Nightmare life of a carer in shameful ‘don’t care’ industry
IT was on the second visit that Donna Wilson noticed it. The lady she was caring for had dropped her tea again just as she was leaving.
An elderly lady so lonely that she was desperate for a few extra moments of Donna’s time.
“I worried about everyone I cared for,” says Donna, 36, a mum-of-four. “There was a man who used to beg me to put him out of his misery because he was in pain with huge bed sores, and that really broke me.”
Then, when a client died in hospital after Donna had administered CPR, she claims she wasn’t even allowed a break.
“I called the office to explain what had happened and said I needed a break because it was really traumatic but was told I couldn’t,” she says.
“I had to go to my next call and just broke down.”
Donna is one of an army of 1.62 million care-workers who look after our increasingly elderly population in an ever more privatised industry.
Almost a quarter are on zero hour contracts, a figure that rises to 58% for care workers in domiciliary care services, like Donna, who look after people at home.
“You are being emotionally blackmailed,” she says. “Agencies know you will get emotionally attached to people – you won’t leave them hungry or wet.
“But you’re always running late. You end up one or two hours late by the end. Clients are ill and they get stressed and spit and shout at you, even throw stoma bags.”
Donna was sacked by her employer JK Caring For You when they found out she had spoken to HMRC about pay. Last year, a tribunal found she had been unfairly dismissed by the firm in Bridgnorth, Shropshire.
“The system is broken,” she says. “Managers don’t see clients as people, they’re just a number. As long as they get the money from the calls they don’t care. They work you into the ground.” Donna claims the pressures were there from the start. “You’re on a zero hours contract but they don’t tell you that,” she says. “I’d do 27 hours over the weekend because that’s when I had childcare. But I was never paid for all that. You’re not paid for travel time. “You can’t claim mileage unless you’re earning enough to pay full tax and National Insurance and most carers aren’t.”
Donna’s former employer disputes this and says she was paid the National Minimum Wage, travel time and that employees “chose their own hours”. Donna’s first client was an elderly lady. “She was bedbound. I had to clean her, change her pad and give her a bed bath. They give you gloves and an apron and that’s it. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I didn’t have any choice, I couldn’t leave someone like that.
“A lot of the time we had to Google YouTube videos to make sure we had the right straps to use the hoists.
“You don’t want to say anything as you’re grateful you’ve got a job.”
After a few months with one firm, she joined JK Caring for You in May 2017.
As Donna explains, their tight schedule left carers with no choice but to shorten visits – known as “clipping” – or run late. “Calls were 15, 30, 45 minutes or an hour,” she says. “You’re meant to do admin, a pad change and prepare food in that time. Sometimes you’d have to spend five or 10 minutes on paperwork.”
As Ken Loach’s film Sorry We Missed You shows so painfully, the long hours worked by those in the gig economy leave little family time. “A typical day should have been 6am to 2pm, break, then 3pm to 10.30pm,” Donna explains, “but you work through to try to catch up and get home at 11.30pm. There’s no time to eat lunch or even go to the toilet some days. The latest I’ve got back is 1.15am. “Family life goes. When you do get home, you’re tired, you don’t want to read with your kids. You have no energy for homework. You’re too knackered to cook – you end up on the sofa with a bag of crisps. “You miss out on parents’ evenings, sports days – all things where you might book annual leave, you can’t. If you take time off, whoever does the rota punishes you. You lose shifts for the next week or weekend.”
Donna was left struggling to manage her money. “You never know what you’re getting each month,” she explains. “I was constantly having to borrow, constantly juggling. I got into rent arrears then lost my house.”
In December 2017, Donna complained to HMRC about pay. She later received an email from her employer accusing her of fuel theft, data theft and harassment and asking her to return her badge and uniform. She was dismissed a month later.
Unable to pay her bills, her car was towed away, and she had to live on credit cards. In September, she represented herself in a tribunal against her former employer. It found she was unfairly dismissed.
Employment Judge Reed said: “Our conclusion was the principal reason for Mrs Wilson’s dismissal was that she had taken action with a view to enforcing her right to the minimum wage by contacting HMRC.”
STRUGGLING
A Care Quality Commission report found JK Caring For You to be “not safe”, “not well led” and “not always caring”. The firm has closed.
Shropshire Council says it “always puts the person who receives a service at the centre of our concerns”.
A spokeswoman added: “We cannot comment on the experience of an individual support worker with their employer, but we take very seriously care organisations’ conduct in regard to call delivery, staff training, ensuring employment legislation is met and the fair treatment of staff .
“Contracted organisations are monitored by ourselves and the Care Quality Commission.”
Donna is still struggling. “The public are quite blind about the ‘don’t care’ industry,” she says. “The people we are caring for don’t have a voice.
“The elderly people I cared for were grateful for any care they got, sometimes for very little. They don’t want to complain as they know carers are stressed. They don’t want to risk being put into residential care or a hospital. I just wanted to set the record straight.”
Clients aren’t seen as people. They are just a number
Some days there’s no time to eat lunch or even go to the toilet