Underpaying care workers has been a systemic problem in many developed countries for several years, but the weaknesses of this have been laid bare by a combination of the Pandemic and Brexit - which has left the care sector in the UK (and elsewhere) struggling to recruit sufficient workers to fill all necessary caring roles.
NB The problem of low pay and high numbers wanting to leave the profession was already around before the Pandemic, the Pandemic has just brought the issue into focus, with most care workers working at minimum wage or just above, and many not earning enough money to buy their own houses, which must be a rub when some of them are working in jobs caring for older people who do.
The reason for the low pay seems to be pretty simple - it's years of Conservative Austerity Policy, keeping taxes and public expenditure relatively low, and especially squeezing funding to local councils, who are responsible for a lot of social care contracts.
At the same time there has been lack of planning for how to deal with an ageing population and an increasing dependency ratio - more old people for fewer younger people who have to pay for the elderly care, mostly through taxes - and that is now catching up with us.
The government's current solution for the crisis is to relax immigration rules for migrants to try and attract more care workers from abroad, but honestly with Britain's declining place in the world following Brexit, this isn't going to be an attractive place to work for much longer, if indeed it still is.
There's also the fact that it's difficult for care workers to unionise and strike when striking has such an immediate effect on the people you are caring for - it kind of doesn't go with the territory which kind of helps companies and local authorities keep wages relatively low.
Then of course there's the fact that all of this caring is largely invisible, it's in the domestic sphere, it's not exiting, there's no dynamism in it, it's the kind of thing we'd rather all just pretend doesn't exist.
And while many of us will have relatives who go through the caring system at some point - there's never quite enough of us moving through it in one go to reach a tipping point that demands change.
And maybe we all know what it will take to make positive change - an extra £10 billion a year apparently, and we kind of all know where that's going to come from - it's more tax every year or more years of paying tax to fund for our own old age care, or probably both.
So in short, it's probably precisely that kind of career- sector where we know pay and conditions are not good, but it's just easier to ignore it!
It will all probably be fine anyway!
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