Support for homecare workers
An overview of third-party support available to home care workers. For support specifically for migrant care workers, skip to this section.
Legal support
Understand your legal rights as a care worker
ACAS provides free resources and personalised advice for all workers. Meanwhile, Citizens Advice provides information about alternative ways to access free or affordable legal support as a care worker, be that via legal aid, law centres, legal advice clinics, free advocacy services or exceptional case funding. Find out what each of these mean by clicking here. For further help, you can contact Citizens Advice online or visit in person at your local branch.
Join a trade union
Joining a union is the best way find formal representation and bespoke advice if you have a specific issue you would like to raise with your employer. You do need to pay a monthly membership fee. The main unions representing care workers are UNISON and GMB.
The monthly membership fee at UNISON depends on how much you earn per year, anywhere from £1.30 a month if you earn under £2000 a year to £22.50 if you earn over £35,000. At GMB, monthly membership is £8.40 if you work under 20 hours a week or £14.57 if you work full time.
Find out how unpaid travel time affects your true hourly rate of pay
Free of charge, Homecare Workers' Group will calculate your true hourly rate of pay for a given shift once unpaid travel time has been taken into account.​​
Financial support
The Care Workers' Charity Crisis Grant
Through the Care Workers' Charity, you can apply for an emergency grant: "The Care Workers’ Charity Crisis Grant is open to care workers who have experienced a recent change in circumstance resulting in a significant financial impact. Grant applications are assessed on a case-by-case basis and a maximum of £500 can be awarded. Subject to funding and circumstances in some cases we can award up to £2,000 for funeral costs grants if you live or work in the Oxfordshire area". Find out more on their website by clicking here.
Citizens Advice provides information about ways you can find support in the face of low-pay and the cost-of-living crisis, including support with debt. Click here to see what support is available. For further help, you can contact Citizens Advice online or visit in person at your local branch.
Care workers can apply for a free membership which allows them to shop at a Company Shop. There are currently fourteen Company Shops around the UK. They sell surplus stock which would otherwise go to waste at discounted prices. Take a look at their website here and see if there's one near you.
'Social care workers' qualify for a Blue Light Card which gives you access to online and in-store discounts from hundreds of retailers as well as savings on holidays and days out. It costs £4.99 in total to register for two years. Click here to go to the Blue Light Card website.
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Emotional support
Managing stress as a care worker
Take a look at this resource from Skills for Care which provides tips and advice about how to develop resilience to the pressures involved in care work. This is something members of Homecare Workers' Group talked through together at one of our online meetups.
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Free sessions with a qualified therapist via The Care Workers' Charity
If you feel you could benefit from speaking with a professional about your mental health and wellbeing, you can apply to access free support sessions with a qualified therapist via The Care Workers' Charity. For full information, click here.
Samaritans - someone to listen at any time of day
You can always call Samaritans for free on 116 123 to have a chat with a trained volunteer about what's on your mind. If you are feeling overwhelmed, stressed or in despair, a Samaritans volunteer will listen. If you live in Wales, you can call their main number as above, or their dedicated helpline for health and social care workers on 08004840555 (English line, 7am-11pm) or 08081642777 (Welsh line, 7pm-11pm).
Mind - the mental health charity
Mind is a national charity which helps support peoples' mental health and wellbeing. As well as each local branch of Mind offering their own set of free services, there is a wealth of useful information on their website.
Finding others in the same boat as you can do wonders for your wellbeing. Join Homecare Workers' Group today to help grow our supportive community. It's a free, secure online space that's easy to use, exclusively for home care workers.​
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Support for migrant care workers
An overview of third-party support available to migrant care workers.
Resources for migrant care workers
Information from the UK government about the Health and Care Worker visa scheme, including how to go about attempting to change your employer
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Further guidance from the UK government
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​Information from the Work Rights Centre about where you stand as a migrant care worker in relation to various situations at work​
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A database compiled by the Autonomy Institute which makes it easier to identify other potential employers in your area
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An organisation called SponsorSwitch which may be able to support you in finding a new employer​​
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UK Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline
The Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline is a victim-centred service run by the charity, Unseen. They are not affiliated with the government or the police. You can call them confidentially on 08000 121 700 or report concerns online.
Here is their guide to spotting the signs of Modern Slavery.
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If you contact the helpline, advisors will treat everything you say confidentially and will not pass information to anybody (including law enforcement) without your permission, except if there is a threat to life or a child involved. They have interpreters in over 200 languages.
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Advisors at the helpline will signpost you in the direction of the most suitable support, such as that listed at the end of this page. With your permission, an advisor can help refer your case to relevant investigative agencies such as the Gangmasters & Labour Abuse Authority or the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for modern slavery. “Once in the NRM, potential victims can access services based on their individual needs such as relevant legal advice, safe and secure accommodation, access to a support worker, financial support and medical care and counselling”.
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You can call the helpline 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so if you need to, you can ring them in the middle of the night and still receive exactly the same service. If the helpline ever needs to call you, their call will come from a private number. If you are a potential victim, the helpline recommends that you delete any record of your contact with the helpline from your phone, for your safety.
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The helpline will provide you with a unique case number which you can use to identify yourself in any future contact with the helpline. This means that if you need to put down the phone suddenly, you can always back pick the conversation back up by providing your case number. If you have other colleagues in the same position as you, you would be welcome to share the same case number so that your situations can be examined together.
Homecare Workers’ Group has its own open case with the Modern Slavery Helpline and the unique case number for this is 53048. If you wish, you can provide this case number when contacting the helpline. This means is that the helpline will be able keep track of all reports which have come through to them via Homecare Workers’ Group.
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