Carers have extremely difficult and demanding jobs, it is true, and we all need to “pull together” and “support each other” in these times. However, it is a shame to say that the true problems that carers are faced with right now cannot be clapped out of existence, they are simple institutional problems that could be remedied by effective action by politicians, who invest far too much time in supporting “clapping for carers” and insufficient time actually doing anything to make carers’ lives slightly bearable at the moment.
I worked as a carer for half a year in London during this pandemic. The rotas frequently and unavoidably consist of carrying out a dizzying battery of split shifts, sleep-overs, and ten or twelve-hour long shifts. Some days consist of starting work at 7.30 AM and finishing work at 9 PM, with a little window in the middle in which you are “off” but not in any meaningful sense. The effect is a basically permanent lethargy. (This was a very generous employer.)
Strange and convoluted hours are an unavoidable reality of caring for people. However, this is combined with the traditionally bad wages for carers, who earn far, far less than people sat at home self-isolating and working 9-5 from the comfort of their own homes. This is in spite of the many different phenomena they have to worry about in this pandemic. They could pass COVID-19 to vulnerable people, killing them. They could themselves easily become infected with COVID-19, especially in bigger care homes. In addition, and perhaps hardest of all, they must try to explain and elaborate the COVID-19 pandemic to the people they care for (“support”, in contemporary parlance.) They must explain why they can’t go out and see their families. They must explain why nobody was able to visit them on Christmas. They must explain why they can only see their friends and loved ones on a Zoom call. It is extremely difficult to explain to someone who is highly progressed in dementia suffering
Instead of ‘clapping for carers’, then, I urge you to demand higher wages for carers. I also urge you to encourage anyone working as a carer right now to join a union. Union penetration in the “care sector” is extremely low, and carers can join UNISON, who are determined to fight for their interests. I urge you to fight for a systematic end to zero-hours contracts, which many care workers must still contend with. I urge you to ask the government to fund the NHS properly, which is, by definition, the government’s job. This could be done, for example, by not spending quite so much on, for example, the military, since we very famously can’t nuke COVID out of existence. (I believe military spending increased in the last budget, the government evidently determined that shooting the virus with an AK-47 is the best course of action.) What carers need right now is not a patronising pat on the back, a sort of impersonal “well done”, but structural changes that make their lives easier. I have never felt encouraged by people ‘clapping for carers’, but I know I would be encouraged by such structural changes.
Squidditas 