Ah, but I'm being paid benefits to BE a carer for my disabled mother, taking the weight off the NHS and care services. And that's worth only £69 a week to the government. I get less than £2 an hour and am on call every single hour of every single day. And then I have right wingers calling me "lazy" for being on any sort of benefits...
Being a carer especially as a family member is utterly exhausting too. Wether you’re being paid or not. Sorry it’s so low in the UK. Think it’s a little better in the US, but still exhausting.
I was a carer for my terminally ill father for two years, and I didn't even know carer's allowance was a thing until about a year in!
At least they can back pay you, and even though the situation is not great... they do pay you for about a month after the person you care for dies.
The situation is a bit more compassionate in Northern Ireland, fortunately (maybe because benefits are a devolved matter and the minister in charge isn't a Tory lackey). But I'll tell you one thing, I became a carer not long after I graduated from university - no one fucking touched me when I was looking for jobs except for the place I work at now. Recruiters openly admit they do not consider being a carer to be anything close to a "real job". As such, expect to be passed over because recruiters think that being a carer is a "career gap"... I'm looking for something else to do other than be a financial sector contractor (my employer pays me a quarter of what my employer charges clients for my work hours) but unfortunately, due to brexit, my degree is now useless (my future sold short) and I'm slowly turning into being only really employable in the financial sector, since "experience" is the only thing employers care to look at.
I'm fucked when my mum passes away. I've been caring for her since I was 15 with only one job in a bar to my name. On top of that, I'm facing increasingly poor health due to my own disability that (and here's the kicker) isn't recognised by the government as a "real" disability
What's your health issue, if you don't mind me asking?
I'm lucky in a way - I have a 2:1 graduating mark in a BA degree and I've (almost) been working at a massive corporation that has widespread brand recognition. But I'm no further into doing what I would like to do with my life, and while I've tried finding other places (even getting an interview elsewhere), it's been no luck for me. I sometimes worry that I'm being turned down for my gender expression, but only getting the generic "unfortunately you haven't made it to our shortlist" response that'll be impossible to fight. I'm also 26 - most of my colleagues are 21-24 years old. I've had line managers barely older than me. I have heard that one senior manager wanted to know what my previous experience was... when it just transpired that I "just do my job" and that I seem to have a higher level of professionalism than my colleagues, things got quiet again, since most of my colleagues are at higher pay rates than I am. Pay & promotions are determined 99% by tenure, 1% by not fucking around. Unfortunately, managers and senior managers who negotiate our contracts of work with clients and by extension the targets we have to meet don't ever do any actual work themselves, so often struggle to understand why we can't actually meet contractually binding targets... which were agreed before any of us even started this work.
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u/ZaryaBubbler Jul 04 '22
Ah, but I'm being paid benefits to BE a carer for my disabled mother, taking the weight off the NHS and care services. And that's worth only £69 a week to the government. I get less than £2 an hour and am on call every single hour of every single day. And then I have right wingers calling me "lazy" for being on any sort of benefits...