last 6 months. It's such a shame for customers and workers alike; you really get attatched to some and they too you but then you find you can no longer afford to keep working and you do feel guilty.
x
It's called business!
Whilst I do agree that it is just business, high staff turnover is a major indicator that a business is struggling.
Aquiring new workers costs lots when you have to pay fo them to go to training and who you will then loose in in 6 months- this is surely a never-ending cycle of faliure.
Service users recognise this as they see so many disgruntled staff come and go that surely it would be better to get to the bottom of this and offer workers more support?
The business will set all their training and other costs off against tax - so it matters little to them and whilst there is a ready supply of workers I see little changing. They may not be good employers but that it up to them and the Local Authority who Commissions their Services.
Maggie's Market forces....as long as new workers keep coming at these rates, and interupted/intermittant, or even poor service doesn't reduce/deter demand, nothing will change.
Supply and demand!
Very true- we lost a few service users because they were fed up of being messed around but these people were very quickly replaced by new service users.
Hi Sarah, download form P87 from HMRC, fill it in with how many miles youve done this financial year, and you'll need to send it to somewhere in Liverpool i think. You're entitles to up to 40p per mile tax allowance. I get 23p per mile in my job, so was entitled from HMRC to the remaining 17p as tax relief, so i was allowed an extra £1000 in my wages that was tax free, which worked out on my salary at about £15 per month extra in my wages, would be more for you as you havent claimed anything. I also got about 25% of the total as a cheque, so about £100odd pound. Phone HMRC, ask if you can claim back the money, and where to send the form, its not your local tax office, they wont respond, im in swansea, my office is cardiff, but had to send the form to Liverpool. I think the allowance may have increased this year to 45p, also, you can claim up to something like 5 financial years, but believe you have to fill in 5 seperate forms. good luck.
I also work as a domiciliary carer in the private sector but I work for a company who pay a set rate for the hours we do, plus minimum wage for all driving time (including to and from first and last call) and 45p a mile (except to and from first and last call). As far as I am aware my company is the only one in the county that actually pays driving time, but our staff are happy and there is a very low staff turnover (I have been there nearly a year and most of the others have been there for much longer). You should bring it up with management....
Ellie
ps. I've only just joined and can't work out how to post without quoting!!
Remarkable........
I wonder where you are..? I wonder what the LA arrangement is with the Provider...? I wonder what the LA/Private client percentage split is for the company..? I wonder what the uplift is for private clients rates over LA service users rates...? I wonder what the rate paid by from the LA is....? (this varies enormously across the UK....) I wonder if the company is making a profit...? I wonder what percentage of turnover is spent (invested?) in training...? I wonder if there is a 'field management' structure...? A career progression path....? I wonder what the (last..) CQC star rating for the company was...?
As is mentioned, this company appears to be the only "one in the County" paying such expenses........I wonder why? I wonder why this Company has a way of doing it but hundreds (?) of other providers cannot...? I suspect there's more to this than we are being told.
UKHCA, the domcare provision body, are carrying our a survey across the UK right now. It is looking like it is a startling piece of research with some extraordinary findings which show great differences across the UK (a report they carried out some 7 years ago on LA rates showed a difference across the UK from £9.50ph up to £18.70ph) including the creeping practice of paying by the minute! Late payment of money owing to providers is also a recurring theme
The question I would ask "management" is..... how do you manage to pay this money when just about every other provider across the UK cannot?
carewatcher