What would you do with that time?

The following blog was written by Lucy Clarke, a member of Homecare Voices.

A few weeks ago, I asked fellow members of our community what they would do if they were given back all the unpaid gaps in their weeks currently spent either traveling or waiting around between care visits. We reflected on what we would do if that time was truly ours, to go where we wanted and do as we pleased.

• Some said that if it weren't for all the unpaid gaps, they would use the time to properly catch up on sleep.

• Others said they would use the time to watch a series they had wanted to watch, or to peg their washing out on the line in the sun.

• People said they would take the time to buy ingredients and make healthy meals, or to organise their cupboards.

• They would help their children with homework, look after their pets, see more of their partners.

• People talked about saving to go on holiday if they were paid for all of their hours. One had a dream to one day buy a proper New York bagel in New York.

• Others wished to develop themselves as care professionals. They said they would do formal education in social care, would take time to reflect upon and improve their practice, or read the books they had bought on the subject.

• Many said that they would like to do the things that we stress are so important for the people we support: socialise, do exercise, do hobbies, arts and crafts.

Consider how much more energy a physically fit, well-rested, homecare worker has to do the job of supporting people. Consider how much more resilient a person is in supporting others when they are supported and nourished themselves by their loved ones. Consider how much more able a person is to enjoy their work if they are able to fulfil themselves creatively and intellectually outside of it. 

When we talk about unpaid time in care work, it can all seem a bit abstract to people who haven’t done the job. But the unpaid hours we are talking about are many, many hours of peoples lives, which they would otherwise fill with things that are fun, or that give them meaning, or help them get on top of things.

For context, below is a visualisation of a real homecare run submitted via our True Hourly Pay Calculator:

The above visualisation shows a real homecare run consisting of ten care visits between 9:30am and 8:30pm. The individual is only paid for the time spent at care visits (purple) and not for the gaps between visits (orange) despite all of these gaps being under 60 minutes in duration, making them legally payable working time. Unless the individual's employer acted to top up their wages at payroll, as a result of the unpaid gaps on this run they would have earned just £8.60 per hour (£94.63 total pay which is £39.68 short of the £134.31 they should be paid). The £8.60 hourly rate falls far short of the National Minimum Wage of £12.21 per hour, which is the individual's contracted rate of pay in the above example.

All we are advocating for is some time, every day, in homecare workers' lives. Time to have a bit of a life back, to do normal things, to be something other than a care worker for a bit. This is a perfectly realistic, normal, reasonable aim. I am confident we will get there, since shift-based pay is the norm for homecare workers in other countries. There's no reason it shouldn't be here, too.

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Peer support

Homecare Voices is a free-to-join, not-for-profit peer support network run by and for domiciliary care workers throughout the UK. We offer round-the-clock peer support and fortnightly online drop-ins, as well as letting homecare workers know about other ways to get involved in meaningful activities outside of work.

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