I have signed this petition as the UK is low on the number of Bank Holidays, but unfortunately these are not recognised as such by some professions such as care.
Care is a 365 day profession and due to the complete lack of required finance and lack of persons in the profession, carers are expected to work these Bank Holidays as though they are normal working days. While working them does not affect their holiday entitlement, they are not paid any extra for doing so, with the possible exception of Christmas and New Years Day. So not only are the salaries they receive way too low, many not even on the Real Living Wage of £9.90 per hour, as most will be on the National Living Wage of £9.50 per hour.
This is far from encouraging people to enter the profession for such an essential workforce, when they could easily earn £14 per hour in supermarkets for much less responsibilities.
So while this holiday will benefit most of the population it will not benefit care workers, who will still only get the bare minimum holiday entitlement.
Everyone should receive the same basic holiday entitlement with Bank Holidays in addition.
This Government could do much more for Social Care, but they are very reluctant to provide funding.
Yes, there is the promise of a proportion of the £12 billion being raised from the from 6 April 2022 to 5 April 2023 National Insurance contributions increase by 1.25 percentage points. They say this will be spent on the NHS, health and social care in the UK, but initially the NHS will get the bulk of it to reduce the waiting lists, so, I feel little will be available for Social Care if any. The response of this Government during the COVID pandemic is a true refection on their view of Social Care, where they let down Care Homes. They promised there was a ‘ring fence’ around care homes , but, if there was it was full of holes as they instructed hospitals to discharge elderly patients into care homes without any COVID tests being done, hence COVID came into the care homes and this resulted in many deaths of residents and some care workers in the region of 20000.
But care homes are just one area of social care as care covers both children and adults for home care, respite, supported living, hospices, etc.
In fact, Social Care needs , at least, £12 billion itself and that would only bring funding back to the 2010 level, which was wholly insufficient then. For Social Care has never been sufficiently funded and every delay in funding brings greater pressures on the NHS.
61chrissterry 