Ian Willis

05/05/2022

Well, that’s made my day! 🎉🍾

Top 20 UK Home Care Group for the 2nd time in 3 years and during a pandemic to boot!

I ❤️ our team.

HOME CARE SERVICES TO MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER Award-winning home care services and support to help you continue living happily, confidently, safely and independently in the comfort of your home BOOK A CALL TODAY

30/04/2022

The price to play in Domiciliary Care

I find it strange that there are still conversations about call-clipping (the contract-breaching practice of shortening one care visit in order to travel to the next without incurring additional payable time) and non-payment of properly calculated travel time (potentially an employment law breach depending on the net hourly rate it creates).

Delivering the full, contractually agreed visit duration and then paying the carer for that plus the travel time to the next visit should be the bare minimum standard any care company should hold itself to.

The price to play.

If you’re not doing at least this, you shouldn’t be in the game as you’re abusing both clients and carers in order to deliver a contract-breaching, dangerous and potentially illegal care service.

It’s what we then do beyond that price-to-play level that raises the bar on carer experience, client experience and quality of care.

E.g.

- Real Living Wage
- Full Shift Pay
- Guaranteed Hours contracts

These things move the needle and make working in care financially attractive as well as intrinsically rewarding.

This is good for both private clients and local authorities as we can recruit and retain carers, increase our capacity and support more people.

We work with a number of local authorities but on our rates and both we and they seem happy with the equation:

- We’re clear on what it costs to deliver a service we’re proud of, paying carers and treating clients fairly.

- We’re not using higher rates for private-clients to subsidise unviable local authority rates.

- They’re under no obligation to offer us any work.

- We’re not dependent on their work.

It’s a lot healthier all round.

Better for the carers, the clients, the quality of care and, in my humble opinion, ultimately better for the local authorities and the NHS too.

21/04/2022

Myth #10 “There’s no proper employment contract!”

A&B Truth, as part of our commitment to raising the bar when it comes to pay and terms for Carers, all our teams are employees with all the rights that brings including pension and paid holiday.

You’ll have a full Guaranteed Pay contract from day 1, so say goodbye to zero hours contracts!

With our Guaranteed Pay plus Full Shift Pay, you have the security of knowing that, even if we couldn’t offer you work, you’d be sure of being paid a certain amount each month, no matter what.

It’s the perfect safety net, so rather than worry about finances, you can instead focus your efforts on continuing to deliver outstanding care to our clients.

If you like the sound of the Fairer Care approach, find out more here https://www.fairercare.com/the-abney-and-baker-experience

21/04/2022

The value of FULL SHIFT PAY. 💰

On average we worked out last month that travel and waiting time made up just under 20% of our carers’ shift, so if you’re not paid for that, or not paid at the full hourly rate, that can make a big dent in your take home pay at the end of the month. We pay 100% of the shift, regardless.

Because we pay you from the first to the last minute of your shift, you’ll earn significantly more with us than with an employer that only pays for care and travel time. A care provider that only pays for care and travel time would have to offer pay rates of at least £14 an hour to match our pay!

Find out more about fair pay here https://www.fairercare.com/pay-and-terms

Home Carer Pay and Terms What you could earn Our home carers earn £11.05-£13.36 an hour on average based on a normal mix of morning, evening and weekend shifts.This means a full-time carer working 40 hours a week could expect to earn between between £22,900 and £27,800 a year.This is over £4,00...

18/04/2022

It’s not uncommon for Home Care workers to complain of working for 8 hours but only getting paid for 5.

Waiting time and cancelled visits can leave them with gaps in their shift.

If they’re on a “Care + Travel” contract, they won’t be paid for gaps.

A carer on £13.50 paid for 5 hours of an 8 hour shift would earn £67.50.

If they were on a FULL SHIFT PAY contract that paid £10 an hour, they’d be paid for all 8 hours and earn £80.

That’s £12.50 extra per shift.

Over a year, for a full-time carer that can add up to an eye-watering £3,250.

Imagine what you could do with an extra £3,250 a year and you wouldn’t need to do a single extra hour of work to get it.

If you’re looking at jobs in Home Care (and you should!) then make sure you ask employers whether you’d get FULL SHIFT PAY.

Abney & Baker carers do.

It’s one of the many things we do to treat our care team fairly for the vital work they do.

18/04/2022

When is £10 worth more than £13?

Or why domiciliary care workers should be getting Full Shift Pay, and you could be missing out on thousands if you aren’t.

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These days job boards seem to be awash with ads for Domiciliary Care Workers offering ever greater hourly rates.

So great in fact that they seem too good to be true.

Sadly, for far too many UK Domiciliary Care Workers, they are too good to be true.

If you’re a Domiciliary Care Worker then, for far too long, you’ve probably paid the price for complicated Care + Travel pay structures that allow care providers to promise you a high hourly rate but leave you feeling short-changed when you get your payslip.

If you’re being paid on a Care + Travel basis, you could be missing out on thousands of pounds a year in pay.

Wait! How is this possible?

It all comes down to the common practice among Domiciliary Care Providers of paying you for your time delivering care and for travelling between visits (a Care + Travel contract) rather than paying you all the way from the start to the end of your shift (a Full Shift Pay contract).

The difference is, on a Care + Travel contract, you are NOT paid for time spent waiting during your shift.

On a Full Shift Pay contract you are and that can have a huge impact to how much you earn each week, each month and each year as well as on your pension when you retire.

So, how much might I be missing out on if I’m on a Care + Travel contract?
To explain, here’s a worked example.

Let’s be generous to our Care + Travel employer and say they pay £13 an hour and pay that rate for both the Care and the Travel time (many pay a lower rate for travel).

It’s quite common for carers to complain of going out for an 8 hour shift and only being paid for 5 hours because of the gaps in their shift because scheduling issues or because of cancelled visits which can happen if a client is in hospital, away or has family visiting.

The carer is then missing out on 3 hours of potential paid time as their employer says they weren’t working or travelling during these gaps and doesn’t pay them for that time.

The Care + Travel carer would be paid for 5 hours at £13.00 for a total of £65.00

A Full Shift Pay carer earning £10.00 an hour would be paid for 8 hours at £10.00 for a total of £80.00.

Even though their hourly rate is £3.00 an hour lower, the Full Shift Pay earns £15.00 more each shift.

Crazy but true.

For a full-time Care + Travel carer, that adds up to £75 a week, £325 a month, or an eye-watering £3,900 a year that they’re missing out on compared to the Full Shift Pay carer.

Why is this unacceptable?

In effect, the Carer is paying the price for their employer’s scheduling challenges.

If you worked in a Care Home, a hospital, in retail or hospitality, you’d be paid for your full shift.

A retail employer doesn’t stop paying a shop worker for quiet periods when there aren’t any customers in the shop.

We believe Domiciliary Care Workers should get Full Shift Pay too.

What can you do about it?

Just follow these 3 steps to make sure you get paid what you deserve:

1. If you’re a Domiciliary Care Worker or are considering becoming one, ask potential employers about Full Shift Pay and don’t accept a Care + Travel contract.

2. Be suspicious of high hourly rates on job ads and ask about exactly what is paid, when and attt be what rates during your shift.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

3. In particular ask whether you are paid for all waiting time and gaps in your shift.

In summary

While there are too many Care Providers still paying Care + Travel, there are growing numbers who do pay Full Shift Pay.

They’re the ones showing that they care about their carers and about treating them fairly.

Finding one and joining them could be worth thousands of pounds a year without working an extra hour.

It’ll also help force those Care + Travel Providers to step up and make the move to Full Shift Pay.

About Us

Ian Willis is the Founder and CEO of Abney & Baker. An advocate for Fairer Care, he is committed to proving that raising standards for carers in turn raises standards of care for clients and is key to building a sustainable care company.

Abney & Baker is an award-winning, Real Living Wage accredited, Domiciliary Care Provider in Bath & North East Somerset and West Wiltshire. In line with our core value of Doing the Right Thing, we have been raising standards for care workers since we started in 2015 and offer Full Shift Pay as well as Guaranteed Pay contracts as standard.

Fairer Care is our campaign to shine a light on what we consider unfair pay and unfair practices in the Care sector while showing how raising standards is better for carers, clients and companies alike.