We would not last very long as a species if we did not care about others, would we? Humans are emotional and moral beings. We are not capable of observing another’s behaviour without reacting emotionally. We are supposed to care for ourselves, our children, our partners, our parents, our community, even our nation. But when it comes to social care, caring becomes a low-status career with no prospects. Low value, low pay, unskilled ‘women’s work’.
Caring has so many beneficial effects. On wellbeing, on happiness. It is rewarding and empowering. Take ‘random acts of kindness’, for example. They make you feel good. But social care? No, that is wiping bottoms. When I worked at the council, we actually replaced the word ‘care’ with ‘support’. We did not want to regard people who drew on services as passive recipients of care. Because being cared-for was somehow demeaning. What nonsense was this?
A strengths-based approach was enshrined in the Care Act 2014. Assessment should no longer seek out deficits to be fixed but focus on an individual’s capabilities and potential for positive change. That is, of course, laudable but tell that to someone living with severe dementia at the end of life. Of course, they should be treated with the utmost respect and dignity, but what they need above all else is care.
The availability of a suitably qualified social care workforce is a major concern. Employee recruitment and retention is a real issue, with endemic staff shortages. International recruits have always been an important component of the workforce. But that does not translate into wages. The bargaining power of care workers is low. Social care services are fragmented, and unionisation rates are lower than the economy as a whole (20% vs 41%).
Angela Raynor said she remembered the feeling of people looking down on her when she was a carer. Her apparent determination to raise the pay, if not the status, of carers appears to be paying off with the Employment Rights Bill working its way into statute. A social care negotiating body will be established to determine Fair Pay Agreements – to negotiate pay, and terms and conditions for care workers.
We are not unique in the UK. Persistently low wages are paid to long-term care workers across Europe. But the impact is about so much more than money. In our minds we associate low wages with low skills. It is not a big leap to assume that people on low wages lack intelligence, ambition, maybe that they cannot master more skilled work. A real risk of this prejudice is that social care employment is organised in a way that ignores the intelligence or even restricts the contribution of low-paid workers. This leads to top-down management that overrides the judgement of care workers and does not see them as the problem solvers they invariably are.
I am bewildered by why we think it is OK to entrust the care of often our nearest and dearest relatives with someone who is valued so poorly we cannot scrape together more than the minimum wage to pay them. Do you want one in five of that workforce to be living in poverty? Will it make them a better carer? Or a more desperate or indifferent one? It is time, surely, to value the resourcefulness and creativity of people caring for others. And, most of all, the love they bring to the people they look after. That is who I would want to care for me.
In your view, what more can be done to support care workers? Leave a comment on this column or join the conversation to share your thoughts.
Sara Livadeas is the Founder of Social Care Works. Email: [email protected] X: @saralivadeas