Obscure job adverts
​Homecare employers regularly use misleading techniques in their job adverts.
For example, by promoting attractive hourly rates of pay when staff are paid far less in reality as a result of unpaid travel time. Or, promising guaranteed hours but not stating that staff are required to make themselves available for work at all times of day, every day of the week, in order to access this type of contract.
Many job adverts are light on detail when it comes to describing specific terms of employment. This puts the onus on the job-seeker to interrogate every potential employer.
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Without prior experience in homecare, it can be difficult for job-seekers to know what questions to ask a prospective employer.
Questions like: are working hours guaranteed and, if so, on what terms? Is travel time paid? Is training time paid? Are notes taken by hand or digitally? Is there sick pay?
In addition to such specifics as described above, it is common for terms of employment to vary significantly from one local branch of a homecare chain to the next. This could explain why many job adverts are so vague: if an employer represents a national brand, it could detract from the brand's reputation to make it known that some branches are materially better to work for than others.
This keeps frontline care workers in the dark and obscures from view the true employment situation in domiciliary care, such that when policy makers pay attention to the sector, it is difficult to perceive a problem from the outside looking in. Compared to healthcare which, under the NHS, is a fairly transparent sector, social care has been described as like the 'Wild West', with no fewer than 12,808 CQC-regulated domiciliary care locations in England as of October 2023.
Improved transparency throughout the recruitment process could do much to address the painfully high staff turnover rates in social care, bringing clear benefits to those who draw on support as far as continuity and quality of care is concerned.
National bodies like Skills for Care and CQC already collect a great deal of data from homecare employers in England. Given the sector-wide consensus about the need to tackle poor employment conditions in social care in order to boost recruitment and improve retention, we would welcome the development of a tool that would make it easier for job-seekers to identify decent homecare employers in their area.
Such a tool would incentivise positive change throughout the sector and could provide the impetus for a broader conversation about the need for a sustained increase in central government funding to local authorities, should employers feel their terms of employment are unfairly under scrutiny.