Carers’ work needs proper recognition – and pay
Care workers and carers have been the bread holding our society together – especially in recent times. Yet they are given nothing but scornful and degrading crumbs.
They are some of the most put upon and hardworking people in the UK and sadly, some of the most invisible.
They risked their lives throughout the pandemic, never missing a day and providing an essential role to our most vulnerable. How do we reward them? By giving them barely enough to feed and clothe themselves and their families due to the very low pay and allowances they receive and by ignoring the heavy mental burden that comes with their daily tasks.
Essential but not considered, many care workers and home carers are paid below the real living wage (RLW). In fact, 60 per cent of home care worker jobs advertised in the past six months offered a pittance wage not nearly enough to live on. And how do they manage to sustain a wage that covers their living costs? By throwing away their own mental health and precious family time to work a number hours that most of us would consider inhumane.
This life-giving work of supporting our elderly, disabled or people with chronic illness, mental health problems and learning difficulties was thanked last summer with the hollow noise of ‘clapping for carers.’
Applause is something you can partake in and feel good about but once the echo of the clapping has faded away all you are left with is silence. Clapping does not pay the bills. Clapping does not endure. Clapping does not provide.
Until you have lived it you do not know the amount of time, effort and endurance these people face on a daily basis.
Seeing a much fairer settlement for care workers and carers is well overdue. People who have been risking their own lives for others for wool thin wages or allowance is not okay. It is not human. Boris was quick to clap the care workers for a gleaming photo opportunity on his Downing Street doorstep when instead he should be using those hands to dip into his pockets and pull decent people out of poverty, not follow the trail of puerile publicity stunts.