It’s been a big year for Homecare Workers’ Group. Our free peer support network for domiciliary care workers has grown from 23 to 333 members since 1st January. The warmth, openness and solidarity of the community that has developed in this time has been most precious of all, bringing together individuals from different backgrounds, with different experiences of the same indispensable role. In September, we secured the grant funding we needed to start testing our vision out properly. Here’s an overview of what we’ve learned over the course of the year, and our plans for 2025.
Peer support
In 2024, we finally established a place where any homecare worker can freely ask everyday questions about the details of their role: how to respond in a given situation, has anyone else experienced ‘X’?. Homecare Workers' Group is a place for reflecting on the immense social value of our work; supporting each other through the emotions of tending to tens of individuals and their families at any one time; offloading about the responsibility that comes with having to liaise with all manner of professionals on someone’s behalf, usually without being given extra time to do so, and much more.
Since many homecare workers have very little contact with colleagues, our community of best practice creates an essential space for these everyday yet important conversations to take place. The group also side-steps common concerns about seeking support via one’s employer, as when engaged in precarious employment, it is generally considered wise to ‘keep your head down’. Whenever questions relating to specific terms of employment are too complex for the free resources available via Acas, we sign-post individuals to established trade unions for formal advice and representation.
A study in the US previously demonstrated the benefits to personal wellbeing and professional resilience that come from homecare workers being able to access the kind of independent peer support now available via our community.
The big issues
Homecare Workers’ Group has also become a trusted space for ‘big picture’ conversations. For example, earlier this week one of our members shared an article which considered the role of profit-making in social care. A discussion followed about whether profit is a necessary incentive for doing business in social care, how profit-making may interact with end quality of care and employment, and whether a perception of social care as a ‘free’ market may have contributed to a lack of appropriate government investment over the years.
Many of our members have travelled to the UK from overseas to take up roles under the Health & Care Worker visa scheme. Three weeks ago, a number of these members attended focus groups hosted by the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care, at which government officials sought to better understand the nature of the challenges faced by Health & Care Worker visa holders.
A recent Early Day Motion (EDM) arranged by Unison and a public petition call for visa holders to be permitted to seek employment from any CQC-registered care provider, rather than needing to find an employer that is prepared to become their official sponsor. In these developments lie signs of movement in the right direction for Health & Care Worker visa holders, as far as addressing modern slavery is concerned.
That said, the pursuit of a Certificate of Common Sponsorship as per the EDM and public petition must be viewed as one part of a necessary package of changes for Health & Care Worker visa holders. If the only change that took place was to allow people to ‘vote with their feet’ and leave behind a poor employer, then (if staying within homecare) visa holders might soon discover that even well-intentioned employers also subject them to exploitative working hours. Why? To meet the terms of the Health & Care Worker visa, an individual must earn at least the ‘minimum salary requirement’ each year. To meet that minimum salary requirement when on low hourly pay, a person typically needs to be paid for 40 hours’ work a week. This becomes problematic in homecare, since many employers do not pay workers for the legal working time they spend travelling from one care visit to the next (more info here).
This unpaid travel time means that if your first care visit starts at 3pm and your last one ends at 9pm, with constant travelling between visits, then instead of being paid for six hours’ work, you would be lucky to earn five. This issue affects all homecare workers whose travel time is unpaid. For visa holders, the result is that their employer must send them out ‘on the road’ for far more than 40 hours each week. Many of our members seeking full-time pay report leaving the house for work at 7am and not getting home until 10pm, six or sometimes seven days a week, and still struggling to make 40 hours’ pay. In this way, labour abuse of migrant homecare workers is systemic, rather than a case of a few bad employers. As a group we will continue to speak up about unpaid travel time, joining others in calls for shift-based pay for all homecare workers.
Developing the voices of homecare workers
When I started attending social care events in 2023, I often found I was the only care worker there, sometimes amongst a significant number of people. National events for care workers seemed to attract a tiny number of attendees. Researchers who sought the views of care workers appeared to struggle with recruitment.
There are a number of practical reasons explaining this lack of engagement from care workers. 1. For lack of a mandatory membership body for care workers, it is very difficult to let care workers know about events that are taking place. 2. If we do find out about an event, the chances are we won’t know until days beforehand whether we’ll be at work that day, and it’s likely we will be. 3. As low-paid workers, spare time is in short supply and it generally has towards the essentials. This is particularly the case for homecare workers, thanks to unpaid travel time.
Yet there are also deeper-rooted issues at play. I’ve noticed a profound lack of confidence among many of my peers who have joined Homecare Workers’ Group. We are simply not used to being asked for our views. At work, many of us have found that advocating on behalf of the people we support seems to fall on deaf ears. Too often, there is a sense from other visiting professionals that we are a necessary, though ideally invisible, part of the furniture. To voluntarily participate in an unfamiliar activity in one’s own time is an intimidating prospect for the best of us. For people who perceive their chosen occupation as ‘looked down upon’ by others, it takes even more courage to engage.
And yet, alongside those who draw on social care and unpaid carers, paid care workers like us are the very people who see exactly how our current ‘system’ operates on the ground. Speak only to office-based members of staff at homecare agencies and you’re unlikely to hear from someone who carries out normal client visits on a regular basis. That is why engagement from ‘frontline’ homecare workers should be - and in many cases is - sought after by those seeking the best for social care.
From the perspective of developing the voices of homecare workers, 2024 has been a good year. First and foremost, there is now a way to let more of England’s 655,000 homecare workers know about third-party events, studies and other activities they might wish to participate in. The public-facing Get Involved page on the Homecare Workers’ Group website lists the details of all such opportunities we find out about. We further promote each opportunity via our mailing list and our secure WhatsApp Community.
As our community at Homecare Workers’ Group has developed, so too has the confidence of our members. In 2024, members of Homecare Workers’ Group participated in government focus groups, national roundtables, numerous research studies, a project to develop workforce priorities for the Local Government Association, and even an interview for national television.
As a group, we regularly encourage our members to join and engage with established trade unions to ensure better formal representation for homecare workers. Earlier this year, the Care Workers’ Charity established its Care Worker Advisory Board and Care Worker Champions programme, offering new opportunities for care workers to ‘have their say’.
In September, members of Homecare Workers’ Group told their stories in writing to key ministers, which led to a conversation with the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, Wes Streeting MP.
Looking ahead…
Homecare Workers’ Group is moving into 2025 with strong momentum. Just days ago, we formalised our status as a not-for-profit organisation by converting to a Community Interest Company (CIC). In January, we are welcoming a former care worker into our core team, on placement from the University of Kent. Also in January, we are hosting our first two guest speaker events for members, with a talk by Mark Russell-Smith from AI Dimension about their eye-opening research into how homecare runs are organised and free media training delivered by Aanisah Khan from Citizens UK.
At the end of March, we will hold the first meeting of our new Advisory Board made up of Homecare Workers’ Group members, which will act to ensure that the group operates as just that: a group. Also at the end of March will be our next quarterly in-person meetup at a yet-to-be decided location. If our recent meetup in Nottingham is anything to go by, it’ll be something special (see video at the top of the page). In the meantime, we’ll continue to stay in touch via our secure WhatsApp community, fortnightly online drop-ins, and keep people in the loop via our monthly email update.
Sincerest of thanks to our funders, the Rayne Foundation, for making these plans possible and to every single person who has supported Homecare Workers’ Group over the course of its first year-and-a-bit. Now, off to do nine busy care visits for New Years’ Eve, and another seven in the morning!
Sign up to our free peer support network for homecare workers at homecarewg.org
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