Employing someone?

One of the upsides of the Adult SS direct payment system is that they allow at least £8.50 for the hourly wage. They pay a much higher rate to an agency but the agency generally only pay minimum wage. I know it isn't a great deal more but it does make a small difference.

Of course the issue here is low pay. Good to see that some people, including your mother, are aware of this and empathise with carers.

Nearly a third of carers are on zero hours contracts and most not by choice. The suicide rate for carers is double the national average.

As their Union puts it:

"It's a sorry state of affairs when the people who care for our nearest and dearest are among the lowest paid members of the workforce, labouring with poor terms and conditions, and little job security.

“It’s little wonder carers are leaving the profession in droves, but it doesn't have to be that way.

“Paying care workers properly, giving them proper contracts and making sure they are treated like proper professionals would be a decent starting point.

“Our social care system is in crisis, one of the first things we can do to tackle the problem is invest in the health and well-being of our carers.

“With our ageing population – this problem isn’t going away.”

We can't solve this by ourselves but we can put pressure on the politicians to do so.

Gillt57, my DD had a carer who went sick before maternity leave, then took the maternity leave, then went sick again. It wasn't just a case of what money she had to find to pay the carer because it hadn't been allowed by the ASS but also the stress of finding someone else at short notice. I think you have to have really good reasons for doing direct payment if using agency staff works for you.

I agree with everything you say GillT57 it is “a blinking nightmare” and exactly the same rules and regulations apply whether you employ 1 or 101 .

Agreed Gillybob, running a payroll and employing staff is a blinking nightmare of ever changing rules and regulation and I don't think everyone realises just how onerous it can be, and yes icanhandthembackthe employer no longer gets reimbursed for SSP, when you have a small company of 7 employees as I did, and 1 goes sick for 6 weeks it is financially crippling. Not necessarily relevant to the current discussion, but just a quick insight into the process for anyone who thinks being an employer is easy!

The DWP don't pay all of Statutory Sick Pay like they used to either, the employer has to provide it.

Employing soneone is a minefield and not to be taken on lightly ( unless we are talking about paying someone cash in hand that is in which case “you pays your money and takes your chance” ).

The employer will be liable for all the things others have mentioned including ; living wage, employers NI, liability insurance, compulsory pension provision ( rising next month) not to mention sick pay, maternity pay, holiday pay and crikey knows what else . Having been an employer for many years I certainly wouldn’t do it again now.

I have a neighbour who is a carer for LA. In recent years with funding cuts a few of the ladies she cares for were assessed as not needing as much help e.g having to drop back from 2 hours per day to 1 hour. My neighbour was asked by the families of the person they cared for if she could continue to do the 2 hours and they would pay the 2nd hour themselves. She is still employed by LA to do some 1 hour per day so obviously has been DBS checked by LA. The elderly person did not want to have to get used to a different carer and was happy with the service my neighbour provides. It seems to suit both parties. I would be very wary about stopping using LA carer though as what happens if a private carer is unwell and cannot come?

Isn't there also the issue of providing them with a pension, paying tax, National insurance etc?

My friend, no longer here, considered her own carer but the pitfalls were too great, especially if she was caught out by the tax man or authorities

JaneJudge, oh that things worked like they were supposed to. We thought that too but the reality was very different. The Social Workers who are supposed to arrange this, just don’t. In reality they just want you to use an agency as it is so much simpler...for them. We had a fight on our hands all the way to get direct payment and they insisted that the PA should be self-employed. It was quite a battle to get the extra money out of them to cover holidays etc which are the normal employment rights people have.

Icanhandthemback , ah I didn't realise that, I thought that they could register as self employed if they worked for several different people. I knew they would be employed if they only worked for one person. We had a carer for our dad and she was often suggesting that she came "privately ", but she wanted cash in hand and had no intention of declaring it so we asked the agency to send someone else . As others have said , the agency send cover in case of holidays, sickness etc

Icanhand, the local authority are supposed to support wrt to employing someone using direct payments there should be accountants involved who are approved by the LA and your records should be checked by someone from the LA.

The insurance isn't actually that expensive. It's usually in the region of £80 - £120 a year.
Obviously there are issues with accessing a wages software, paying ni, tax etc. It's not rocket science with the right software/paperwork but it will time consuming for you op, presumably. Then there is managing the staff, contracts etc. I do see your Mothers point though but I see yours as well.

Mauriherb, you cannot just decide they will be self employed. There are now rigorous rules in place to stop people doing that as you might have read lately about some of the journalists with the BBC. My sister had a ‘sel-employed’ carer, through the direct payment scheme and with the Social Services blessing but the DWP made her pay all the back tax because they said he had to be employed. It crippled her financially.

Tell your Mum that she would need to set up an insurance policy to cover these 'girls' in case of an accident, that she would have to do without their help if one of them were to be ill, and that she would have no recourse to any organisation whatsoever should she find they had been stealing from her. Agencies do charge a lot more than they actually pay but they are the responsible bodies.

Some, not all, of the carers are trying to get "cash in hand" private jobs. If they were told that it would all be done above board they might not be so keen. However, if they set themselves up as self employed there would be no need to deduct tax or insurance from them,

This happened with my Mum who had a carer who told her long sob stories about her family difficulties, mainly revolving round lack of cash. The carer went in twice a day as we lived at a distance and rapidly built up a lot of influence over Mum. I then found out that she was selling Mum drawings she had done of Mum's garden and dogs. They were dreadful amateur things and she was charging a fortune. Next it was special scarves she was selling, then pot plants and finally a suggestion that Mum employ her direct cash-in-hand. At that point I installed myself in Mum's house for a visit and had 'words', including telling the carer that I would be obliged to report the matter to the agency if it happened again. Two weeks later the woman said her car had broken down so she was being reassigned to an area near her house. Mum was sad to lose a familiar face, but as it happened the replacement was much nicer.

Your Mum would have to have all the employment rights in place as she would be deemed as an employer. This means she would have give holiday pay and agree to a pension if her carers want it. Tax and NI have to be paid as and when it is deducted. If they get pregnant, there is the maternity pay to cover. If she employs over a certain number she will need the various contracts in place. If she does not do this and the tax people find out, she will be liable for the back tax. My daughter has been employing her carers and it is a nightmare for the person who has to administer it.

When my son got direct payments from the local Council, we asked an agency to find him a suitable Personal Assistant. They found him a very caring young man a few years older than him. We had to pay them direct, so no worry about checks or anything. We also employed our older daughter (by 13 years) who no longer lived at our home. To do this we had to become her employer which mean paying her with proper wage slips, Nat insurance, paying tax, holiday pay, sickness pay and insuring her. We had to have a proper contract and then when she had a baby we had to pay maternity benefit. Luckily there was a group called Equal Lives which I think was set up partly by Disabled people and the local Council to help people employing their own care help. Don't know how I would have managed it all without them, even then we still had lots of paper work, had to fill in monthly accounts, paid the tax direct to the Tax people etc. I was quite relived when we found him a place in Residential care especially as having to pay a pension was just coming into force and would have meant even more paper work. Plus of course if you didn't get tax paid on time you could be fined. I would think carefully before employing anyone myself as there is a lot more to it than we think-if you do it legally of course and if you don't there can be other repercussions.

My mum enjoyed chatting to her carers about everything under the sun.
Their lazy husbands (my mum found one of them a job in Argos!) and so on. She knew they were poorly paid, knew their childrens names, etc.

been there got the tshirt dad has a cleaner the sad hard luck stories make you cry omg very unperfessional to talk about pay . yes its wrong and agree a few jobs a few stories a few extras,older people do not see the problems ,just keep an eye out

Coincidentally, someone has just phoned me to ask if I would be interested in becoming a carer, with the arrangement that I claim the allowance.

It's true that the person being cared for is likely to become close to regular carers and feel they ought to contribute in some way to help their situation. DH used to call in on Mum from time to time and warn me that she was 'Going into Lady Bountiful mode.'

I kept a close eye on things as her cleaner had also started to become a bit clingy so was quite relieved when Mum finally went into care because her dementia had increased.

I arrived at her care home one morning though to find her full of beans. The reason being, she told me, was that she'd won the lottery, bought the whole place and given all the girls a pay rise!

I'm afraid that I would report to the agency that their staff are complaining to your mother about aspects of their work contracts. Whether they are hinting that they change to a personal arrangements or not, it's unprofessional. They choose to work for the agency and, if they preferred to be self employed, they should have gone down that route in the first place and got their own clients!!

Iam a low paid carer, but this would not be acceptable to me. Iam insured with the company I work with, I have the back up of asking senior staff anything, medication etc. The laws are quite complicated around this sort of thing. Also poaching staff is illegal. My company asks that all gifts over the value of £5 are declared to keep staff from false accusations.