Press Release

Carers should be paid £30,000

October 15 2018

Dumfries and Galloway Pensioners for Independence has called for carers to be paid a minimum £30,000 a year to avoid a care crisis.

The Westminster government’s chaotic handling of the Brexit debacle will see threshold earnings of £30,000 for workers from outside the UK.

The care industry in the UK is heavily dependent on European workers to provide necessary care for elderly and disadvantaged people. This group is heavily dependent on care workers for the daily necessities of life as well as the ability to remain in their own homes.

The care provided by these dedicated and hard working professionals merits these payments. We ask people - who do you value higher: the care worker who is your mother’s only daily contact with the outside world, who washes her and takes care of her toilet, who feeds her and gives her a reason to live; or a politician?

A rank and file MP gets £77,379 (on top of their expenses). An experienced Care Worker might earn an average of £16,000.

The withdrawal of care workers will mean the elderly and vulnerable being shunted into care homes and the inevitable clogging up of the NHS – affecting everyone.

The only way to avoid this catastrophe, by Westminster’s own standards, is to pay Care Workers a minimum £30,000.

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