They're now attempting to keep the money for her CRB. Her contract states that after 13 weeks employment the company will reimburse this. She enquired, to be told that the terms have changed and it is now 6 months. Nothing to sign, no notification until she asks. Going to take her contract in on Monday and ask them to elaborate.

As for the work, it was £6.20 an hour, days from 6am-11pm with several inconveniant breaks, 15 minute calls and a low milage allowance. Her last call for example, was a 15 minute one which she was not allowed into until 22:45. The call she had before that, 10 minutes travel away was at 21:30-22:00. I think its not only ridiculous but unsafe to ask young girls to park up at that time of night.

In respect to her, she understood all these cons but enjoyed the work and genuinely liked the majority of the clients, hence her working it for a few months until it became too much.

In "the real world" there is a shortage of jobs, Sal.

And when there is a shortage of jobs, it is much easier for employers to screw their employees.

As was made clear only the other day by Lord Young telling businesses they can profit in a downturn by doing exactly that.

Mind, that's pretty cute to turn bad behaviour by an employer into, in effect, it being the employee's fault for taking a job. What next – rape is the fault of the victim?

Call me a pedant if you want, but the word is "whose".

I suspect it was a typo.

"Below the belt"?

As far as I'm concerned a tory wears his belt around his ankles, anything above that is a fair hit.

You was the one who had this simplistic vision of care workers, swanning around in their cars, taking their time with their patients and copping a healthy wedge plus exes.

As to "why would anyone work for such an employer?". If you bothered reading the thread, you'd see that she didn't think she was working for such an employer, she thought she was working for an employer that would keep their side of the deal. Unfortunately she found out they were less than honorable, as are many other employers in the care sector. When social care was in the public sector, the primary focus was on care, unfortunately, in private hands the focus shifts to one of profit.

I do hope that you have provided well for your later years because if you haven't, you will see the reality of "care" as meted out to those less fortunate.

This is very true. Its hard to be motivated with your job when your employer is terrible, which must ultimately, at least occasionaly lead to you not working as well, which at least in care can be very detrimental.

Anyone interested in staff development and empowerment could do worse than listen to a 15 minute lecture on the subject of. Unfortunately Stewart's speech impediment doesn't make for easy listening but the subject matter is interesting