Inside the outsource, part 1

I worked in social care for a number of years. Prior to that I was unemployed for a time and prior to that I’d left a job in IT in schools because it was already somewhat dispiriting and was about to get worse. I was Microsoft and Cisco trained because, at some time in my youth, I was a bit less crap at computers than my classmates and drifted in that direction. Years later I was miserable and due to be TUPE transferred to a private company. It was a terrible idea to outsource school resources and facilities to profit making businesses. Everyone knew it, but it happened anyway as it was all wrapped up with New Labour's building of new schools. It was the pre-academisation march of drawing the public sector, and particularly its funds, away from public accountability and into private hands.

I was told by my manager that our jobs would remain the same. He stood to benefit from the transfer but I would be down-skilled much as the school would be under-resourced as part of a series of service level agreements that meant every flickering lightbulb and squiffy mouse would be subject to a request sent to someone in a data centre 40 miles away who would then ask the technician or caretaker 30 yards away to fix them. I met with a senior manager from my prospective employer and put it to him that my job would have all the skill scooped out of it. He said I was right. They knew what they were doing.

I might have sought advice on this broad and reductive change to my responsibilities and duties, but I wasn’t in a union then. I had once almost joined the union most of the support staff were members of, but thought better of it when I realised the steward was also the headteacher’s personal assistant. I recall the caretaking team being really unhappy about the situation, as they too were palmed off to a different but similar corporate facade and all that came with that. I don’t think they got much help from their union rep and they only found sympathy in me. I didn’t have any intention of sticking around to see the predictable mess unfold as multiple private interests kept only the very specific promises made in their meticulously written contracts.

My motivation levels and mental health were already suffering by that point. Our office was a windowless former home economics larder and my self-preserving manager was painfully David Brentesque, which was far from amusing to endure outside of a fictional context. I quit just before the public-private partnership dream came true. I had minimal savings and no specific plans, so though I was only laughing during the very the short walk to my very small piggy bank, I was mildly elated to have exited a rut and approached a desolate crossroads. I heard years later that the outsourcing didn't deliver on its heavily caveated promise and had to be reversed.

After a sustained period of unemployment, during which I discovered new things that I liked doing and remain important to me, but that I couldn’t monetise, I needed a job again. I was getting nowhere and eventually turned to the job centre. I didn’t want to work behind a computer again, I wanted to work with people, but I didn’t know where I could do that. It was not the job centre but a friend who happened to work for the council who eventually pointed me in a helpful direction. He referred me to a recruitment agency contracted to fill jobs funded by the local authority that no one wanted. Social care was an area where they couldn’t fill vacancies, even then.

This was in 2010, after the financial crash and around the time that austerity was looming. I was sent to interview with two small care providers, who both had vacancies for community support workers. The first interview was in a bog-standard business unit in the once industrial part of town. Very no-frills. They seemed friendly and said they provided a wide variety of support to people with a range of disabilities and conditions. They said they were going to give a job to everyone who applied and see how it worked out because they needed staff that badly, and it wasn’t a job that everyone necessarily wanted to continue doing after giving it a go. Being zero hours, there was no risk for them to hire everyone who applied, because they weren’t necessarily obliged to offer any work.

Management were middle aged women who had obviously done the job themselves before running the service. They seemed to genuinely want to get a sense of who I was, and that was the purpose of the interview. For everything else I would be trained up on.

My other interview was at an office in the centre of town which seemed weirdly well furnished. It looked more like the office of a solicitor than a care provider. There was a nice vintage leather sofa and wood panelled walls. Perhaps they had a good deal on rent, but it didn’t feel quite right. The interview was a bit more challenging; a couple of times I was asked what almost felt like trick questions. They were women again, only younger and more formally dressed and obviously trying to give off a purposefully professional vibe.

In the end I was offered a job by both providers. Both were zero hours, no guaranteed work or income, and it would involve travelling all over the city, which for me meant lots of time spent on public transport between visits; time for which I wouldn’t be paid. Both paid slightly above the minimum wage, with some uplift for evenings and weekends. I said yes to the ones with the less fancy office who seemed a little more experienced, friendly and sans-frills.

After a week or so of training provided by a small company dedicated to training care workers, I shadowed a couple of more experienced care workers for a week or so, and then gradually started work with a range of people (clients/service users/people we support — terms still vary and change). Often it was kids with autism, either as a respite carer so their families could have some time out, or in more of a ‘befriending’ capacity to help them access the community or improve their social skills. I worked with other children of different ages with conditions including cerebral palsy, Downs, and developmental issues arising from trauma and neglect in early childhood. I also worked with older people with learning disabilities, brain injuries, Parkinson’s or dementia; providing respite for their families or supporting them to be independent.

It could be emotionally demanding. Sometimes the more challenging aspect was navigating the expectations and demands of families. Building their confidence and trust in you whilst maintaining professional boundaries could require a fine balance. I tried to learn as I went along; I recall spending an evening of my own time on the phone to the child psychiatrist of a client, trying to absorb experimental techniques and strategies the family was trying to implement. Building on my own skills and seeing improvements in my clients was rewarding. Sometimes it could be stressful, but sometimes it wasn’t like work at all. It was a purposeful, stimulating and varied vocation.

This small outfit was a local franchise of a larger charity network. It was run with a lot of goodwill by people who really cared, had spent many years doing the work themselves, and knew what it was all about. They seemed to care about us too. We had staff Christmas meals and a sense that we were part of a team, even though we usually worked on our own.

I didn’t earn a lot, but I liked working for them so I worked evenings, weekends and bank holidays in order to try and top up my income with the slightly higher rates we were paid for unsocial hours. Now and then shifts were cancelled and, if given sufficient notice, I wouldn’t be paid. Overall, however, they paid better than some other care providers and received very good inspection reports from regulators and independent assessors.

After less than 2 years they were rewarded for all this by having their bid for renewing their contract with the council rejected. At the time many councils suffered significant cuts to their funding which were inflicted most harshly on Labour councils by the coalition government. This one had already suffered a loss of £140 per person, which would increase to £200 per person within the next couple of years. Motivated by these cuts the council seemed inclined to commission larger organisations which could scale costs and offer more services, so the smaller operators were forced into consortiums to place joint bids. The trustees, who had prior careers in the council as social workers, had worked hard behind the scenes to attempt to save the service. Their bid still wasn’t competitive enough, and they met with all of the staff in person to spell it out. They couldn’t compete without cutting pay and reducing standards and therefore the quality and consistency of the care they provided. A month or so later we went for one last staff meal together, arranged as a thank you to us, and we said our goodbyes.

The organisation that won the tender for most of our clients’ support packages was a large, profit making company which paid even nearer the minimum wage and offered no uplifts for unsocial hours. I recall them boasting that they would be gifting staff with mobile devices that issued shift information and tracked their whereabouts. They weren’t really scaling costs, they were just reducing them by treating care workers like units and paying them less to provide the care which generated their profits.

As it happened I wasn’t personally eligible to TUPE transfer as too few of my clients, being varied in their needs, were transferring over to a single provider. Instead I was encouraged by the council to apply for one of the new vacancies created by this process, vacancies they had previously paid a recruitment firm to get people like me to fill. Had I successfully done so, I would have been one of the slightly more experienced support workers doing the same job for less pay. I was not inclined to interview for my own mugging.

I was soon after contacted by families and social workers asking if I wanted to work on a direct payment basis for one or two of my clients, but I couldn’t see how I could ever earn nearly enough money to live on by doing that, so had to decline. Many individuals and families lost support workers they knew and trusted who were swapped out for newer and lower paid replacements. Outsourcing had struck again. This misapplication of the market remains costly in both financial and human terms.

As much as I would have liked to have stuck around for the people I supported, I hoped to one day make a living. I needed to find something consistent which entailed less unpaid travel time. If it was to be minimum wage adjacent, I hoped I could at least be guaranteed those hours of low paid work and fill my days with them.