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carers

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wallace

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My daughter finished a 2year coarse in animal husbandry and care last year and has been trying to find work. Jobs are not great in the area without a decent commute. She would like to do something to do something with animals, maybe a zoo or vet assistant. She has always been obsessed with animals. Those type of jobs are few and far between but one type of work which is very easy to get into is care work.
I knew this work was hard and deemed the lowest but I reckon it must be just about the most under acknowledged work out there. The level of training is disturbing to say the least. It consisted of 3 days classroom and then 2 days shadowing with a worker, before being let loose on clients. Baring in mind some of the people have complex needs and others are quite unwell.
Because she does not drive she has to walk everywhere but the company are supposed to create a route that is as close as possible to each other. Being zero hour contract she is not paid between clients. One day her first client was a 50min walk across town and then ping ponging all over the place, after seeing lots of people and covering lots of miles over an 8hr period she worked out what she'd earnt. About £35 which I think is attrocious, considering the type of work being done this really should warrant much more. But the care industry is ran by private companies who are creaming it in. I'd hate to think what they charge local government and feel sorry for people who pay for this service from their own pocket. As you can imagine the turn over of employees is huge with most leaving by dinnertime of their first day.
I'm surprised but she really enjoys it, yes there are some grim parts but meeting and helping the likes of old Bert seems very rewarding. This job is only a stopgap until she can find something better but I am pleasantly surprised at how she is taking it.
 
Despite the challenges, a lot of carers say the personal connections (like "old Bert" in your example) make it worthwhile. There's a sense of meaning and immediate impact that you don't always get in other jobs. Even if she doesn't stay in the sector long-term, this can give her a strong foundation for future animal-care roles, where empathy and patience are equally valued.
 
Having seen the care that my cousin's husband received recently before he died, some of these carers are close to angels.

I have another cousin, widowed and beyond retirement age, who is a carer, loves the job but hates all the stuff Wallace talks about.
 
yep although I was remote from the day to day care my parents received over the past few years it takes a special sort to do that job.
 
wallace said:
My daughter finished a 2year coarse in animal husbandry and care last year and has been trying to find work. Jobs are not great in the area without a decent commute. She would like to do something to do something with animals, maybe a zoo or vet assistant. She has always been obsessed with animals. Those type of jobs are few and far between but one type of work which is very easy to get into is care work.
I knew this work was hard and deemed the lowest but I reckon it must be just about the most under acknowledged work out there. The level of training is disturbing to say the least. It consisted of 3 days classroom and then 2 days shadowing with a worker, before being let loose on clients. Baring in mind some of the people have complex needs and others are quite unwell.
Because she does not drive she has to walk everywhere but the company are supposed to create a route that is as close as possible to each other. Being zero hour contract she is not paid between clients. One day her first client was a 50min walk across town and then ping ponging all over the place, after seeing lots of people and covering lots of miles over an 8hr period she worked out what she'd earnt. About £35 which I think is attrocious, considering the type of work being done this really should warrant much more. But the care industry is ran by private companies who are creaming it in. I'd hate to think what they charge local government and feel sorry for people who pay for this service from their own pocket. As you can imagine the turn over of employees is huge with most leaving by dinnertime of their first day.
I'm surprised but she really enjoys it, yes there are some grim parts but meeting and helping the likes of old Bert seems very rewarding. This job is only a stopgap until she can find something better but I am pleasantly surprised at how she is taking it.
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It does indeed take a special kind of person to do that work, and I agree the people doing the caring are the worst treated in the whole process, it's shocking.

Even if it's a stopgap, it's a great life lesson for her and grounding to proper grafting, which is a trait that far too few of the current entry level working generation seem to want to buy into sadly.
 
My wife worked as a carer part time for a while, she is a qualified nurse, before getting fed up with the incompetence of the local government management of the service.

She would start a 30 minute job at 9:00 and the next job would be scheduled for 9:30 five miles away. Clients who were paying obviously complained about lateness and not getting the full time they were paying for. On a job requiring two people she would be waiting on the second person at the clients house to get a call from the other carer asking why she is not at another clients to help her. They had been booked to two different clients, 8 miles apart each requiring two carers, at the same time. This sort of issue was very common. In addition her wages and expenses were always wrong.

When my father required carers, appointments were often missed, leaving him in bed until the afternoon as he required help to get out of bed. The carers were aways under pressure to get to the next job and due to the staff turnover he often had different carers who did not know him.
Being a carer is a demanding job with the client often being totally dependent on them, the pay is low for the responsibility to which is added the lack of planning by their management which it is often left to the carer to sort it out. I am sure there are competent companies out there but I think they are a minority.

Good luck to your daughter in finding the job of her dreams.
 
Even in a short time she has been there, the incompitance is rife, being booked for the next client a 50min walk from the previous. Or a 2hr break between clients which would mean either walking home which would take 50min only to leave again after 10min to walk to the next one. or sitting on a bench for 90mins. One big thing which bugged me was the training. Bearing in mind they are dealing with medication and generally ill people. It was done by an obviously foreign woman who said she had came here a month ago, extremely strong african accent. Being shown cpr and heimlich on a dummy but not having a go themselves, everything rushed and when questions asked not knowing the answers and no attempt to find them. There are a lot of foreign workers who speak very broken english and are dishing out medication, how is old Bert supposed to understand them and vice versa.
She went out yesterday for 4hrs and made £18. For work not that far away from a base level nurse. I think the only ones benefitting from this is the companies running the show.
 
Is that wage even legal?. I’m a long time out of the Uk but I thought minimum wage was £10 per hour?
 
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