Tag: sleep ins

PA employers are facing probes into ‘sleep-in’ minimum wage back-pay – Black Triangle Campaign

Chris Sterry commenting1 Comment

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has admitted to Disability News Service (DNS) that individual PA employers have been investigated, just like large service-providers such as Mencap.

The government has publicly warned – following a high-profile tribunal ruling involving the charity – that many care workers should have been paid at least the minimum wage for the hours when they were sleeping on an overnight shift.

Many of them should now be able to claim for up to six years back-pay.

But the revelation that individual disabled people who use PAs are also being pursued by HMRC for years of back-pay is now beginning to cause alarm in the independent living movement.

In April, the employment appeal tribunal ruled against Mencap and said the charity should have been paying care workers at least the minimum wage for “sleep-ins”.

Mencap is now appealing against the ruling.

 

Source: PA employers are facing probes into ‘sleep-in’ minimum wage back-pay – Black Triangle Campaign

Social care is on the brink. This new nightmare might push it over the edge | David Brindle | Society | The Guardian

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Alys Phillips admits she found it daunting when she did her first solo sleep-in shift as a care support worker two years ago. But now she says she would willingly cancel social arrangements to do more of the 24-hour stints, from 3pm one day to 3pm the next.

Phillips says her work with people with learning disabilities in rural Wales and the Welsh valleys is hugely satisfying. She helps with daytime domestic tasks in their homes, sees the residents to bed and helps them to get up again the next morning. She is allowed to sleep from 11pm to 7am – but is on hand if something happens during the night.

“Things do happen, but not regularly,” says Phillips, a 23-year-old graduate. “I clock off at 11 and go to sleep and I’m up at around six, ready for when the residents wake; then I assist with breakfast and help them get ready for the day. I’ve become acquainted with numerous service users and their daily routines.”

While Phillips insists she is not money-motivated, she does acknowledge that a recent, significant pay rise for the sleep-ins has proved very welcome. Previously she was paid a flat £30 for the eight hours of presumed sleeping time. Now she gets £57, almost double. She works for Cartrefi Cymru – a not-for-profit support provider – in its office, as well as in people’s homes. Cartrefi is one of a small minority of providers that have been able to raise their sleep-in rates in line with an official reinterpretation of minimum-pay rules that is said to be presenting a “£200m-ish” headache for the social care sector.

That considerable sum is the estimate made by the UK government care minister, David Mowat, who told MPs last week that the sector faced “quite a serious issue” for which no cost provision had been made. “There was a court case around sleepovers in which the law was clarified in a way that the government didn’t expect it to be clarified,” he said. “Now, potentially, charities – and indeed individuals who have got personal budgets – could be held liable for minimum-wage violations going back six years. And the cost is enormous.” (This is the same minister who suggested tackling the care crisis by requiring people to be as responsible for their parents as they were for their children.)

Source: Social care is on the brink. This new nightmare might push it over the edge | David Brindle | Society | The Guardian