Why low pay of carers remains a national scandal – Dinah Keal

Throughout the pandemic, those who work in social care settings have been the unsung heroes. In the same way as our doctors and nurses have dedicated their working lives to saving Covid patients, social care workers have shown true bravery in continuing to work in care homes and other care settings, putting their own lives and those of their families at risk.

But it is still the case that social care workers are the bottom of the pile when it comes to rewards for their very considerable labours.

Whilst medical teams fight to save lives in hospitals, it has often been social care staff who have held the hands of dying residents who have been starved of contact with their loved ones in our care homes.

It was also social care workers who welcomed back patients with Covid who were unceremoniously turned out of hospitals into care homes in the first lockdown.

And who continue to work tirelessly to meet the daily needs of the elderly and disabled.

Their job is hard enough without the added pressures of a pandemic, and yet the wages of social care staff are pitiful considering the responsibility and sheer hard graft of what they do.

I have come across people who work 14-hour shifts caring for severely handicapped adults who are unable to communicate other than via eye movements or facial expressions.

This is physically and emotionally hard work for which they are paid the minimum wage.

How can this be acceptable when society places such a heavy load on them caring for those who we either cannot or choose not to care for? It is this undervaluing of social care and those who work in the field that leads to the continuation of the current state of the care system and which has, once again, been overlooked by the latest tranche of NHS reforms unveiled just last week and which are intended to ‘learn lessons’ from the pandemic.

So we pay people rubbish wages, so the job must be ‘rubbish’ – the staff feel under pressure and start to believe their roles can’t be important as no-one pays them a decent wage for all their hard work – and they are often so exhausted and demoralised by the daily grind that they don’t have the energy to campaign for change.

This is where government should – years ago – have stepped in and put a fair price on the heads of the thousands of dedicated, hard-working social care staff, offering them respect in the caring industry and a decent standard of 
living.

But successive governments have ‘kicked the can down the road’ and ignored the issue, with politicians sticking their heads in the sand, other than taking advantage of the occasional photocall in a care home or when they need to seek care for their own loved ones.

This is, in itself, part of the problem – much of the care goes on behind closed doors – in care homes and also homes for people with learning difficulties or disabilities – so most of us don’t get to see the level of dedication and the hard work involved until we need it to support our own loved ones.

Things that happen behind closed doors are far to easy for politicians to ignore.

And now we have a global pandemic which will give the Government another excuse to ignore the plight of social care workers and a social care system at breaking point and say society ‘can’t afford’ the investment.

After the suffering and heartbreak that we have seen in care settings during the pandemic, frankly a Government that closes its eyes and puts its fingers in its ears for a moment longer on this issue should be deeply ashamed.

Dinah Keal is a Lib Dem town and district councillor for Norton in Ryedale.

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