Hi. That’s my first post here. I’m Polish (so sorry for my English) and i never thought about myself as carer, I had a cat Wooooooooooow. I came to UK in december 2017 and since then Im working as carer because of my mom, she’s doing it from last 20 years in UK as well. If someone would read all that and try to understand my situation i would appreciate that.
It took me few months to understand, that you can’t just walk from the street and become carer. You need to have a specific personality to do it. I realized, that i love it because “My definition” of Help is more or less “unconditional” i’m just observing later if people that i helped appriciate that. Some people will help you but then they expecting kneeling before them. That’s why I’m doing this job because i like helping.i used to be shy. My clients build up my confidence by their opinion about me, now I’m Awesome haha. Obviously i can earn some money for that as well in the end, that’s Job not charity. Earnings is one of my problem at the moment and not because we are underpaid.
My problem is my health conditions. I’m Epileptic since i’m 7 I’m 32 now but that was fine I’m not counting my “episodes” weekly, more like monthly (I love the fact that since I’m carer i started be more interested about Epilepsy and all other medical stuff it’s really interesting). Anyway. Because of my epilepsy i agreed to do only double-up’s so i can have always someone with me just in case. I can feel it when it’s comming anyway so i can prepare myself. But doing only double’s as I think we all know, it’s hard.
I used to work in care home. I had my own double up round. My manager was just changing my partner for every shift, usually it was someone new and i loved to train them but I’m not going back there it was MAD sometimes, pretty much on every shift.
My problems starts in September last year. I’ve changed the company and this company doesn’t have any care homes that I could work. Most of the workers here are drivers and we working in community. My problem with this company is favoritasing and lack of common sence. We have here Carers and carers, I’m the secoun one. They have obviously many double-up calls, but these are not for me. These are somebody’s calls and they can’t take someone hours and just give it to me. But I’m stripped already from hours by doing only doubles, My life deppens on it. So my company preffer send 2 carers that can do singles instead of me with someone. Then I’m ending up with 3-4 calls and listening conversation between office and My partner “could you go there” “Please do that” “We have uncover this visit” and I’m sitting In a car like a Idiot most of the shift waiting for my partner. It’s not safe for me to do singles but sitting in a car for few hours alone it’s absolutely fine. I would love to have a seizure then like deadly one while im waiting.
Since September my seizures are increase to 1 event monthly almost like in a clock 29.03 than 2.05 We will see what’s gonna happen next month. In april I ended up in hospital for almost 2 weeks plus my hours at work after my employer charged me for acomodation (I live in a flat that my employer renting from someone, so i’m not paying directly to landlord) I ended up with 0,47 pounds in my pocket. Now in May happend same thing. I spend over a weeks in hospital i came back on tuesday 10.05 i emailed them on Thursday that I’m ready to work today is Wednesday 18.05 and I’m still sitting at home because "They don’t wan’t me to overwork myself. I used to do 13-15 calls from 5pm. till 22.pm and i was fine i just had enough after few years.
Anyway that’s really bad company with low quality that overpaying their employees, drivers. All i could say about them is. I wish for most of workers here, their families, their children, grandchildren. To have the same qality of care as they provide. I could say a lot more what’s wrong with this company
i’m not asking for money, I just don’t know what to do.
Many thanks for any help
Hubert Kończak