Good jobs for care workers

The way we care for the elderly and the disabled is important. They are our neighbours, our friends and our parents. One day, we will all need care. People receiving care need support to live comfortably and independently. They might need extra help to prepare meals and bathe, they might need a prompt to take vital medication, and they might need support with conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.

But care work is in crisis. People are not being treated with the care and attention they deserve. All too often, their only source of support, care workers, are exhausted, unable to plan their own lives through insecure contracts, and unable to spend enough quality time with the person in receipt of care.

As a first step in the short term, care managers must be registered and have a licence to practice with a requirement 61 to have a level 5 Diploma in Leadership for Health and Social Care.

Second, the national minimum wage must be a floor, not a ceiling. The CQC should be required to monitor evidence of non-payment of the national minimum wage. It should have an absolute requirement to refer cases where workers are being paid less than the legal minimum to the HMRC for investigation.

Third, there should be a ban on exploitative ‘zero hours contracts’. An independent review for the Labour Party recently set out new legal rights for employees on zero hours contracts to ban employers from being able to force them to be available at all hours, insist they cannot work for anyone else, or cancel shifts at short notice without compensation.

Fourth, the CQC should set standards for local authority procurement processes through a new care charter. Above all, this must include an end to 15-minute slots, which are associated with non-payment of the minimum wage and poor quality of care.

Fifth, there should be a focus on improving training standards and progression. Skills for Care should be reformed to strengthen the representation of employers and employees on its board. It should be given an explicit remit to tackle poor standards and raise levels of training, and particularly apprenticeships, in the sector.

We need good quality care. 63 We need care workers who are treated properly, paid fairly and adequately trained. The opportunity to make those changes is now.

Source:

https://www.demos.co.uk/files/GoodJobs_essaycollection.pdf?1418312724