Home care underpaid

pixiehelper

Having experience in this sector people should be paid hour usually people get paid per call, a 30 min call = £3.50, a client is charged £20 per hr uniforms are provided and mileage allowance 40p per mile this is to cover car repairs, tyres, petrol, private insurance for taking clients out, most carers provide their own phone and told to ring from a clients home, this is not always possible, if late for a call you try to ring hands free whilst driving. .Some companies give no travel time ie you have to be at the next call the same time you leave the last .
Not all calls are in the same area some 5 miles away with 15 mins to arrive, if stuck in traffic that adds to your day at no extra pay you run late at each call if you are lucky someone may cover a call to help you, 20mph zones are not recognised in travel time.
A carer provides a car, phone, insurance, sat nav with not enough provisions and earn approx. £7-8 per hr some could say its abuse but people do it cause they care..

paddyrg

Are you posting because the client pays the agency £20 and the worker gets £8 plus mileage plus uniform? Some of the £12 will be the employers NI, DBS checks, holiday pay for staff, payroll costs, expenses and expensing costs, running the office staff, finding clients and doing their legals/paperwork, recruiting carers, advertising, management expenses and fees, possibly vat and certainly corporation tax on any profit. It probably sounds less fair than it is, and I don't suppose there's much to stop a carer from going direct to their own clients they find.

piglet25

In my area carers are on minimum wage and paid per call so two x one hour calls plus half an hour travelling =2.5 hours of time, they get paid 2 hours worth of wages.

pixiehelper

Piglet25 yes the same as our area so a lot of travel time is unpaid and can equate to 2-4 hrs per day of unpaid time

Laz123

paddyrg wrote: »

Are you posting because the client pays the agency £20 and the worker gets £8 plus mileage plus uniform? Some of the £12 will be the employers NI, DBS checks, holiday pay for staff, payroll costs, expenses and expensing costs, running the office staff, finding clients and doing their legals/paperwork, recruiting carers, advertising, management expenses and fees, possibly vat and certainly corporation tax on any profit. It probably sounds less fair than it is, and I don't suppose there's much to stop a carer from going direct to their own clients they find.

So that's £12 per hour per employee that goes to the employer and if there's 20 employees on their books that's £240 per hour earned by the employer. Money for old rope.

duchy

What sort of costs do the employers have ?

CRB checks
Recruitment costs
Office staff
NI
Pay roll costs
Rent of office premises
Registration costs
Business rate
heat , Light and telephone bill
advertising


Seems like there are quite a few costs each week but then if it really was money for old rope I suppose more carers would set up agencies themselves......or even a workers co-operative.

Laz123

duchy wrote: »

What sort of costs do the employers have ?

CRB checks
Recruitment costs
Office staff
NI
Pay roll costs
Rent of office premises
Registration costs
Business rate
heat , Light and telephone bill
advertising


Seems like there are quite a few costs each week but then if it really was money for old rope I suppose more carers would set up agencies themselves......or even a workers co-operative.[/QUOTE

My Kenyan wife is a home carer and she had to pay for her own CRB check, uniform and travel on buses. She gets £7 ph and most of her time is spent travelling between clients. Most of the time, as mentioned above, the time given on the rota is the same time for two clients who could be 15+ minutes away, so she spends most of her time running on catch-up time. People like her are usually African who do the job because their culture tends to care more for people in a nursing capacity than us Westerners and they enjoy their underpaid jobs.

I'm not sure about them setting up their own agencies. Competition is stiff and most have connections with Social Services so it would be pretty difficult. Her agency bosses are Asian and are quite well off. I do know about overheads because I once ran my own company and you are correct that salaries are the major overhead, but when staff are lowly paid this is greatly reduced because even the office staff who are usually East European are on low pay.

mel48rose

Why not work in a care home then you would have no travelling. Still be on the same rate of pay though.

The_mangler

I care for my husband at home. I get £61.35 a week for a minimum of 35 hours a week caring. Most days it is round the clock, no days off or holidays. Out of that amount, £20 is taken off as my husband receives Income Related ESA. That works out at £1.18 p/h for 35 hours. Still think you're hard done by? I can't change jobs either. This one is for life.

lincroft1710

Home care underpaid

This has been the case for many years

dzug1

Laz123 wrote: »

duchy wrote: »

Competition is stiff .

Therefore the costs incurred and prices charged are not unreasonable. No old rope necessary.