Extra pay for Westminster carers is huge boost, says disability campaigner

By Adrian Zorzut, Local Democracy Reporter

A disability campaigner has praised a funding uplift for carers his council is set to introduce.

Colin Hughes, 59, said the extra £1.4m Westminster City council is pouring into personal care assistants’ pay will help make the role competitive again.

Mr Hughes, who writes about disability issues and relies on a personal assistant himself due to Muscular Dystrophy, said the increase – which is expected to be between £1.50 and £2 an hour – could lure people away from employers like Amazon and McDonald’s, which traditionally offer a higher wage.

He said Brexit and an underappreciation of carers in society has made finding and retaining an assistant more difficult.

He said: “Every disabled person will tell you it’s very hard to recruit social care workers for two reasons. One is Brexit, which has seen a lot of people leave the city in the last few years and the second reason is because British people aren’t that interested in a career in social care.

“But this payment will make it easier to attract people to work with me”.

Under the plans, direct payment recipients will receive a flat rate of £20 an hour, much of which the council said will be paid directly to assistants in the form of earnings.

Recipients of direct payments are provided a lump sum from the council for their care, which is based on their level of need. This form of funding is said to give disabled residents greater say over how their care is administered by allowing them to hire their own assistants.

Direct payment recipients are classed as employers and therefore must also cover other fixed expenses like National Insurance and pension contributions.

When those are taken into account, a disabled person needing 21 hours a week of care will be able to pay their assistant £15.80 an hour – an almost £2 jump from their current London Living Wage of £13.85.

Those receiving 16 hours a week of care will be able to pay their assistant £15.72 an hour. This is expected to impact 400 assistants in the borough.

Nafsika Butler-Thalassis, the cabinet member for adult social care and public health, said she thinks increasing workers’ pay will lead to better quality care and stability.

She said: “You can hire somebody who does a good job and won’t leave because you’re paying them a competitive salary. We have found the same thing with the pay increase we did last year so we think it will work the same way for people using direct payments.

“Also, if people are getting better quality of care, that has a preventive element and you hope they will therefore stay well for longer and that would be a benefit to the council, because they wouldn’t deteriorate and need more hours of care.”

Last year, Westminster City Council increased the pay of agency care staff by £1.50 an hour.

For Colin, who has lived in a wheelchair since his teens, getting the right care can be the difference between life and death.

The former BBC producer, who has lived in Westminster since the 1990s, said: “If you are being hoisted into bed by an incompetent carer, or someone who doesn’t have the confidence, then it’s very dangerous. Your life is in their hands every single day.”

The council is also promising an extra £1.2m to level up the threshold at which people start paying for their social care costs. Some 460 residents aged under 65 with disabilities will be able to keep at least £272.69 a week after they have paid their care bills.

Councillors will vote to adopt the measures in a new budget during a full council meeting on March 5.

Pictured top: Colin Hughes, who has welcomed the moves (Picture: Colin Hughes)