need advice for my friend

mon37

My friend has just started working for the local agency as a care assistant. She has been doing this job for the last 2-3 weeks. Yesterday she phoned me to say that she has received her first pay for the first week and it was only £32.00. My friend said that for that 1st week of her work she worked for 3 days and 2 of them had some shadowing and she also was involved in doing some tasks for the service users. She is on £6.50 per hour and £7 on weekends, flexible hours - basically few hours in the morning and then return back to the clients in the afternoon and again in the very late evenings to prepare them for the night. She said that she has to use her mobile to call the agency or the clients when it needed and the agency does not reimburse the expenses. They pay 25 pence for a mile, do not pay for the time she has to spend for travelling to the client and for the time between the clients. The agency, for example, gave her 20 minutes for 1 client and the client required some other help so she overstayed for another 10 minutes but she will only be paid for that 20 minutes. She said that quite often she gets like 1 hour break between the clients and goes back home and then again she has to go back again to see another client. They only have 1 car in their family and her husband has to be taken to work by her at the 8 am and collected at 5 pm and her 9 years old son has to be taken to school. She is saying that they thought that by doing this work, she will be helping her husband to pay for the bills, rent, car finance but getting £32.00 for a week does not really helps.
She is saying that she thinks that these two days which involved the shadowing were not paid at all but she was doing some tasks for the clients. In general, she is very tired, she is not spending enough time with her son and abandoned some of her household tasks. Any advice will be appreciated.

[Deleted User]

Standard of the care industry, can your friend look for something completely different as harsh as it sounds, this only leads to misery and it will be your friends and the person cared for

A year or so later you also find you haven't paid enough N/I so if needing likes of future JSA you can find yourself stuffed - never under estimate the dangers of this job
Home care only works for those who can play it, are strongly assertive but have a carefree attitude, I'd never encourage someone to leave a stable job for it

It is the one industry, the Jobcentre don't actively push me to knowing my past, been in your mates shoes and it doesn't get better unless you really want the flexibility and are a strong but assertive fighter who doesn't mind becoming unpopular as a result, that said I didn't mind working in care homes (picked up more work and better paid from that as an agency worker) but I dislike having to pay any more DBS checks

So sorry, did they not explain this to your friend as most companies regardless nowadays want to not pay if it involves training

I know it is hard, it might be best to chalk the shadowing up to experience as trying a job and seeing if it fit her? Move on x

dawyldthing

I agree with a lot of keepcalm but if it is care work you would like to do keep an eye out for support work posts or care posts that are part of nursing homes or the like as they will be more than likely more hours. Like where I work we can work long long hours or some shorter shifts. The shortest shift is 2 hours, longest goes over 2 days. The only problem with care work is a lot of companies expect you to be at there becken call and have a call anytime of day, even on your day off. Many are short staffed as there is a lack of people wanting to do the job (as it certainly isn't for everyone) but with the right company and service users it can be a lovely job.

There are some ok companies out there, like with mine they paid for training and my crb check, which would have had to have been paid back if i left within 6 months. You should have been paid for shadow shifts though as we did. My only other suggestion is if possible to stick it for 6 months as the amount of places that expect you to know it all and have x experience is unreal