At New Age Care we are on mission to improve the in-home care industry for clients and their carers. We recently wrote a letter to our Prime Minister, the honourable Mr Boris Johnson MP highlighting our concerns.
You can read our letter here:
Mr Boris Johnson MP
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
Westminster
London, SW1A 2AA
23rd April 2021
Dear Prime Minister,
We write to you as a fledgling company looking to make a difference in care and to be able to make both clients and carer’s lives better. The world’s older population continues to grow at an unprecedented rate and is set to increase exponentially by 2050.
Carer’s play a very important role within their community helping people from all walks of life to try and maintain their independence, dignity and wellbeing. We feel basically that carer’s do generally get overlooked, yet without them the NHS, social services and indeed care homes would be overrun.
Carer’s whether they are working with mental health patients or the elderly need a host of qualities and training to be able to do their job. Above all, they have to be responsible, respectful, dependable, sensitive, understanding, supportive, good interpersonal/communication skills and professional at all times.
Our aim is to treat both carer and client in a better way, this comes from the fact that during COVID19, We noticed that the big companies seemed only to care for the money they were bringing in and not so much their client and carer.
Carers are not normally paid for the first ten miles per day after which, the average rate of pay per mile is .25p. A carer can be driving between calls and doing up to 60-70 miles per day, they may find that they have less than an hour in-between calls which they are not paid for and where they need to pull into a lay-by and wait before attending their next call as it’s not worth the expense to drive home.
On many occasions this has happened to many of us where calls can start from 8am and we do not finish until 9pm, they are spaced out with maybe 30 mins in between some calls and an hour with others, so you are out 13 hours and only being paid for 7/8 hours.
Not only is the petrol allowance poor but, there is also the upkeep and service of the vehicle to be maintained for which there is no help, hence, there is often a high turnover of carers because of this. We would like this to stop.
To continue with their caring work and to become a better carer, training is vital and yet again for those carer’s who take NVQ’s they do not get paid, they have to follow through in their own time.
Again their dedication needs to be recognised and this should be subsidised at the very least. It would also help if our pay reflected our out of hours and weekend work because of the impact this can have on our private lives and families.
We are asking what can your government do to help this very vital and underrated profession?
To obtain funding is virtually impossible. Why is that? From the time we are born we are all heading in the same direction, surely it should be a priority that our elderly and indeed vulnerable population should not be just statistics.
As already stated, this Country has an ever growing elderly population and this modality is very much needed to alleviate pressure, not only on the NHS but to also help families who are struggling with the responsibility of their elderly relations, also their changing needs and indeed for those who have no relatives.
The social aspect of this is, that by having carers enabling the elderly and vulnerable to stay in their own home longer than perhaps they would means, it saves the state funds which, otherwise may well be spent subsidising admissions and permanent residence (24 hour) in care homes.
It is the vision of New Age Care Limited to change the outlook and perception of this service. We would like carer’s to be acknowledged for the work they do and for carer’s to be supported and valued so there is never a high turnover of staff thus creating a good enduring relationship between both carer and client.
It takes a great deal of knowledge, training, common sense and compassion to be a good carer.
“To care for those who once cared for us is one of the highest honours”
As a company, we are very passionate about our vision and to that end we will be sending copies of this letter to all constituents in our areas.
Yours sincerely