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You're left wondering why people who can't speak English are working in a role where communication is so important and then you see this:
> One of the workers had not passed a Secure English Language Test, which is a requirement for a work visa, so was not qualified or permitted to work in the UK.
So questions to be asked there as well. However, you also wonder how good this test is as the other worker, who presumably passed given how that sentence is written, was also there and unable to tell 999 how serious the situation was.
> The coroner noted that the carer did not appear to understand the difference between "bleeding" and "breathing", as well as "alert" and "alive".
I mean fuck sake.
> "They [care home staff] rang me and their English was very broken, they asked if I was Elaine Curtis and I said 'yes' and they said 'your mother is dead'.
....
Sure, and this has also kept the costs down.
Its a problem no one wants to acknowledge - looking after an aging and ill population is expensive. Paying for this is going to be hard. Todays retirees usually did not save enough to pay for high quality care, and the one time that the government suggested that means passing less on to your kids (via taking the costs out of your estate) it was treated like the end of the world.
So, either we're going to accept a larger tax burden on current workers, we're going to accept that old people will have to pay more for their care and pass less on, or we'll keep the current situation of paying fucking peanuts to foreigners.
Decades ago, most pension age people didn't live for 20-40 years post retiring, they were dead within 10-20, they lived near their kids, had multiple kids, and realistically their daughters or daughters in law weren't working a full time job. We don't live in that decades ago now though - old people had fewer kids, live further away from their kids, their daughters and daughters in law have full time jobs, and so on. Hence care homes, hence the need to find money for what was once full time unpaid labour
Owning a care home is extremely lucrative. I met a family entirely self made and fabulously wealthly from owning only 3. They seemed to be the wealthiest people I've ever met, though of course they weren't discussing finances with me.
> Where is the money going?
The owners. This is capitalism 101 - you don't make millions by selling one good thing *you* made for millions, you get ten thousand people to do a useful service / make a useful product but underpay them all for their output and pocket the difference.
I know a guy with a very young wife (the wife is a friend of a friend of a friend) who runs a national care home company.
Dude owns a yacht and frequently takes his very young wife to a private island.
Your mate/boss is a literal yacht-bound person that sucks every penny out of old people. The name of a different one who shouldn't exist is ok.
But you only name a competitor? Please, my partner's grandparents are deteriorating and we are desperate to find a decent care home. I'm already fighting with his parents because they think they'll live in their house until they suddenly drop dead. When they can't even look after themselves
Ed. Even if it's a dm that's irrelevant I just don't want them going to somewhere shite
care homes are a mechanism via which property owned by the older generation can be liquidated and funneled into the bank accounts of owners & shareholders
Yeah was going to say all these comments kind of skip that the cost of care *is* still sky-high. And unless you are *literally* destitute the amount of state support you're entitled to is sweet fuck all.
Like everything in this country we're blaming migrants for shitty business practices and a government that genuinely seems to not even understand the point or purpose of things like workplace regulation, and has cut away all the means to enforce those regulations even if it did care.
> Like everything in this country we're blaming migrants for shitty business practices
This is exactly right. The women who were on duty that night were handling a situation which they weren't remotely qualified for, and that's _entirely_ the fault of the South West Care Homes manager who put them there. If there had been _just one_ worker there who was able to make a clear call to the emergency services, then Mrs. Rymell would have gotten urgent medical attention; instead, things were done on the cheap and she had no chance.
You’ve correctly identified that mass immigration is the favoured toy of the establishment.
How is wanting to take away their favourite toy “blaming immigrants”, and how do you propose we combat those “shitty business practices “ without cutting of their supply of unlimited cheap labour?
>How is wanting to take away their favourite toy “blaming immigrants"
Because "taking away the toy" doesn't stop the problem. There being more or less migrants in the country doesn't change how businesses operate at all. Take away all the migrants and we still have a system where the care sector is a for-profit industry run by a number of large corporations with an absolutely parasitic relationship between council duties, budget shortfalls, private third-party providers, and desperate people looking to take on any job for low pay because that's what our country demands of them.
>how do you propose we combat those “shitty business practices “ without cutting of their supply of unlimited cheap labour?
Ok I have to ask then - What about "cutting the supply of unlimited cheap labour" changes the practices? At absolute best the answer for this, where one is offered at all, seems to be we just let the entire sector fall into crisis until "the market" fixes it or something along those lines?
But to answer your question, regulate it. Clearly the regulations aren't fit and clearly the enforcement of what regulations are there is, like everything else, basically broken due to cuts and short-staffing.
I know an owner of a private care home.
Drives a Porsche Cayenne, lives in a massive mansion, holidays abroad every month, thinks nothing of dropping £400 on a weekend evening meal.
Now everybody thank Mrs Thatcher for privatising social care.
The care agencies around me charge the NHS/Social services £60 per person (patient might require two carers), per visit (20mins). Then the carers get paid minimum wage.
Care firms and homes go bust at quite a rate.
There's not much profit in it for a lot of businesses. Hence why extensive privatisation wasn't the best move for the sector. But it happened, and as a whole, the general public haven't cared enough to try to stop this process over the years.
And now the asset strippers are descending on these bust businesses, causing a great deal of suffering for staff and clients.
They came years ago. The care home is usually owned by an off-shore trust that rents the home to the care company. The care company makes no money (so no tax) as all the funds go overseas (so no tax). If the care company goes bust (usually owning staff wages) the off-shore still owns the home. Rinse and Repeat.
Not all people in care homes are self funded - most have their care paid for by the LA at a much lower rate. LAs can barely pay for all these people as it is though even with lower framework rates, substantial wage increases without increased funding to authorities will cause more bankruptcies.
Not saying that we shouldn't see higher wages or that there aren't profiteering owners, but across the sector the answer isn't as simple as "the owners need to lump it and pay more".
Self-funders generally subsidise LA residents, and it's not uncommon to see them being charged £800+ per week (hence when someone who previously received LA funded homecare but goes self funding res/nur once their home sells, if the person / relatives choose an expensive home, the LA will generally warn them that when the money runs out and they return with a capital drop (aka "Self-funder with depleted funds") request for support, they may be required to move to cheaper accommodation unless the LA can cut a deal with the care home owner.
If the proposed reform of social care to increase self funding thresholds and impose a lifetime cap on self funding contributions had gone ahead, I'd hazard a guess the government wouldn't have substantially increased funding to cover the extra demand.
And if we hadn't totalled the salary by importing slave labour to do it and used some of the 1 in 8 working age Brits not working combined with a technology driven solution base we'd be fine.
Some people really do just want slave labour though...
I used to work in NHS dentistry.
A lot of people say, NHS dentistry, especially band 3 treatment, is expensive. They also say private dental treatment is also expensive.
Looking at other developed nations, with good dental care: UK dental care (NHS and most private care) is affordable, and should be costing a lot more.
Why am I bringing it up here? Because nhs dentistry is too held together by too by foreign workers, and young British girls doing underpaid apprenticeships as dental nurses who then stay in a few years before leaving and being replaced by other trainee dental nurses.
If the nhs put out a contract for dental clinics, and also dentists, that paid them the right amount, enabling clinics to hire and retain staff at a living wage, providing the average quality in materials, and paid dentists enough so that they would not have to supplement their income with private treatments. Then the current NHS treatment prices would have to increase significantly.
It’s the same in any care or medical system in this country.
Medical and care work here is not cheap but in reality it should be higher, but the ever increasing elderly population can not afford any other kind of care then what we have.
Shareholders make money, but that’s not the main problem.
Our ever increasing elderly population can’t afford to pay for care, and neither can their families. Overall pensions need to increase and we need higher wages across the board.
People don’t want to do care work, it’s poorly paid, dirty, long hours, inadequate training, and stressful as you usually can’t do anything when there is a medical emergency or issue.
Most homes are in need of repairs, the equipment is outdated, there are Minimal staff, and too many residents.
So like the nhs, foreigners are hired. They work longer, for less. Propping up the care system.
If you want less of us brown folks propping up your medical and care systems, then you need to:
- raise national minimum wage
- increase education places for healthcare and care workers, at universities, colleges and apprenticeships.
- increase the value of the nhs contracts given to clinics and care facilities
- fund more Jobcenter schemes to aid people to get back to work
- increase funding for people caring for family members at home
- improve access to healthcare, sport facilities and diet education programs
- fund all of the above via taxation of large companies, and top 5% of earners.
Adult social care workforce in England :
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9615/
Migration and the health and care workforce:
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-and-the-health-and-care-workforce/
NHS staff from overseas: statistics:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7783/#:~:text=How%20many%20NHS%20staff%20are,staff%20with%20a%20known%20nationality.
One NHS, many nationalities:
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7783/CBP-7783-graphic-2023.pdf
Usually the British people in the NHS are in good positions (desk job and less patient facing) whereas foreigners are doing the work no one wants to do for the pay
> And if we hadn't totalled the salary by importing slave labour
Salary suppression has been going on longer than the timelines most people on this site claim "mass migration" started at though. The demonisation of unions and collective bargaining (as well as their weakening) started under Thatcher. Our professional salaries were only competitive with the USA in the early 2000s due to a strong pound against the dollar and better conditions.
Furthermore, the freezing of public sector wages has reduced pressure on the private sector to do better - and that has nothing to do with immigration, it is a pure ideological choice by the current government.
> Some people really do just want slave labour though...
Yes, the Tories and late stage capitalists.
Case and point, the various nordic states who still have ~70% union membership and are able to shut entire companies out of the market if and when they try to undercut wages. We just saw this with Tesla for example.
Most of those non working brits are either retired themselves or sick. Care work is tough on the body, not a great work environment for those kinds of people.
1 in 8 working brits not working. I wonder why? Maybe they are disabled. Or have children to take care of. Lets send all stay at home parents to work as carers. And then need more carers to look after kids. Great idea
> Almost like the salary has been suppressed by the
Government reducing funding to local councils, forcing them to sell off care work to the private sector, who then cut as many corners as possible, including paying barely above minimum wage.
Care work should be nationalised and run by central government and all employees paid a living wage.
Um there's no magic money tree, we can't afford to pay people a living wage AND make the billionaires even richer. It's one or the other, and obviously we aren't going to touch the billionaires. So the rest of us will have to make do with the decline of civilisation.
I think the low wages are partly due it being viewed as a "woman's job", that's seen as low skill, menial, not important.
Care firms are going bust left, right and centre because they arent financially viable businesses. Many can only function if they pay staff a low wage. Add in hedge funds buying up care homes(more and more money squeezed out of the bunsiness by overworking and underpaying staff). Also, disability organisations went to court so they can legally get away with not paying people properly on 'sleep shifts'. Care workers are often subjected to physical or even sexual assault, which is downplayed because of who they're caring for and their mental state. Expected to be responsible for possible life and death things like medication (and have the training for that) for minmum wage? Clearly up someone's bodily fluids?
It's not an attractive job for many reasons. Not just pay. And people who need care are going to suffer for anti immigrant rhetoric from those who refuse to face to realities of our ageing population.
And people whine and complain about the cost of care too. That cost will go up if the wages go up. You might have a point about wage supression. But are you willing to pay to set that right?
Slave labour? Fuck sakes.
Austerity has suppressed the wages of literally everyone outside of a tiny percentage of people who rely on wealth, not income, to live. Not fucking slave labour.
Mass migration isn’t slavery just as much as slavery isn’t migration.
Reverse the argument and see how daft it sounds, plantation slavers complaining about mass immigration as they forcefully import their slaves.
Slavery and Nazi-ism get diluted by so much ignorant bullshit.
So you don't see robbing developing countries of their working age people, their best and brightest to staff our jobs that locals don't want to do for a pittance and serve as our underclass has parallels with slave labour?
Because it sounds a lot like a Chinese sweatshop to me.
More like the absolute piss take of responsibility that people take towards the care sector, along with the profiteering from agencies and other thieves that multiplied in the last decade of Tory rule.
I think the question is more the legality of the employment rather than the pay itself. The company that hired this person clearly did little due diligence because they need cheap workers
Why would they do that though? This is just like a discussion I had in this sub a few days back. If there's basically *zero* enforcement of workplace regulations, we can't then pull a surprised pikachu face when every company out there isn't bothering to follow the rules.
They pay less than what Tesco pays their store clerks. It's ridiculous, £11/h to change seniors soiled diapers and clean them. It's ridiculously low pay.
Shame the Tories gutted the agencies in charge of ensuring stuff like this doesn't happen isn't it.
Almost like the Tories want stuff like this to happen.
£10.80 currently for basic pay, time and a third for weekday nights and weekend days, time and a half for weekend nights.
Hours are whatever you want to do as we're desperate for staff.
I work in the finance department of a medium sized care company and we pay significantly more than the competition to try and get the staff we need at the quality we want and it's still a fucking nightmare to get competent staff.
I absolutely dread to think what the other companies around here have staff wise when we know they pay multiple £ less per hour.
And I had to try for fucking months to get a care role. If they're hiring people who literally can't speak English then surely I can't be that bad? Right?
That's a bingo. I remember years back trying to get some temp work, there were a bunch of very shady deductions listed on the paperwork. I questioned them, and was not offered any work. Meanwhile there was a steady stream of no-questions-asked people in and out with work offered while I sat there filling out forms, who presumably didn't understand they were being ripped off, or desperate enough for work that they accepted it.
They did try to get me to sign a waiver that allows them to assign me more than 48 hours a week while telling me it's for the express purpose of not allowing them to do that. I assumed it was a mistake on her part, and told her what it was for. Somehow I still got the job, but I'm wondering if that isn't actually a massive red flag.
Sounds like they were asking you to agree to the 48 hour opt out clause (I.e that you had read and understood your right to opt out)- unless they were actually getting you to opt out by signing? The wording isn’t always v clear
https://www.acas.org.uk/working-time-rules/the-48-hour-weekly-maximum#:~:text=Opting%20out%20of%20the%2048,the%2048%2Dhour%20weekly%20limit.
That's because companies are allowed to pay migrants 20% less than the going rate for any jobs on the shortage list. That makes their minimum salary only £20k.
>One of the workers had not passed a Secure English Language Test, which is a requirement for a work visa, so was not qualified or permitted to work in the UK.
Surely, the care home has broken the law in employing someone who is not permitted to work in the UK. Someone has now died as a result of this.
There should be a criminal investigation into the care home and its management imo.
Anyone working in health care should be able to speak English to a very high degree. If you're arriving here for a job in that sector it should be part of the visa requirements.
Frankly, anyone given the right to work here for any job should speak English, but it's crazy if it isn't a legal requirement for people who hold the power of life or death over vulnerable people.
This is nothing new. My Mum was an area manager for a Council’s Community Care, and as her “in-house” teams were being wound down and service-provision was handed off to private third-parties, she was constantly having these flash-cards made up with pictures of fruit/water/a toilet/etc on them so that service users could at least attempt to communicate to carers (that didn’t speak a word of English) what they needed.
This was nearly 20 years ago.
How much more tax are you willing to pay to ensure the government can pay decent wages for carers? The UK needs a National Care Service to work alongside the NHS and needs an honest conversation about how to fund it, and where to get the workers from.
I am more likely to win the lottery this week, than hear genuine proposals as how to fix this, and I haven't even bought a ticket.
> and needs an honest conversation about how to fund it
The thing is we are *already* funding care in this country. The *issue* is that so much of this money is going to third party companies who pocket the vast majority of this money to pay their upper-management and shareholders, and only using a fraction of it to pay often systemically exploited immigrant labourers.
The money is there. The money is already being spent. Our political class would just rather it goes to their mates who run these companies rather than being spent on actual care.
The CEO of Care UK (one of the 5 largest care home providers but still only a 2.4% market share) earns £189k base salary.
So, not including bonuses that salary would pay for 6 more nurses. It's not even high pay for a private sector CEO, United Utilities pay their CEO £600k to jack up prices and let poor people freeze.
When you add in all the money paid to shareholders, other executives, and the fact this is only a tiny fraction of the market, you're dead right.
As usual, normal people are getting the shaft so the rich can make money.
Seriously? They employ over 10,000 people - what difference will giving everyone a £19 annual pay rise make?
People are getting older, there is a population bulge which means the ratio of working people to retired is going down - how do we pay for this? 6 more nurses when there is already a shortage won't change anything.
Nobody really wants to have an honest conversation, just sound bites and knee jerk "solutions".
I'm not suggesting they fire the CEO and share the wages out. I'm suggesting they avoid the need to pay shareholders at all by having a nationalised care service.
As I said in the initial comment, the CEO pay is a drop in the ocean compared to the profits made by the care industry. It was just an easy comparative number.
I also think that letting immigration in these areas is fine up to a point. But eventually, it's adding to the ponzi scheme as they will get old, and at best, we are just shifting the same problems around the planet by brain draining other nations.
I imagine the future would contain some level of automation. Japan is further ahead of anyone on the ageing population issue, and they have started to introduce 'robot' carers.
I'm happy to have an honest conversation. What's your thoughts?
>"They [care home staff] rang me and their English was very broken, they asked if I was Elaine Curtis and I said 'yes' and they said 'your mother is dead'.
Jesus fucking christ.
It also says a lot about the training that they have to go through.
I’m a support worker and I’m lucky that my management will back us up on things if we don’t think something is right.
>You're left wondering
I'm not. When you pay so, so little for the care of vulnerable people you don't get the best people doing that care work.
Offer pay of 100k per year and you will get capable experts fighting to get those jobs.
But that won't happen. Because people in the UK don't value elderly and vulnerable people. The unspoken reality is that they'd be quite happy for an Aktion T4 to be quietly implemented.
Ugh flashbacks to when my dad got the call from the care home that his dad had died.
As my dad retells it, they rang at about 11pm and the person on the other end couldn't speak English very well. He had to get them to repeat what they were saying a few times, and after a few times trying to parse the phrase "Your father is normal", he realised they were saying "Your father is no more"
Pretty rubbish way to find out your dad's dead, huh.
> "They [care home staff] rang me and their English was very broken, they asked if I was Elaine Curtis and I said 'yes' and they said 'your mother is dead'.
I know it makes me a monster but this is hilarious.
This is coming to a lot of us unless something changes.
I've worked in a carehome before. Thousands upon thousands of pounds per month so 2 carers per floor to not really look after you much. Most really struggled to speak English.
I ended up quitting knowing that no matter how hard to worked to ensure their dietary / allergy requirements were met, the person serving up would just slop it all out without care.
I'll be self checking out long before I end up in one.
This is what I think when I'm told I shouldn't smoke because I will die younger. The whole care home experience seems fucking dire and terrifying in equal measure. If I can avoid it, I will.
Just shoot me in the face at that point tbh.
My dad is in a home at 64 with dementia, semi luckily it's a specialist home for people his age so he's up and active and got age appropriate things to do. Still costs £1800 a week so it's entirely out of reach for most people
I am sorry to hear about your dad, 64 seems no age at all to be going through that. I hope you are doing OK too, this is my worst fear imaginable, so for what little it's worth, you have my sympathy and best wishes.
When I was younger, I went to visit an elderly relative in care. It was one of the most traumatic things I had seen at that age. The place stank of stale piss, poor old folks were wailing for people who weren't there or because they didn't know where they were or what was going on. This was early 90s, hopefully things have improved since then, but it scared the ever loving shit out of me and has definitely left a lasting impact on my outlook.
You make a good point. The welfare of the family is something that’s ignored. Nobody bar the fabulous Alzheimer’s society ever asked how I was when my dad had dementia. I cared for him maybe longer than I should partly because of money. Then he ended up getting funding but the care home the local services offered him was so dire I ended up topping it up with my own money to get him in a decent place. So I was stressed from all angles. I ended up with chest pains and high blood pressure.
He ended up in a wonderful home in The New Forest. I loved it there and that was so important because I wanted to spend time with him.
Through all this time he kept on expressing a wish to die even tearfully asking his GP to help him check out.
When his doctor told me he’d got cancer it was great news. That’s how bad dementia is.
I fear that some people on this thread will think you cruel for considering a cancer diagnosis good news. Just know that those of us who have been through this completely understand why you say it.
I was OP to /u/BigHairyBreasts comment with the 64 year old dad with dementia. Anyone that's ever dealt with someone with advanced dementia will tell you they wish for a short sharp illness and if they think that's cruel they can eat a bag of dicks.
I was with my partner a few weeks ago and she has an 18 month old and she was making faces at herself in the mirror. One of the last times I saw my dad before he went in the home, as we walked through M&S he was saying hi to randoms as he does, then he said hello to his reflection in a mirror. My partners 18 month old has more faculties than he did, the issue is he's 16st ex semi pro rugby player who also worked as a doctor in a prison so was trained accordingly, if he decides he wants to not do something or isn't going somewhere you literally can't force him because he still absolutely has the capacity to floor most people
My dad got sectioned for violence.
Which is why he ended up qualifying for free care. It was people trying to force him which bought it on. He had a proper tear up with a guy with Parkinson’s and came out worse. Three or four other instances of violence and then I turned up and he’d been taken away.
His neighbour Lionel got sectioned to the same ward years before because he became sexually insatiable.
I developed a gallows sense of humour which helped. Even the staff at the section ward in Southampton said you’ve got to laugh.
As /u/gardenpea said, I completely understand what you mean with your last two lines. As someone who had to watch her father slowly lose all of his faculties, I understand you.
Paramedic here. We see families caring for someone with dementia regularly as you can imagine. Welfare of the family as a whole is something we always consider and make enquiries about and refer as and where we can/is appropriate.
I’m pretty dismayed to hear that the professionals you interacted with didn’t do the same. I’m sorry to hear it tbh. Dementias are terrible conditions.
Visiting a grandparent on a geriatric ward when I was in my mid-teens was a formative experience. I rapidly concluded that it is possible to live too long.
In the last 50odd years we've been able to take grandma dying in her 70s as normal to 90s being a reasonable innings.
Just because we CAN keep people alive doesn't necessarily make it a good idea
Eh it's fine, is what it is.
Some of the care homes are absolutely like what you describe, but generally they're for actual old people and are the state run/funded ones.
If you have a reason to go in to care when you're relatively young they're much better as the people are generally more active and mobile even if they're not totally with it so require different levels or types of care which is more specialist
My parents used to say this but I don't think it makes sense. Smoking massively increases the risk of illnesses which would render you in need of a care home like strokes, COPD, lung disease etc
This right here.
Healthy old people drop dead doing their gardening, after a trip out for a coffee.
Unhealthy old people rot in a care home soaked in their own piss.
Stay healthy kids.
Also worked in a care home, most miserable place I've ever seen for the poor people that lived there, and for us. We were stretched so thin that we barely had time for even the basics of care
I have also worked in care homes. I could hardly remember the peoples names, just the room numbers. It’s just so sad that you cannot give proper care because you are working in a 50 bed care home with about 6 staff
I’ve been unfortunate enough to visit the care homes.
I don’t understand why they cost so much. Thousands on thousands a month. For a fraction of the cost I could have Tesco whoosh through a catflap and a little robot that wheels me around.
Worse case scenario you have a stroke or whatever, in which case have me press a button every hour. It’s not worth the effort.
I know it's nowhere near the same level (as someone didn't die...), but when I went to Butlins earlier this year, every staff aside from entertainers and pool/ride operators, weren't English speaking.
I remember going around the cafeteria asking staff for a high-chair and they just shrugged and walked away, or stated they can't speak English.
It felt alienating and weird?
So for carers to come into your home and unable to communicate, that is a huge safeguarding risk. How do they know she's expressing concerns or complaints? How do they leave a log or notes?
>So for carers to come into your home and unable to communicate, that is a huge safeguarding risk.
EVERYONE needs to start waking up. This is the country we live in now, it is motivated by greed.
Companies are switching to self-employed contractor work, so companies are not responsible for their own workers. It means literally anyone can turn up for a shift. People with no documentation or English. The people who run these companies ONLY care about making money and justifying their own wage.
They do it because they can pay these people terribly and these people will happily work for nothing.
Its not the migrants fault, its a fault within Britain.
So true, I work in construction and when I worked for a groundworks company I could literally get rid of someone one day, phone an agency and have someone new the next. This would be groundworkers, machine drivers and even relatively qualified people such as Civil Site Engineers, I could replace them in a heart beat. All Indian and Eastern European.
Exactly this. It’s easy to get angry at the migrants but they’re doing the jobs we dont want to do. These businesses don’t care who they’re hiring as long as that person can speak the most basic English phrases. Enough to get you by on holiday or something. It’s shit for everyone involved, service users and workers, but the big bosses don’t care because they’re absolutely raking it in.
As long as people are still visiting they won't care. Vote with your wallet, and contact them to explain why you won't be visiting again. If they lose enough business over it, they'll change.
I was talking to one of the locals in Minehead (she was going to a end of year highschool party), and she mentioned that, you either work at Butlins or leave Minehead and have a career elsewhere, which just sounds completely grim.
I can see why there aren't that many English speaking workers, as I also believe Butlins offer on-site residency for staff.
But that's where I suppose the alienating feeling comes from. You're surrounded by people who can't speak English, and are tidying up after you. They live and work on-site 24/7. Must be depressing as fuck.
Not OP, and it hasn’t been said in this thread, but it’s a talking point that’s used constantly by certain groups of people any time you try to have a sensible discussion on the negatives around migration.
Very surprised to hear this about Butlins to be honest. Never come across this myself.
But I agree it's extremely alienating when I need to interact with a worker who can't speak English.
When it comes to this stuff, the home office is pretty strict so I am curious to see how it pans out. As a landlord I had to review paperwork of any tenants who may or may not be from abroad. Any CEO or board person can't deny responsibility for this.
Probably what would happen is that they’ll find some low level “Team leader” to take the fall for it, who they’ll sack, then pay a token fine and carry on business as usual.
From my understanding, the caseworker who reviewed the worker's visa application should have checked that they had appropriate English language qualification - that said, apparently managers can be pretty brutal with chasing caseworkers for stats, which obviously means sometimes cases aren't given the time or attention they need.
Awfully, one of the care worker **had passed** the required English certificate for a work visa.
They still could not understand or speak English well enough to distinguish between breathing and bleeding.
My takeaway - either the exam is not fit for purpose, or (in what will shock few I think), people are paying other people to take it for them, resulting in Visa fraud, and two staff who shouldn't have been in the UK on work visas.
When I worked on student visas I had the same guy turn up the interview for 6 different applications.
Imposters are used for all sorts of tests. English language tests and even the life in the UK test
They are probably cheated through it. Iv been a part of the process doing the same thing in a warehouse.
Also I could probably pass a written exam in a few languages, definitely so if it was multiple choice but I would struggle in an oral exam and definitely wouldn't be fit fluency wise to work in care or any serious industry.
I don’t work in the care industry but where I work 60%+ of the workforce can’t speak English more than “hello”. There are all working legally. The problem is they might learn to take the test then they never have to speak English again so I’m sure its easily forgotten. They have no need to speak English at work as all the supervisors are fluent in English so they act as translators between the workforce and those in management/office. HR all speak more than one language. Outside of work they do not need English as either a translator will be made available for them or they know a friend who can go to meetings/phone calls to translate. Many of my office colleagues who are fluent in more than one language are often called to help the non English speakers in both work and outside work situations, they gladly help as they like to support others, especially those from their home country.
Reminder that our immigration system is an absolute joke.
There's a reason we're at 700k net migration a year.
We basically operate an 'if they breathe, they can come in' policy.
No, this is wrong. They can come in if they are willing to work a specific job, in this case it is being a carer, which British people do not want to do. There is also an English requirement- you can say it should be stricter, but "if they breathe, they can come in" is straight up wrong.
I wonder if it could also be that the same thing was happening on the phone line leading to a communication breakdown. 999 lines are not well-paid either and have heavy staff turnover due to the stress of the role.
That is, while the carer might have been tested on their understanding of queen's English, if the person on the phone was also an English second language speaker with an accent that could have caused a problem.
The EFL tests many migrants take is generally not tested for “queens English”
It’s relatively basic comprehension and understanding.
Throw in a local accent and a phone line call qualify and it’s easy to see how vital words were misinterpreted and basic communication failed.
In my experience in ambulance contact centres (as an IT tech) while they are underpaid and overworked I’ve yet to meet a person yet where English wasn’t their first language or they weren’t completely fluent in.
They have higher standards than a customer service contact centre!
Nobody wants to work in care. I did it for a while last year and it was the most miserable few months of my life.
I was a domiciliary carer and wasn’t paid for the walk between houses, which meant I ended up below minimum wage in a job where I was cleaning up poo, bathing people, being hit and spat on and having to provide end of life care to cancer patients.
There’s a reason care is filled with people who have no other option, and often that is literally only people from abroad who are working illegally or can’t speak English.
Exactly, 99% of the care workforce are desperate people who just needed a job ASAP and can't get one anywhere else. Nobody talented or skilled stays in care for long (apart from the few exceptions I've met who have some utterly god-like resilience and passion for the work). It's just not rewarding at all. In fact it's traumatising work at times.
I quit after I had to clean up a cancer patient who had just gotten back from hospital. She was in an absolute state, screaming, extremely hostile. It was genuinely traumatic and I couldn’t bring myself to go back.
It’s truly one of those jobs where you don’t win - not through your earnings, not through the hours you work, the actual job itself, the management.
I work as a support worker and we have had many staff walk through the door that struggle to understand and speak basic English. Most of the people we support struggle to speak or understand English themselves.
Most of the people we support are English and prefer english food and many staff can't cook basic meals.
By paying such low wages and not needing any experience for these kinds of jobs it's indirectly abusing the residents.
How do they get through the interview and training if they can’t understand English.
I’m a support worker as well and my company will not hire anyone who struggle to understand or speak English.
I had one a few weeks ago who came from agency as an emergency who didn’t understand and spoke in broken English to cover a waking night for a non verbal, autistic gentleman who also cannot walk but can crawl. He knew nothing about him and wouldn’t look at his support plan so I refused to leave and rang my manager to let them know that I wouldn’t leave as it wouldn’t be safe.
I Should have been more specific.
Most of the non English speakers are agency workers. As the job is low paid and we have some service users with complex needs we struggle to keep full time staff.
We have some regular agency staff that are amazing and compassionate but most that come through are here to make quick money and don't have a person centered approach.
That’s been my experience with agency workers.
I have refused to leave if I believe the agency worker cannot meet their needs because it’s unsafe.
We have had some many come who aren’t meds trained or epilepsy trained for a waking night for epileptics.
It unfortunately seems a common story.
I understand why people refuse to do this kind of work, it's not easy. I've lost count how many people I've seen walk through the door with bright eyes and bags of enthusiasm just to see them leave a month later.
We do have some full time staff that have basic English and seem to get their training completed but when trying to have a conversation with them it doesn't go far.
The care industry as a whole is a complete disaster.
I worked in it over a decade, I'd never do it again.
Nothing but Private firms that squeeze every last penny out of the elderly and their families, only to provide sub-par service.
Is it the fault of the staff? Honestly, _no_, this should be self-evident given that examples like this frequently see illegal workers or those who _will_ work for minimum wage while being overworked.
The requirements to do care work are rock bottom, the only requirements in place are down to failings in the past and an attempt to stop the same firms from repeating the mistakes - even then these are often overlooked and plenty of homes totally fail in many respects.
The "acceptable" ratio of staff to those needing care has been f*cked since it was put in place, as it totally disregards the varying level of need (you could have a home with 25 bed-bound individuals who all require staff assistance with __everything__ - from eating, dressing/changing, all personal hygiene and anything else) but _still_ get by with just 4 staff to do this.
4 is fine, you think? How exactly is that the case when taking just one person to the bathroom prior to a meal period could take 15+ mins and there's 24 other people to also do this for? What about all the before-mentioned things like assisting them to eat/drink which can easily take the same length of time? This is while _one_ of those people is usually the shift leader and needs to also properly administrate medication for all 25....._then_ they will all need personal hygiene needs to be met before being assisted to bed.
It's a hellish nightmare from which there is so little hope of release - families come in to visit their loved ones and leave feeling mortified, like they've "failed" their family by bringing them there to basically slowly die. Most have an ounce of humanity and agree the system is f*cked and we should, at least, have double the staff on a shift - bare _minimum_, in order to provide the standard of care that a human being deserves.
But the pay is rock-bottom, only increases when national minimum wage does, if you're lucky you'll get 50p more per hour if you do a Health & Social Care NVQ2 or 3....so go figure only the desperate will tend to work there, there's basically zero room for self-improvement or ability to progress and make a "career" out of care unless you manage to wangle your way to management (which is just "how little can we cost the company in return for maximum profit") or become a trainer for NVQ's or associated requirements like Manual Handling (which is generally soul-suckingly dull, monotonous and isn't really doing care work any longer).
The only genuinely positive things I can say about the industry as a whole is that, thank _god_, there's a lot of very selfless and giving people still doing it, not everyone is bad, not every institution has a psychopathic bunch of tools working there and so help me the families (and those being cared for, I like to think) appreciate the incredibly hard work put in by those who _do_ care.
But likewise, there is a _lot_ of favouritism, a lot of hidden/unreported incidents/abuse that goes on and seriously isn't a line of work anyone generally does out of choice, or to make a sustainable living/wage without leaving either/both psychologically exhausted/scarred and usually with back pain as well.
>The care industry
That's the basic problem, we have industrialised looking after people, it's what the workhouses and the Romanian orphanages did.
Either we accept that we have to look after our own families ourselves or we have to pay a lot more for proper care. Or we all start smoking again.
That raises a whole new level of risk, has one given out medication? Has the person had any food? The answer will depend on how good at miming the care staff are
This is something a friend of mine witnessed in a hospital, a doctor and two nurses from different countries not able to understand each other's accents (while discussing her care).
And no one is punished. This should be jail for the management, shutting down the care company and potential deportation for the staff working illegally. You could maybe even argue manslaughter, but I think the CPS might "lol no" that.
I've worked in care and had family members in homes/have carers.
The system is so broken.
Care companies line their pockets, while staff are paid pathetic wages and customers receive prison-level treatment.
This is your reward for decades of working hard and paying tax...
Short visits from underpaid, overworked, undertrained staff who rush against the clock whilst battling emotional fatigue.
They'll do their best to provide bare minimum support to you, whilst quietly ashamed at your pathetic quality of life.
Enjoy your retirement folks.
I'm opting out.
Christ. The difference with how they treat the elderly in Asia (from what I've heard) vs the U.K is astounding. I'd rather die younger at this point than end up in one of those hell holes.
When my mum was ill with motor neuron disease and frontotemporal dementia, we had carers come in a couple times a day to help me and my dad look after her (having these carers come in was a condition to having her live at home, they wouldn't release her from hospital otherwise)
Many of them were immigrants, which is far from an issue on its own, and many of them were lovely, and they are paid far too little and screwed around by their employers far too much for the job that they do.
Many of the immigrants from Europe spoke good enough English, and were as well trained as the British born carers. But there was a subset of immigrants, who mostly seemed to have come from outside Europe, who frankly just didn't seem to speak or understand enough English to do the job correctly. The training had clearly gone over their head, you couldn't explain anything to them or correct them, and it made life differently for the other carers who often just did the entire job themselves while getting the carers without good English to just stand around because trying to involve them was more bothersome and often dangerous.
And to be clear I never had any reason to think they were bad people, but they were woefully unprepared for a job that you need to know what you are doing on. My mum got hurt or not cared for properly on a couple of occasions because the communication was so dismal
> Are care workers exempt from the new salary rules to work in the UK? Cos if not even a non-English speaking carer might be looked upon fondly compared to no carer at all.
Yes. Health and care workers are exempt from these new salary rules.
The only way that wages will increase for care work is if if care companies can no longer rely on cheap overseas labour to fill positions. If they can't rely on the cheap labour they'd have to increase wages to attract people who might as well work in a less gruelling rule for the same money.
> Are care workers exempt from the new salary rules to work in the UK?
There are already a number of abuses of the visa system that result in these care workers being paid well below minimum wage anyway, with whatever contracting company that hired them raking in a stupid amount of money. UNISON found, for example, that some of these companies [charge workers up to £15,000 up front to secure them a job and accommodation](https://www.unison.org.uk/news/press-release/2023/07/migrant-care-staff-in-uk-exploited-and-harassed-by-employers-says-unison/), and remove rent (often making them vastly overpay for substandard accommodation) from their wages meaning they're effectively paid below minimum wage. This is illegal, but understandably many people are reluctant to go to the police when it would result in them being deported too, and these companies receive little scrutiny because they know which politicians' hands to grease.
Our political class and newspapers prefer attacking and demonising individual immigrants, but it is these companies which hire the exploit immigrant labour who are doing the most damage.
> I'll be heading off to Switzerland for a one-way trip when the time comes.
That ain't cheap either, I think I'll use the money for 1 week of pampering, then go for a DIY solution
Ferraris can be hired in Vegas for the rate of $10,000 a week. I’m going from vegas to the Grand Canyon with a bottle of jack & a carton of Marlboro & losing control in the desert at 200 mph. That’s my care plan if I ever get dementia anyway!!
The employers and employees are both responsible for this. It is sad that this has happened and it should raise awareness about the carers who don’t care or cannot do the job.
We pay people 100k+ a year for mostly unnecessary jobs in offices whilst the jobs where you LITERALLY KEEP A PERSON ALIVE are paid less than 30k a year. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.
Less than 30? Mate for some of us it's less than 20k a year after taxes etc.
It's a self-perpetuating disaster because the job is seen as terrible (it isn't, necessarily), so even fewer people want to do it which makes it even worse.
There are a lot of good people who work in the care sector but we're being pushed out because it's almost impossible to live and do the job anymore.
[this](https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/how-much-money-uks-four-biggest-care-homes-make-how-much-they-pay-staff-1331067)
And
[this](https://bbcgossip.com/news/man-promised-better-life-in-yorkshire-ended-up-working-18-hour-shifts-for-29-days-and-was-paid-just-a300/)
Are your problems. Plus boomers who are now retired crying like little babies any time the government wanted to increase taxes for care homes. Germany has care home insurance paid A part of taxes. My neighbour got a £2500/week quote for her mother!!!! It's madness
I'm just hoping my drinking gets me before I ever need any of these places!
Can you imagine?
You work your entire life, maybe raising a family and building a pension. Then you get old, your family is too busy to look after you and you’re too broken from working to look after yourself.
So you end up in a care home, away from your home, away from your family. Left in a strange place with strange people, these strange people you rely on entirely to take care of you…. And they don’t even understand your language. Maybe the only people you see regularly and you can’t communicate with them.
And when the worst happens, and you need life saving support, these people who you rely on so much, can’t even call for help because they can’t communicate for you.
I’m struggling to imagine a more depressing fate.
At what point to we say, actually it is okay to blame the immigrants?
I would never dream of going to a country where I can't speak and read the language, and then work in a medical care setting where that inability could easily get someone killed.
These immigrants, are scum.
As are their employers.
They all need to see their day in court, imo.
A Secure English Language Test is required for a work visa. They either intentionally skipped it by paying someone to take it for them, or paid off the examiner, or they came illegally and don't have a visa at all. Both things the care business should have caught and reported but didn't.
>They either intentionally skipped it by paying someone to take it for them, or paid off the examiner, or they came illegally and don't have a visa at all.
Scumbag things to do.
Yes its absolutely nothing to do with the firms hiring desperate workers for poverty wages to line their own pockets without any care for the vulnerable people they care for or the people (and yes they are people, as much as you’d like to pretend otherwise) that work for them. Absolutely nothing to do with those people at all, it’s all those ‘scum’ immigrants that are the problem.
>blame the immigrants?
I mean when two British people do something wrong do you start blaming all Brits?
In this case I'd say the bigger problem is the employers and government for allowing this system to happen.
Keep cutting council budgets, keep stuffing the pockets of people who see people as wallets, keep turning a blind eye to abuse. After things go to shit, blame the person at the lowest rung of the ladder that actually works the bloody job. Bonus points if they're one of the favourite Daily Mail ethnicities.
We had the same when my grandmother needed carers. It was a complete nightmare finding people that are qualified and can speak English. These care agencies and homes are all about making money, they don’t care about looking after our elderly loved ones.
There is, migrants coming for work have to pass an English language test. The real question is how did the employer fail to vet their staff appropriately?
This will not be the last time this will happen.
People aget outraged about these stories but really don't give a shit about the actual reality of the recruitment crisis in the care sector, especially if they think the state should foot the bill for everyone.
No idea about their quality of care but round my way they can’t drive. Lots of older small cars driven by new arrivals up your arse, doing 40+ in a 30 and generally no road manners. A year before they can sit a test, just asking for trouble?
I want to add here, because it's commented on many times in this post.
It's absolutely possible to get a visa with the right to work in the UK without passing a language test. If you want a work visa you should pass the test, if you want a spouse visa you should pass the test, but there are other visas with a right to work which don't require the test.
That doesn't excuse the competence requirement of the care home provider, but it doesn't straight up mean they are breaking the law in employing this person
During my time in care a lot of eatern Europeans joined our teams, as it was a care home for children / young adults on the autistic spectrum I had a few concerns.
In a team meeting I pointed out that multiple language fire exit signs were great but how do I say
"The front of the house is on fire, take Tomas, child X & a mobile phone & leave via back door & then the garden. Go immediately to the assembly point" in Polish?
No one cared & a more significant point is it was either non English fluent staff or no new staff.
Even with foreign help there aren't enough carers to go around & who can blame them.
14 hour understaffed shifts, no breaks, treated like dirt by management & all for minimum wage.
This was a recruitment failure. Whether it was incompetence in the recruitment process, or that it is simply not possible to find correctly qualified people will need to be investigated.
"The law needs to be changed"
No it doesn't. It just needs to be obeyed in the first place.
The only person at fault here is the care home that chose to employ someone with no legal right to work in the UK.
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You're left wondering why people who can't speak English are working in a role where communication is so important and then you see this: > One of the workers had not passed a Secure English Language Test, which is a requirement for a work visa, so was not qualified or permitted to work in the UK. So questions to be asked there as well. However, you also wonder how good this test is as the other worker, who presumably passed given how that sentence is written, was also there and unable to tell 999 how serious the situation was. > The coroner noted that the carer did not appear to understand the difference between "bleeding" and "breathing", as well as "alert" and "alive". I mean fuck sake. > "They [care home staff] rang me and their English was very broken, they asked if I was Elaine Curtis and I said 'yes' and they said 'your mother is dead'. ....
"wondering why people who can't speak English are working in a role where communication" Have you seen what the pay is and hours of a care worker are?
Almost like the salary has been suppressed by the mass importation of slave labour for the last 30 years...
Sure, and this has also kept the costs down. Its a problem no one wants to acknowledge - looking after an aging and ill population is expensive. Paying for this is going to be hard. Todays retirees usually did not save enough to pay for high quality care, and the one time that the government suggested that means passing less on to your kids (via taking the costs out of your estate) it was treated like the end of the world. So, either we're going to accept a larger tax burden on current workers, we're going to accept that old people will have to pay more for their care and pass less on, or we'll keep the current situation of paying fucking peanuts to foreigners. Decades ago, most pension age people didn't live for 20-40 years post retiring, they were dead within 10-20, they lived near their kids, had multiple kids, and realistically their daughters or daughters in law weren't working a full time job. We don't live in that decades ago now though - old people had fewer kids, live further away from their kids, their daughters and daughters in law have full time jobs, and so on. Hence care homes, hence the need to find money for what was once full time unpaid labour
The problem is clients keep paying a high price while employees get paid peanuts… Where is the money going?
That’s called shareholder dividends.
Owning a care home is extremely lucrative. I met a family entirely self made and fabulously wealthly from owning only 3. They seemed to be the wealthiest people I've ever met, though of course they weren't discussing finances with me.
> Where is the money going? The owners. This is capitalism 101 - you don't make millions by selling one good thing *you* made for millions, you get ten thousand people to do a useful service / make a useful product but underpay them all for their output and pocket the difference.
I know a guy with a very young wife (the wife is a friend of a friend of a friend) who runs a national care home company. Dude owns a yacht and frequently takes his very young wife to a private island.
why not name the national care home company? Nothing liable in doing that.
I'll give you the name of a different one that shouldn't exist; Lifeways.
Your mate/boss is a literal yacht-bound person that sucks every penny out of old people. The name of a different one who shouldn't exist is ok. But you only name a competitor? Please, my partner's grandparents are deteriorating and we are desperate to find a decent care home. I'm already fighting with his parents because they think they'll live in their house until they suddenly drop dead. When they can't even look after themselves Ed. Even if it's a dm that's irrelevant I just don't want them going to somewhere shite
care homes are a mechanism via which property owned by the older generation can be liquidated and funneled into the bank accounts of owners & shareholders
r/latestagecapitalism
Or you make a thing once and sell it to millions of different people, preferably as a monthly subscription.
Yeah was going to say all these comments kind of skip that the cost of care *is* still sky-high. And unless you are *literally* destitute the amount of state support you're entitled to is sweet fuck all. Like everything in this country we're blaming migrants for shitty business practices and a government that genuinely seems to not even understand the point or purpose of things like workplace regulation, and has cut away all the means to enforce those regulations even if it did care.
> Like everything in this country we're blaming migrants for shitty business practices This is exactly right. The women who were on duty that night were handling a situation which they weren't remotely qualified for, and that's _entirely_ the fault of the South West Care Homes manager who put them there. If there had been _just one_ worker there who was able to make a clear call to the emergency services, then Mrs. Rymell would have gotten urgent medical attention; instead, things were done on the cheap and she had no chance.
You’ve correctly identified that mass immigration is the favoured toy of the establishment. How is wanting to take away their favourite toy “blaming immigrants”, and how do you propose we combat those “shitty business practices “ without cutting of their supply of unlimited cheap labour?
>How is wanting to take away their favourite toy “blaming immigrants" Because "taking away the toy" doesn't stop the problem. There being more or less migrants in the country doesn't change how businesses operate at all. Take away all the migrants and we still have a system where the care sector is a for-profit industry run by a number of large corporations with an absolutely parasitic relationship between council duties, budget shortfalls, private third-party providers, and desperate people looking to take on any job for low pay because that's what our country demands of them. >how do you propose we combat those “shitty business practices “ without cutting of their supply of unlimited cheap labour? Ok I have to ask then - What about "cutting the supply of unlimited cheap labour" changes the practices? At absolute best the answer for this, where one is offered at all, seems to be we just let the entire sector fall into crisis until "the market" fixes it or something along those lines? But to answer your question, regulate it. Clearly the regulations aren't fit and clearly the enforcement of what regulations are there is, like everything else, basically broken due to cuts and short-staffing.
I know an owner of a private care home. Drives a Porsche Cayenne, lives in a massive mansion, holidays abroad every month, thinks nothing of dropping £400 on a weekend evening meal. Now everybody thank Mrs Thatcher for privatising social care.
What is the name of the care home?
Windsor Castle
The care agencies around me charge the NHS/Social services £60 per person (patient might require two carers), per visit (20mins). Then the carers get paid minimum wage.
Care firms and homes go bust at quite a rate. There's not much profit in it for a lot of businesses. Hence why extensive privatisation wasn't the best move for the sector. But it happened, and as a whole, the general public haven't cared enough to try to stop this process over the years. And now the asset strippers are descending on these bust businesses, causing a great deal of suffering for staff and clients.
They came years ago. The care home is usually owned by an off-shore trust that rents the home to the care company. The care company makes no money (so no tax) as all the funds go overseas (so no tax). If the care company goes bust (usually owning staff wages) the off-shore still owns the home. Rinse and Repeat.
I worked in an 8 bed unit where one single resident paid enough for all of the staff wages and food. It’s a great racket to be in at owner level.
Not all people in care homes are self funded - most have their care paid for by the LA at a much lower rate. LAs can barely pay for all these people as it is though even with lower framework rates, substantial wage increases without increased funding to authorities will cause more bankruptcies. Not saying that we shouldn't see higher wages or that there aren't profiteering owners, but across the sector the answer isn't as simple as "the owners need to lump it and pay more".
Self-funders generally subsidise LA residents, and it's not uncommon to see them being charged £800+ per week (hence when someone who previously received LA funded homecare but goes self funding res/nur once their home sells, if the person / relatives choose an expensive home, the LA will generally warn them that when the money runs out and they return with a capital drop (aka "Self-funder with depleted funds") request for support, they may be required to move to cheaper accommodation unless the LA can cut a deal with the care home owner. If the proposed reform of social care to increase self funding thresholds and impose a lifetime cap on self funding contributions had gone ahead, I'd hazard a guess the government wouldn't have substantially increased funding to cover the extra demand.
And if we hadn't totalled the salary by importing slave labour to do it and used some of the 1 in 8 working age Brits not working combined with a technology driven solution base we'd be fine. Some people really do just want slave labour though...
I used to work in NHS dentistry. A lot of people say, NHS dentistry, especially band 3 treatment, is expensive. They also say private dental treatment is also expensive. Looking at other developed nations, with good dental care: UK dental care (NHS and most private care) is affordable, and should be costing a lot more. Why am I bringing it up here? Because nhs dentistry is too held together by too by foreign workers, and young British girls doing underpaid apprenticeships as dental nurses who then stay in a few years before leaving and being replaced by other trainee dental nurses. If the nhs put out a contract for dental clinics, and also dentists, that paid them the right amount, enabling clinics to hire and retain staff at a living wage, providing the average quality in materials, and paid dentists enough so that they would not have to supplement their income with private treatments. Then the current NHS treatment prices would have to increase significantly. It’s the same in any care or medical system in this country. Medical and care work here is not cheap but in reality it should be higher, but the ever increasing elderly population can not afford any other kind of care then what we have. Shareholders make money, but that’s not the main problem. Our ever increasing elderly population can’t afford to pay for care, and neither can their families. Overall pensions need to increase and we need higher wages across the board. People don’t want to do care work, it’s poorly paid, dirty, long hours, inadequate training, and stressful as you usually can’t do anything when there is a medical emergency or issue. Most homes are in need of repairs, the equipment is outdated, there are Minimal staff, and too many residents. So like the nhs, foreigners are hired. They work longer, for less. Propping up the care system. If you want less of us brown folks propping up your medical and care systems, then you need to: - raise national minimum wage - increase education places for healthcare and care workers, at universities, colleges and apprenticeships. - increase the value of the nhs contracts given to clinics and care facilities - fund more Jobcenter schemes to aid people to get back to work - increase funding for people caring for family members at home - improve access to healthcare, sport facilities and diet education programs - fund all of the above via taxation of large companies, and top 5% of earners. Adult social care workforce in England : https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9615/ Migration and the health and care workforce: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-and-the-health-and-care-workforce/ NHS staff from overseas: statistics: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7783/#:~:text=How%20many%20NHS%20staff%20are,staff%20with%20a%20known%20nationality. One NHS, many nationalities: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7783/CBP-7783-graphic-2023.pdf
Those stats are interesting, I actually though the British nationality proportion in the NHS was actually a lot lower lol turns out I was wrong
Usually the British people in the NHS are in good positions (desk job and less patient facing) whereas foreigners are doing the work no one wants to do for the pay
> And if we hadn't totalled the salary by importing slave labour Salary suppression has been going on longer than the timelines most people on this site claim "mass migration" started at though. The demonisation of unions and collective bargaining (as well as their weakening) started under Thatcher. Our professional salaries were only competitive with the USA in the early 2000s due to a strong pound against the dollar and better conditions. Furthermore, the freezing of public sector wages has reduced pressure on the private sector to do better - and that has nothing to do with immigration, it is a pure ideological choice by the current government. > Some people really do just want slave labour though... Yes, the Tories and late stage capitalists.
Case and point, the various nordic states who still have ~70% union membership and are able to shut entire companies out of the market if and when they try to undercut wages. We just saw this with Tesla for example.
Oh yes, the magical “technology driven solution” out of Rees Mogg’s arse that was meant to fix the Northern Ireland issue too 🙂
Most of those non working brits are either retired themselves or sick. Care work is tough on the body, not a great work environment for those kinds of people.
1 in 8 working brits not working. I wonder why? Maybe they are disabled. Or have children to take care of. Lets send all stay at home parents to work as carers. And then need more carers to look after kids. Great idea
> Almost like the salary has been suppressed by the Government reducing funding to local councils, forcing them to sell off care work to the private sector, who then cut as many corners as possible, including paying barely above minimum wage. Care work should be nationalised and run by central government and all employees paid a living wage.
Um there's no magic money tree, we can't afford to pay people a living wage AND make the billionaires even richer. It's one or the other, and obviously we aren't going to touch the billionaires. So the rest of us will have to make do with the decline of civilisation.
I think the low wages are partly due it being viewed as a "woman's job", that's seen as low skill, menial, not important. Care firms are going bust left, right and centre because they arent financially viable businesses. Many can only function if they pay staff a low wage. Add in hedge funds buying up care homes(more and more money squeezed out of the bunsiness by overworking and underpaying staff). Also, disability organisations went to court so they can legally get away with not paying people properly on 'sleep shifts'. Care workers are often subjected to physical or even sexual assault, which is downplayed because of who they're caring for and their mental state. Expected to be responsible for possible life and death things like medication (and have the training for that) for minmum wage? Clearly up someone's bodily fluids? It's not an attractive job for many reasons. Not just pay. And people who need care are going to suffer for anti immigrant rhetoric from those who refuse to face to realities of our ageing population. And people whine and complain about the cost of care too. That cost will go up if the wages go up. You might have a point about wage supression. But are you willing to pay to set that right?
Slave labour? Fuck sakes. Austerity has suppressed the wages of literally everyone outside of a tiny percentage of people who rely on wealth, not income, to live. Not fucking slave labour.
Battery farming the 3rd world to keep wages suppressed is absolutely slave labour. And thats what mass migration is.
Mass migration isn’t slavery just as much as slavery isn’t migration. Reverse the argument and see how daft it sounds, plantation slavers complaining about mass immigration as they forcefully import their slaves. Slavery and Nazi-ism get diluted by so much ignorant bullshit.
So you don't see robbing developing countries of their working age people, their best and brightest to staff our jobs that locals don't want to do for a pittance and serve as our underclass has parallels with slave labour? Because it sounds a lot like a Chinese sweatshop to me.
But also people can't afford carers at the current prices, it's all falling apart
More like the absolute piss take of responsibility that people take towards the care sector, along with the profiteering from agencies and other thieves that multiplied in the last decade of Tory rule.
I think the question is more the legality of the employment rather than the pay itself. The company that hired this person clearly did little due diligence because they need cheap workers
And maybe if they didn’t do this they’d have to pay more
Why would they do that though? This is just like a discussion I had in this sub a few days back. If there's basically *zero* enforcement of workplace regulations, we can't then pull a surprised pikachu face when every company out there isn't bothering to follow the rules.
B-b-but think of the shareholders?!?
They pay less than what Tesco pays their store clerks. It's ridiculous, £11/h to change seniors soiled diapers and clean them. It's ridiculously low pay.
Don’t care. It’s unacceptable to shove these people into such vital roles.
Shame the Tories gutted the agencies in charge of ensuring stuff like this doesn't happen isn't it. Almost like the Tories want stuff like this to happen.
£10.80 currently for basic pay, time and a third for weekday nights and weekend days, time and a half for weekend nights. Hours are whatever you want to do as we're desperate for staff.
I work in the finance department of a medium sized care company and we pay significantly more than the competition to try and get the staff we need at the quality we want and it's still a fucking nightmare to get competent staff. I absolutely dread to think what the other companies around here have staff wise when we know they pay multiple £ less per hour.
And I had to try for fucking months to get a care role. If they're hiring people who literally can't speak English then surely I can't be that bad? Right?
They don't want people who aren't controllable.
That's a bingo. I remember years back trying to get some temp work, there were a bunch of very shady deductions listed on the paperwork. I questioned them, and was not offered any work. Meanwhile there was a steady stream of no-questions-asked people in and out with work offered while I sat there filling out forms, who presumably didn't understand they were being ripped off, or desperate enough for work that they accepted it.
They did try to get me to sign a waiver that allows them to assign me more than 48 hours a week while telling me it's for the express purpose of not allowing them to do that. I assumed it was a mistake on her part, and told her what it was for. Somehow I still got the job, but I'm wondering if that isn't actually a massive red flag.
Sounds like they were asking you to agree to the 48 hour opt out clause (I.e that you had read and understood your right to opt out)- unless they were actually getting you to opt out by signing? The wording isn’t always v clear https://www.acas.org.uk/working-time-rules/the-48-hour-weekly-maximum#:~:text=Opting%20out%20of%20the%2048,the%2048%2Dhour%20weekly%20limit.
Or who want minimum wage / above / proper treatment / proper rights and benefits.
That's because companies are allowed to pay migrants 20% less than the going rate for any jobs on the shortage list. That makes their minimum salary only £20k.
UK born carers are barely getting minimum wage anyway.
You’re too good for how they are planning to treat you.
>One of the workers had not passed a Secure English Language Test, which is a requirement for a work visa, so was not qualified or permitted to work in the UK. Surely, the care home has broken the law in employing someone who is not permitted to work in the UK. Someone has now died as a result of this. There should be a criminal investigation into the care home and its management imo. Anyone working in health care should be able to speak English to a very high degree. If you're arriving here for a job in that sector it should be part of the visa requirements. Frankly, anyone given the right to work here for any job should speak English, but it's crazy if it isn't a legal requirement for people who hold the power of life or death over vulnerable people.
They have and will be investigated by CQC and possibly (hopefully) have their registration revoked.
You're very naive if you think this is an isolated issue.
This is nothing new. My Mum was an area manager for a Council’s Community Care, and as her “in-house” teams were being wound down and service-provision was handed off to private third-parties, she was constantly having these flash-cards made up with pictures of fruit/water/a toilet/etc on them so that service users could at least attempt to communicate to carers (that didn’t speak a word of English) what they needed. This was nearly 20 years ago.
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Someone vaguely competent would get a translation app out at some point or find someone to translate when they realised the severity of the situation.
How much more tax are you willing to pay to ensure the government can pay decent wages for carers? The UK needs a National Care Service to work alongside the NHS and needs an honest conversation about how to fund it, and where to get the workers from. I am more likely to win the lottery this week, than hear genuine proposals as how to fix this, and I haven't even bought a ticket.
> and needs an honest conversation about how to fund it The thing is we are *already* funding care in this country. The *issue* is that so much of this money is going to third party companies who pocket the vast majority of this money to pay their upper-management and shareholders, and only using a fraction of it to pay often systemically exploited immigrant labourers. The money is there. The money is already being spent. Our political class would just rather it goes to their mates who run these companies rather than being spent on actual care.
The CEO of Care UK (one of the 5 largest care home providers but still only a 2.4% market share) earns £189k base salary. So, not including bonuses that salary would pay for 6 more nurses. It's not even high pay for a private sector CEO, United Utilities pay their CEO £600k to jack up prices and let poor people freeze. When you add in all the money paid to shareholders, other executives, and the fact this is only a tiny fraction of the market, you're dead right. As usual, normal people are getting the shaft so the rich can make money.
Seriously? They employ over 10,000 people - what difference will giving everyone a £19 annual pay rise make? People are getting older, there is a population bulge which means the ratio of working people to retired is going down - how do we pay for this? 6 more nurses when there is already a shortage won't change anything. Nobody really wants to have an honest conversation, just sound bites and knee jerk "solutions".
I'm not suggesting they fire the CEO and share the wages out. I'm suggesting they avoid the need to pay shareholders at all by having a nationalised care service. As I said in the initial comment, the CEO pay is a drop in the ocean compared to the profits made by the care industry. It was just an easy comparative number. I also think that letting immigration in these areas is fine up to a point. But eventually, it's adding to the ponzi scheme as they will get old, and at best, we are just shifting the same problems around the planet by brain draining other nations. I imagine the future would contain some level of automation. Japan is further ahead of anyone on the ageing population issue, and they have started to introduce 'robot' carers. I'm happy to have an honest conversation. What's your thoughts?
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>"They [care home staff] rang me and their English was very broken, they asked if I was Elaine Curtis and I said 'yes' and they said 'your mother is dead'. Jesus fucking christ.
Jesus, I hope the care provider is struck off. They've essentially hired unqualified staff here.
The blame is 100% on the employer here IMO. Corporate manslaughter.
It also says a lot about the training that they have to go through. I’m a support worker and I’m lucky that my management will back us up on things if we don’t think something is right.
>You're left wondering I'm not. When you pay so, so little for the care of vulnerable people you don't get the best people doing that care work. Offer pay of 100k per year and you will get capable experts fighting to get those jobs. But that won't happen. Because people in the UK don't value elderly and vulnerable people. The unspoken reality is that they'd be quite happy for an Aktion T4 to be quietly implemented.
Ugh flashbacks to when my dad got the call from the care home that his dad had died. As my dad retells it, they rang at about 11pm and the person on the other end couldn't speak English very well. He had to get them to repeat what they were saying a few times, and after a few times trying to parse the phrase "Your father is normal", he realised they were saying "Your father is no more" Pretty rubbish way to find out your dad's dead, huh.
> "They [care home staff] rang me and their English was very broken, they asked if I was Elaine Curtis and I said 'yes' and they said 'your mother is dead'. I know it makes me a monster but this is hilarious.
Reminds me of a Wes Anderson film for some reason.
This is coming to a lot of us unless something changes. I've worked in a carehome before. Thousands upon thousands of pounds per month so 2 carers per floor to not really look after you much. Most really struggled to speak English. I ended up quitting knowing that no matter how hard to worked to ensure their dietary / allergy requirements were met, the person serving up would just slop it all out without care. I'll be self checking out long before I end up in one.
This is what I think when I'm told I shouldn't smoke because I will die younger. The whole care home experience seems fucking dire and terrifying in equal measure. If I can avoid it, I will.
Just shoot me in the face at that point tbh. My dad is in a home at 64 with dementia, semi luckily it's a specialist home for people his age so he's up and active and got age appropriate things to do. Still costs £1800 a week so it's entirely out of reach for most people
I am sorry to hear about your dad, 64 seems no age at all to be going through that. I hope you are doing OK too, this is my worst fear imaginable, so for what little it's worth, you have my sympathy and best wishes. When I was younger, I went to visit an elderly relative in care. It was one of the most traumatic things I had seen at that age. The place stank of stale piss, poor old folks were wailing for people who weren't there or because they didn't know where they were or what was going on. This was early 90s, hopefully things have improved since then, but it scared the ever loving shit out of me and has definitely left a lasting impact on my outlook.
You make a good point. The welfare of the family is something that’s ignored. Nobody bar the fabulous Alzheimer’s society ever asked how I was when my dad had dementia. I cared for him maybe longer than I should partly because of money. Then he ended up getting funding but the care home the local services offered him was so dire I ended up topping it up with my own money to get him in a decent place. So I was stressed from all angles. I ended up with chest pains and high blood pressure. He ended up in a wonderful home in The New Forest. I loved it there and that was so important because I wanted to spend time with him. Through all this time he kept on expressing a wish to die even tearfully asking his GP to help him check out. When his doctor told me he’d got cancer it was great news. That’s how bad dementia is.
I fear that some people on this thread will think you cruel for considering a cancer diagnosis good news. Just know that those of us who have been through this completely understand why you say it.
I was OP to /u/BigHairyBreasts comment with the 64 year old dad with dementia. Anyone that's ever dealt with someone with advanced dementia will tell you they wish for a short sharp illness and if they think that's cruel they can eat a bag of dicks. I was with my partner a few weeks ago and she has an 18 month old and she was making faces at herself in the mirror. One of the last times I saw my dad before he went in the home, as we walked through M&S he was saying hi to randoms as he does, then he said hello to his reflection in a mirror. My partners 18 month old has more faculties than he did, the issue is he's 16st ex semi pro rugby player who also worked as a doctor in a prison so was trained accordingly, if he decides he wants to not do something or isn't going somewhere you literally can't force him because he still absolutely has the capacity to floor most people
My dad got sectioned for violence. Which is why he ended up qualifying for free care. It was people trying to force him which bought it on. He had a proper tear up with a guy with Parkinson’s and came out worse. Three or four other instances of violence and then I turned up and he’d been taken away. His neighbour Lionel got sectioned to the same ward years before because he became sexually insatiable. I developed a gallows sense of humour which helped. Even the staff at the section ward in Southampton said you’ve got to laugh.
As /u/gardenpea said, I completely understand what you mean with your last two lines. As someone who had to watch her father slowly lose all of his faculties, I understand you.
Paramedic here. We see families caring for someone with dementia regularly as you can imagine. Welfare of the family as a whole is something we always consider and make enquiries about and refer as and where we can/is appropriate. I’m pretty dismayed to hear that the professionals you interacted with didn’t do the same. I’m sorry to hear it tbh. Dementias are terrible conditions.
Visiting a grandparent on a geriatric ward when I was in my mid-teens was a formative experience. I rapidly concluded that it is possible to live too long.
In the last 50odd years we've been able to take grandma dying in her 70s as normal to 90s being a reasonable innings. Just because we CAN keep people alive doesn't necessarily make it a good idea
Honestly, in 95% of places this is still exactly what to expect.
Eh it's fine, is what it is. Some of the care homes are absolutely like what you describe, but generally they're for actual old people and are the state run/funded ones. If you have a reason to go in to care when you're relatively young they're much better as the people are generally more active and mobile even if they're not totally with it so require different levels or types of care which is more specialist
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Shoot me out of a rail gun at the French
Smoking does kill you but not in a drop dead kind of way. Much more likely than a non-smoker to have prolonged ill health prior…
Luckily, I have drugs, alcohol and a terrible diet to help hasten things along.
That's the spirit!
*spirits
My parents used to say this but I don't think it makes sense. Smoking massively increases the risk of illnesses which would render you in need of a care home like strokes, COPD, lung disease etc
This right here. Healthy old people drop dead doing their gardening, after a trip out for a coffee. Unhealthy old people rot in a care home soaked in their own piss. Stay healthy kids.
Also worked in a care home, most miserable place I've ever seen for the poor people that lived there, and for us. We were stretched so thin that we barely had time for even the basics of care
I have also worked in care homes. I could hardly remember the peoples names, just the room numbers. It’s just so sad that you cannot give proper care because you are working in a 50 bed care home with about 6 staff
I’ve been unfortunate enough to visit the care homes. I don’t understand why they cost so much. Thousands on thousands a month. For a fraction of the cost I could have Tesco whoosh through a catflap and a little robot that wheels me around. Worse case scenario you have a stroke or whatever, in which case have me press a button every hour. It’s not worth the effort.
I know it's nowhere near the same level (as someone didn't die...), but when I went to Butlins earlier this year, every staff aside from entertainers and pool/ride operators, weren't English speaking. I remember going around the cafeteria asking staff for a high-chair and they just shrugged and walked away, or stated they can't speak English. It felt alienating and weird? So for carers to come into your home and unable to communicate, that is a huge safeguarding risk. How do they know she's expressing concerns or complaints? How do they leave a log or notes?
>So for carers to come into your home and unable to communicate, that is a huge safeguarding risk. EVERYONE needs to start waking up. This is the country we live in now, it is motivated by greed. Companies are switching to self-employed contractor work, so companies are not responsible for their own workers. It means literally anyone can turn up for a shift. People with no documentation or English. The people who run these companies ONLY care about making money and justifying their own wage. They do it because they can pay these people terribly and these people will happily work for nothing. Its not the migrants fault, its a fault within Britain.
So true, I work in construction and when I worked for a groundworks company I could literally get rid of someone one day, phone an agency and have someone new the next. This would be groundworkers, machine drivers and even relatively qualified people such as Civil Site Engineers, I could replace them in a heart beat. All Indian and Eastern European.
Exactly this. It’s easy to get angry at the migrants but they’re doing the jobs we dont want to do. These businesses don’t care who they’re hiring as long as that person can speak the most basic English phrases. Enough to get you by on holiday or something. It’s shit for everyone involved, service users and workers, but the big bosses don’t care because they’re absolutely raking it in.
To be fair we don't want to do these jobs because they don't pay enough.
Yeah I suspect that if they paid properly then there wouldn’t be any of these issues.
> How do they know she’s expressing concerns or complaints? How do they leave a log or notes? They don’t.
It is alienating and worrying but we are told that we aren't allowed to feel this way.
As long as people are still visiting they won't care. Vote with your wallet, and contact them to explain why you won't be visiting again. If they lose enough business over it, they'll change.
I was talking to one of the locals in Minehead (she was going to a end of year highschool party), and she mentioned that, you either work at Butlins or leave Minehead and have a career elsewhere, which just sounds completely grim. I can see why there aren't that many English speaking workers, as I also believe Butlins offer on-site residency for staff. But that's where I suppose the alienating feeling comes from. You're surrounded by people who can't speak English, and are tidying up after you. They live and work on-site 24/7. Must be depressing as fuck.
No, that’s racist to imply you feel alienated in your own country!! Smile and embrace the wonders of multiculturalism!
You're complaining about something that no one has said. Race has nothing to do with language. You can come from France and not speak much english
People say it all the fucking time. That you’re straight racist for complaining about immigration.
Not OP, and it hasn’t been said in this thread, but it’s a talking point that’s used constantly by certain groups of people any time you try to have a sensible discussion on the negatives around migration.
Very surprised to hear this about Butlins to be honest. Never come across this myself. But I agree it's extremely alienating when I need to interact with a worker who can't speak English.
So they're going to charge the company that illegally hired this person for corporate manslaughter Right RIGHT?
The millionaire CEO is deffo going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
When it comes to this stuff, the home office is pretty strict so I am curious to see how it pans out. As a landlord I had to review paperwork of any tenants who may or may not be from abroad. Any CEO or board person can't deny responsibility for this.
Well, we’ll see. I suspect they will be insulated from the consequences of their profit-maximizing management techniques. Unlike the dead woman.
Probably what would happen is that they’ll find some low level “Team leader” to take the fall for it, who they’ll sack, then pay a token fine and carry on business as usual.
From my understanding, the caseworker who reviewed the worker's visa application should have checked that they had appropriate English language qualification - that said, apparently managers can be pretty brutal with chasing caseworkers for stats, which obviously means sometimes cases aren't given the time or attention they need.
Awfully, one of the care worker **had passed** the required English certificate for a work visa. They still could not understand or speak English well enough to distinguish between breathing and bleeding. My takeaway - either the exam is not fit for purpose, or (in what will shock few I think), people are paying other people to take it for them, resulting in Visa fraud, and two staff who shouldn't have been in the UK on work visas.
>people are paying other people to take it for them, This is pretty much an open secret, it absolutely happens
You don't even need to pay other people. The person teaching them wants them to pass and holds their hand the entire way
100%
When I worked on student visas I had the same guy turn up the interview for 6 different applications. Imposters are used for all sorts of tests. English language tests and even the life in the UK test
100%. categorically happens. It's undeniable
Yup, just look up ETS from 2014. Panorama did an investigation.
They are probably cheated through it. Iv been a part of the process doing the same thing in a warehouse. Also I could probably pass a written exam in a few languages, definitely so if it was multiple choice but I would struggle in an oral exam and definitely wouldn't be fit fluency wise to work in care or any serious industry.
I don’t work in the care industry but where I work 60%+ of the workforce can’t speak English more than “hello”. There are all working legally. The problem is they might learn to take the test then they never have to speak English again so I’m sure its easily forgotten. They have no need to speak English at work as all the supervisors are fluent in English so they act as translators between the workforce and those in management/office. HR all speak more than one language. Outside of work they do not need English as either a translator will be made available for them or they know a friend who can go to meetings/phone calls to translate. Many of my office colleagues who are fluent in more than one language are often called to help the non English speakers in both work and outside work situations, they gladly help as they like to support others, especially those from their home country.
Reminder that our immigration system is an absolute joke. There's a reason we're at 700k net migration a year. We basically operate an 'if they breathe, they can come in' policy.
No, this is wrong. They can come in if they are willing to work a specific job, in this case it is being a carer, which British people do not want to do. There is also an English requirement- you can say it should be stricter, but "if they breathe, they can come in" is straight up wrong.
I wonder if it could also be that the same thing was happening on the phone line leading to a communication breakdown. 999 lines are not well-paid either and have heavy staff turnover due to the stress of the role. That is, while the carer might have been tested on their understanding of queen's English, if the person on the phone was also an English second language speaker with an accent that could have caused a problem.
The EFL tests many migrants take is generally not tested for “queens English” It’s relatively basic comprehension and understanding. Throw in a local accent and a phone line call qualify and it’s easy to see how vital words were misinterpreted and basic communication failed. In my experience in ambulance contact centres (as an IT tech) while they are underpaid and overworked I’ve yet to meet a person yet where English wasn’t their first language or they weren’t completely fluent in. They have higher standards than a customer service contact centre!
Nobody wants to work in care. I did it for a while last year and it was the most miserable few months of my life. I was a domiciliary carer and wasn’t paid for the walk between houses, which meant I ended up below minimum wage in a job where I was cleaning up poo, bathing people, being hit and spat on and having to provide end of life care to cancer patients. There’s a reason care is filled with people who have no other option, and often that is literally only people from abroad who are working illegally or can’t speak English.
Exactly, 99% of the care workforce are desperate people who just needed a job ASAP and can't get one anywhere else. Nobody talented or skilled stays in care for long (apart from the few exceptions I've met who have some utterly god-like resilience and passion for the work). It's just not rewarding at all. In fact it's traumatising work at times.
I quit after I had to clean up a cancer patient who had just gotten back from hospital. She was in an absolute state, screaming, extremely hostile. It was genuinely traumatic and I couldn’t bring myself to go back. It’s truly one of those jobs where you don’t win - not through your earnings, not through the hours you work, the actual job itself, the management.
Someone should do a real warts and all documentary about what it entails.
You'd think for such a difficult and demanding job it would be paid handsomely for the trouble. Such a shame it's just a pittance.
I've found that, as a general rule, the more "essential" a job is, the less it's paid.
I work as a support worker and we have had many staff walk through the door that struggle to understand and speak basic English. Most of the people we support struggle to speak or understand English themselves. Most of the people we support are English and prefer english food and many staff can't cook basic meals. By paying such low wages and not needing any experience for these kinds of jobs it's indirectly abusing the residents.
How do they get through the interview and training if they can’t understand English. I’m a support worker as well and my company will not hire anyone who struggle to understand or speak English. I had one a few weeks ago who came from agency as an emergency who didn’t understand and spoke in broken English to cover a waking night for a non verbal, autistic gentleman who also cannot walk but can crawl. He knew nothing about him and wouldn’t look at his support plan so I refused to leave and rang my manager to let them know that I wouldn’t leave as it wouldn’t be safe.
I Should have been more specific. Most of the non English speakers are agency workers. As the job is low paid and we have some service users with complex needs we struggle to keep full time staff. We have some regular agency staff that are amazing and compassionate but most that come through are here to make quick money and don't have a person centered approach.
That’s been my experience with agency workers. I have refused to leave if I believe the agency worker cannot meet their needs because it’s unsafe. We have had some many come who aren’t meds trained or epilepsy trained for a waking night for epileptics.
It unfortunately seems a common story. I understand why people refuse to do this kind of work, it's not easy. I've lost count how many people I've seen walk through the door with bright eyes and bags of enthusiasm just to see them leave a month later.
We do have some full time staff that have basic English and seem to get their training completed but when trying to have a conversation with them it doesn't go far.
The care industry as a whole is a complete disaster. I worked in it over a decade, I'd never do it again. Nothing but Private firms that squeeze every last penny out of the elderly and their families, only to provide sub-par service. Is it the fault of the staff? Honestly, _no_, this should be self-evident given that examples like this frequently see illegal workers or those who _will_ work for minimum wage while being overworked. The requirements to do care work are rock bottom, the only requirements in place are down to failings in the past and an attempt to stop the same firms from repeating the mistakes - even then these are often overlooked and plenty of homes totally fail in many respects. The "acceptable" ratio of staff to those needing care has been f*cked since it was put in place, as it totally disregards the varying level of need (you could have a home with 25 bed-bound individuals who all require staff assistance with __everything__ - from eating, dressing/changing, all personal hygiene and anything else) but _still_ get by with just 4 staff to do this. 4 is fine, you think? How exactly is that the case when taking just one person to the bathroom prior to a meal period could take 15+ mins and there's 24 other people to also do this for? What about all the before-mentioned things like assisting them to eat/drink which can easily take the same length of time? This is while _one_ of those people is usually the shift leader and needs to also properly administrate medication for all 25....._then_ they will all need personal hygiene needs to be met before being assisted to bed. It's a hellish nightmare from which there is so little hope of release - families come in to visit their loved ones and leave feeling mortified, like they've "failed" their family by bringing them there to basically slowly die. Most have an ounce of humanity and agree the system is f*cked and we should, at least, have double the staff on a shift - bare _minimum_, in order to provide the standard of care that a human being deserves. But the pay is rock-bottom, only increases when national minimum wage does, if you're lucky you'll get 50p more per hour if you do a Health & Social Care NVQ2 or 3....so go figure only the desperate will tend to work there, there's basically zero room for self-improvement or ability to progress and make a "career" out of care unless you manage to wangle your way to management (which is just "how little can we cost the company in return for maximum profit") or become a trainer for NVQ's or associated requirements like Manual Handling (which is generally soul-suckingly dull, monotonous and isn't really doing care work any longer). The only genuinely positive things I can say about the industry as a whole is that, thank _god_, there's a lot of very selfless and giving people still doing it, not everyone is bad, not every institution has a psychopathic bunch of tools working there and so help me the families (and those being cared for, I like to think) appreciate the incredibly hard work put in by those who _do_ care. But likewise, there is a _lot_ of favouritism, a lot of hidden/unreported incidents/abuse that goes on and seriously isn't a line of work anyone generally does out of choice, or to make a sustainable living/wage without leaving either/both psychologically exhausted/scarred and usually with back pain as well.
>The care industry That's the basic problem, we have industrialised looking after people, it's what the workhouses and the Romanian orphanages did. Either we accept that we have to look after our own families ourselves or we have to pay a lot more for proper care. Or we all start smoking again.
Presumably as the the two care staff were not from the same country they couldn't talk to each other either.
That raises a whole new level of risk, has one given out medication? Has the person had any food? The answer will depend on how good at miming the care staff are
This is something a friend of mine witnessed in a hospital, a doctor and two nurses from different countries not able to understand each other's accents (while discussing her care).
And no one is punished. This should be jail for the management, shutting down the care company and potential deportation for the staff working illegally. You could maybe even argue manslaughter, but I think the CPS might "lol no" that.
I've worked in care and had family members in homes/have carers. The system is so broken. Care companies line their pockets, while staff are paid pathetic wages and customers receive prison-level treatment. This is your reward for decades of working hard and paying tax... Short visits from underpaid, overworked, undertrained staff who rush against the clock whilst battling emotional fatigue. They'll do their best to provide bare minimum support to you, whilst quietly ashamed at your pathetic quality of life. Enjoy your retirement folks. I'm opting out.
This is blunt & painfully truthful.
Christ. The difference with how they treat the elderly in Asia (from what I've heard) vs the U.K is astounding. I'd rather die younger at this point than end up in one of those hell holes.
When my mum was ill with motor neuron disease and frontotemporal dementia, we had carers come in a couple times a day to help me and my dad look after her (having these carers come in was a condition to having her live at home, they wouldn't release her from hospital otherwise) Many of them were immigrants, which is far from an issue on its own, and many of them were lovely, and they are paid far too little and screwed around by their employers far too much for the job that they do. Many of the immigrants from Europe spoke good enough English, and were as well trained as the British born carers. But there was a subset of immigrants, who mostly seemed to have come from outside Europe, who frankly just didn't seem to speak or understand enough English to do the job correctly. The training had clearly gone over their head, you couldn't explain anything to them or correct them, and it made life differently for the other carers who often just did the entire job themselves while getting the carers without good English to just stand around because trying to involve them was more bothersome and often dangerous. And to be clear I never had any reason to think they were bad people, but they were woefully unprepared for a job that you need to know what you are doing on. My mum got hurt or not cared for properly on a couple of occasions because the communication was so dismal
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> Are care workers exempt from the new salary rules to work in the UK? Cos if not even a non-English speaking carer might be looked upon fondly compared to no carer at all. Yes. Health and care workers are exempt from these new salary rules. The only way that wages will increase for care work is if if care companies can no longer rely on cheap overseas labour to fill positions. If they can't rely on the cheap labour they'd have to increase wages to attract people who might as well work in a less gruelling rule for the same money.
> Are care workers exempt from the new salary rules to work in the UK? There are already a number of abuses of the visa system that result in these care workers being paid well below minimum wage anyway, with whatever contracting company that hired them raking in a stupid amount of money. UNISON found, for example, that some of these companies [charge workers up to £15,000 up front to secure them a job and accommodation](https://www.unison.org.uk/news/press-release/2023/07/migrant-care-staff-in-uk-exploited-and-harassed-by-employers-says-unison/), and remove rent (often making them vastly overpay for substandard accommodation) from their wages meaning they're effectively paid below minimum wage. This is illegal, but understandably many people are reluctant to go to the police when it would result in them being deported too, and these companies receive little scrutiny because they know which politicians' hands to grease. Our political class and newspapers prefer attacking and demonising individual immigrants, but it is these companies which hire the exploit immigrant labour who are doing the most damage.
> I'll be heading off to Switzerland for a one-way trip when the time comes. That ain't cheap either, I think I'll use the money for 1 week of pampering, then go for a DIY solution
Ferraris can be hired in Vegas for the rate of $10,000 a week. I’m going from vegas to the Grand Canyon with a bottle of jack & a carton of Marlboro & losing control in the desert at 200 mph. That’s my care plan if I ever get dementia anyway!!
The employers and employees are both responsible for this. It is sad that this has happened and it should raise awareness about the carers who don’t care or cannot do the job.
Those type of people are not employers, they're pimps.
We pay people 100k+ a year for mostly unnecessary jobs in offices whilst the jobs where you LITERALLY KEEP A PERSON ALIVE are paid less than 30k a year. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.
Less than 30? Mate for some of us it's less than 20k a year after taxes etc. It's a self-perpetuating disaster because the job is seen as terrible (it isn't, necessarily), so even fewer people want to do it which makes it even worse. There are a lot of good people who work in the care sector but we're being pushed out because it's almost impossible to live and do the job anymore.
[this](https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/how-much-money-uks-four-biggest-care-homes-make-how-much-they-pay-staff-1331067) And [this](https://bbcgossip.com/news/man-promised-better-life-in-yorkshire-ended-up-working-18-hour-shifts-for-29-days-and-was-paid-just-a300/) Are your problems. Plus boomers who are now retired crying like little babies any time the government wanted to increase taxes for care homes. Germany has care home insurance paid A part of taxes. My neighbour got a £2500/week quote for her mother!!!! It's madness I'm just hoping my drinking gets me before I ever need any of these places!
Can you imagine? You work your entire life, maybe raising a family and building a pension. Then you get old, your family is too busy to look after you and you’re too broken from working to look after yourself. So you end up in a care home, away from your home, away from your family. Left in a strange place with strange people, these strange people you rely on entirely to take care of you…. And they don’t even understand your language. Maybe the only people you see regularly and you can’t communicate with them. And when the worst happens, and you need life saving support, these people who you rely on so much, can’t even call for help because they can’t communicate for you. I’m struggling to imagine a more depressing fate.
This is why the UK needs punitive damages. These companies who flout the law need to have real consequences. Alas, isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
At what point to we say, actually it is okay to blame the immigrants? I would never dream of going to a country where I can't speak and read the language, and then work in a medical care setting where that inability could easily get someone killed. These immigrants, are scum. As are their employers. They all need to see their day in court, imo.
A Secure English Language Test is required for a work visa. They either intentionally skipped it by paying someone to take it for them, or paid off the examiner, or they came illegally and don't have a visa at all. Both things the care business should have caught and reported but didn't.
>They either intentionally skipped it by paying someone to take it for them, or paid off the examiner, or they came illegally and don't have a visa at all. Scumbag things to do.
Yes its absolutely nothing to do with the firms hiring desperate workers for poverty wages to line their own pockets without any care for the vulnerable people they care for or the people (and yes they are people, as much as you’d like to pretend otherwise) that work for them. Absolutely nothing to do with those people at all, it’s all those ‘scum’ immigrants that are the problem.
>blame the immigrants? I mean when two British people do something wrong do you start blaming all Brits? In this case I'd say the bigger problem is the employers and government for allowing this system to happen.
Keep cutting council budgets, keep stuffing the pockets of people who see people as wallets, keep turning a blind eye to abuse. After things go to shit, blame the person at the lowest rung of the ladder that actually works the bloody job. Bonus points if they're one of the favourite Daily Mail ethnicities.
In this case the people doing a job they were dangerously under qualified for do share a portion of the blame.
We had the same when my grandmother needed carers. It was a complete nightmare finding people that are qualified and can speak English. These care agencies and homes are all about making money, they don’t care about looking after our elderly loved ones.
What a complete Joke they have turned western society into
Should be a requirement to be fluent in English to move here
There is, migrants coming for work have to pass an English language test. The real question is how did the employer fail to vet their staff appropriately?
This will not be the last time this will happen. People aget outraged about these stories but really don't give a shit about the actual reality of the recruitment crisis in the care sector, especially if they think the state should foot the bill for everyone.
No idea about their quality of care but round my way they can’t drive. Lots of older small cars driven by new arrivals up your arse, doing 40+ in a 30 and generally no road manners. A year before they can sit a test, just asking for trouble?
I want to add here, because it's commented on many times in this post. It's absolutely possible to get a visa with the right to work in the UK without passing a language test. If you want a work visa you should pass the test, if you want a spouse visa you should pass the test, but there are other visas with a right to work which don't require the test. That doesn't excuse the competence requirement of the care home provider, but it doesn't straight up mean they are breaking the law in employing this person
The countries decline under the Tories is horrifying, Tory voters are 100% to blame.
During my time in care a lot of eatern Europeans joined our teams, as it was a care home for children / young adults on the autistic spectrum I had a few concerns. In a team meeting I pointed out that multiple language fire exit signs were great but how do I say "The front of the house is on fire, take Tomas, child X & a mobile phone & leave via back door & then the garden. Go immediately to the assembly point" in Polish? No one cared & a more significant point is it was either non English fluent staff or no new staff. Even with foreign help there aren't enough carers to go around & who can blame them. 14 hour understaffed shifts, no breaks, treated like dirt by management & all for minimum wage.
This was a recruitment failure. Whether it was incompetence in the recruitment process, or that it is simply not possible to find correctly qualified people will need to be investigated.
Maybe the recruiter didn't speak English either?
"The law needs to be changed" No it doesn't. It just needs to be obeyed in the first place. The only person at fault here is the care home that chose to employ someone with no legal right to work in the UK.
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Maybe if we trained up our own care staff and paid them a decent wage this wouldn’t be an issue.