10 years as a full-time carer 24/7 for my mother and I just managed to stay afloat and no more. However, this pandemic has now officially wiped me out - financially and mentally. It's just not sustainable.
The problem is, the UK treating the 2 million full-time carers the way they do (and the UK parliament), namely treating them like a slave labour force, keeping them on 1/3 of the income of public and private sector carers and building a health and social care system on their....
....backs, means that there's very little chance to escape if they wanted to - and at the same time, even if they did escape it would take years for them to recover financially if they ever did.
Think about a private or public sector carer getting burnt out. They can sign off sick or take a holiday. There will be a colleague to take their place. They also get days off and work shifts. Unpaid carers are the lowest paid "benefit claimants" (which is insulting....
....not from an income standpoint but because UK law actually deems carers as not being workers and therefore affords them no protection like paid carers) and they also have no rights to time off, shifts, proper remuneration - they don't even have the right to training!
And even if they do get outside support from local authorities, it is for a few hours a day where they get to have a nap. And there's always a caveat - like councils will assess them for two days but pay out at the wage level for their own staff....
...which doesn't account for the cost of the private care being £16 an hour rather than the £9 they pay their staff. Ergo that 2 days becomes 1 day (that's just one example).
The classic one with the UK Government is when they tell carers they can also take paid work. I say classic because it works like this. A carer (if they can get the time because most work 24/7) gets Carers Allowance which is classed as being too low as an income....
...so they also get UC or income support. It's roughly, all in about £115 a week. But then they have to pay for all their own PPE (unlike private and public carers whose employers buy it) and all of their living costs.
So say a carer does manage to somehow find time for a job. Income Support and UC are means tested. So pound for pound the person earns in that job, the DWP takes it off them. Once they reach a threshold over their income support or UC, the DWP then revoke their carers allowance.
So now what you've got is a carer looking after the person most of the time and working a parttime job, and all they get is the wage from that part-time job which is the equivelant of the benefits they used to get. Twice the work, half the remuneration.
The issue is that carers also don't have something important - they have no workers union and they also can't strike - because if they did, they'd be subject to criminal charges for abandoning the person they care for. Basically, they are state-sponsored hostages.
UK wide people clapped for carers for 5 minutes on a weekday at the start of this pandemic, but I note that they didn't spend 5 minutes email their MP's
Hundreds of thousands of carers haven't even had the £20 a week covid uplift that is on income support.
Hundreds of thousands of carers haven't even had the £20 a week covid uplift that is on income support.
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