When a homecare worker met Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care...
- Oct 24, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 14
On Tuesday 22nd October, I spoke with Wes Streeting MP, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
Homecare Workers' Group was set up just over a year ago to see whether any homecare workers other than myself might be interested in accessing an independent peer support network. Somewhere to share best practice and vent after a hard day's work. Though I knew there was a general election on the horizon, I could never have anticipated how suddenly our burgeoning community would be drawn into matters of collective voice. To find myself speaking to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care at a Ministerial Reception this week was utterly surreal, and indicative of a prior lack of representation for England's 655,000 homecare workers.
Politically-speaking, the signs suggest that we are in good hands. Last week, the Employment Rights Bill set out the government's intention to implement numerous improvements to workers' rights. Within the bill there is an entire chapter dedicated to establishing a Fair Pay Agreement for adult social care. We have every hope that our interests will be well-represented by Unison and GMB throughout the course of this process and it is great to hear that Unison has recently set up a Care Member Committee.
Yet, knowing how small a proportion of homecare workers belong to a union (we encourage all to sign up to one), and given that we constitute 50% of the direct care workforce in England, Homecare Workers' Group will keep raising issues specific to homecare workers as and when appropriate, alongside our core work as an informal peer support network. It was on this basis that I had a chat with Wes (and got a blurred selfie while I was at it...).
The 'going rate' of pay offered by a standard homecare agency is around £14 an hour at the moment. National Living Wage is £11.44. Sounds ok, right? Until you consider that many homecare agencies do not pay workers for the time they spend travelling between one client and the next, despite the fact that this legally counts as working time.
What impact does unpaid travel time have on a homecare worker’s hourly rate of pay?
This is what a typical run of clients might look like for a homecare worker:
Visit no. | Start | End | Duration | Travel time |
1 | 15:30:00 | 16:00:00 | 00:30:00 | |
2 | 16:30:00 | 17:15:00 | 00:45:00 | 00:30:00 |
3 | 17:40:00 | 18:10:00 | 00:30:00 | 00:25:00 |
4 | 18:30:00 | 19:15:00 | 00:45:00 | 00:20:00 |
5 | 19:25:00 | 19:55:00 | 00:30:00 | 00:10:00 |
6 | 20:15:00 | 21:00:00 | 00:45:00 | 00:20:00 |
7 | 21:30:00 | 22:00:00 | 00:30:00 | 00:30:00 |
Legally, the worker must be paid from 3:30pm to 10pm for the above shift. That’s 6.5 hours' work. With a contracted hourly rate of £14 but with travel time unpaid, the worker will earn £59 gross pay. When you divide that £59 across the full 6.5 hours of legal working time, it becomes apparent that the true hourly rate of pay for this shift is much lower, just £9.15 per hour. See full breakdown for this example shift below:
Contracted hourly rate of pay | £14.00 |
True hourly rate of pay | £9.15 |
£11.44 |
Total unpaid travel time | 02:15:00 |
Lost working time (h) | 2.25 |
Lost pay | £31.50 |
Lost pay % | 35% |
Legal working time (t) | 06:30:00 | 04:15:00 | Time paid for (t) |
Legal working time (h) | 6.50 | 4.25 | Time paid for (h) |
Pay including travel time | £91.00 | £59.50 | Pay NOT including travel time |
At Homecare Workers’ Group, we offer to calculate a homecare worker’s true hourly rate of pay as above for a given shift. In every single case to date, the true hourly rate of pay has been below the National Living / Minimum Wage.
Compliant employers take measures to top up their worker's pay to meet the National Living / Minimum Wage with each payroll. Nonetheless, when travel time is unpaid, a homecare worker's contracted hourly rate of pay is always misleadingly high. We worry that when unions enter into pay talks with the government on behalf of care workers, this crucial aspect of pay for homecare workers may be missed. If people think we are already being paid £14 an hour, they are unlikely to perceive an issue.
Meanwhile, unscrupulous or ill-informed employers do not top up wages, meaning they illegally pay their staff below the National Living / Minimum Wage as a result of unpaid travel time. It is our understanding from other sources that HMRC has long turned a blind eye to this matter as it affects homecare workers, despite a landmark case in 2020 where 10 homecare workers were awarded £100,000 at tribunal having been illegally underpaid as a result of unpaid travel time.
The non-payment of travel time links back to the way local authorities commission state-funded homecare packages, generally only paying homecare agencies for a worker's direct contact time with clients. For decades, homecare workers have borne the brunt of central government's inadequate funding into adult social care by quite literally not being paid for their work. In the example above, travel time accounted for 35% of the shift's legal working time.
When I first became a homecare worker, I requested full-time hours, only to be warned by my boss that anyone who goes full-time burns out within a few months. That's because to be paid for 37.5 hours' work when travel time is unpaid, you must be at work for more like 50 hours a week. I was fortunate enough to be able to opt out of this arrangement and continue the work I love on what was technically - though not in real terms - a part-time basis.
Less fortunate are migrant homecare workers. To meet the conditions of the Health & Care Worker visa, a homecare agency must pay each migrant worker a defined minimum salary which, when mapped onto pay rates within homecare, amounts to full-time hours. In order to meet those full-time hours, a typical a working day spans from 7am to 10pm (15 hours) yet they are only paid for a fraction of that time. If the individual does not have access to a car and either walks or takes public transport between clients - which is surprisingly common - then the amount of paid working hours they accrue in a 15-hour day is remarkably low. These long working days offer no semblance of a work-life balance and often repeat for many days in a row.
When they get in touch, our migrant members are nearly always exhausted, desperate and struggling with their mental health. Some say they feel scared to get behind the wheel when driving between clients because they are so tired that they do not feel safe to drive. They feel guilty that they are not in a fit state of health or mind to provide support to clients in the way they would like to, and in the way their clients deserve. They spend so much of their waking time at work, that they form close bonds with clients despite their tiredness, because they are the only people they come into contact with from one day to the next.
The exploitation of migrant homecare workers therefore runs far deeper than a minority of bad employers and unscrupulous middle-men charging thousands in illegal recruitment fees. So long as travel time is unpaid, even the most well-meaning of homecare employers must subject their migrant staff to exploitative working conditions. In this way, the exploitation of migrant homecare workers is systemic; a direct result of unpaid travel time.
As is evident from the experiences of migrant homecare workers, unpaid travel time means that any contract which guarantees a homecare worker a set number of hours commits them to spending significantly longer at work than the number of hours indicated on their contract. Considering the Employment Rights Bill restates the government’s commitment to do away with zero-hours contracts in favour of guaranteed hours contracts, this is yet another reason to ensure unpaid travel time is robustly addressed as part of the forthcoming Fair Pay Agreement. Our members were quick to pick up on this, wondering whether the end of zero-hours contracts - whilst thankfully improving their security of income - would see them having to vastly increase their working availability to the detriment of maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
And so, this is what I spoke with Wes about on Tuesday: unpaid travel time, the need for this to be addressed before our basic hourly rate is subject to review, its impact on all homecare workers but particularly our migrant colleagues who are effectively locked into exploitative working conditions.
Given the current reality of our underfunded social care system, we recognise that for homecare agencies to begin paying their staff explicitly for their travel time would likely involve a drop in our contracted hourly rate of pay, but only to a level that reflects the true hourly rate of pay we already receive. It is essential that this pay transparency is established ahead of / as part of the Fair Pay Agreement in adult social care.
Over the past week, we have been sharing the stories of some of our members, written in their own words. These stories add colour and depth to a range of issues affecting both homecare workers and the individuals they support. Since the voices of homecare workers are seldom heard, do take a moment to read these:
If you are a homecare worker in England, join our free peer support network run by and for homecare workers. We host a secure online group and WhatsApp Community, as well as regular online and in-person meetups.
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