New app helps self-employed carers: PocketCarer

Caring is one of the most rewarding and yet undervalued professions in the UK.

It is a high-pressure role with notoriously low pay and claims of incredibly poor working conditions, which can add up to a situation where sadly carers, patients and standards all suffer.

The Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit have both put extra pressure on the sector, with more demanding restrictions imposed during the former and the latter meaning tighter regulations for overseas workers, leading to a fall in numbers within the carer workforce.

According to Skills for Care, in 2021, vacancies in the care sector reached 165,000, representing a 52 per cent rise on the previous year and salary figures show an average hourly rate of just £9.50, much lower than jobs elsewhere. But it seems increasing numbers of carers are now starting to take action to improve the situation.

People with years of experience and a real passion for providing the best quality care are no longer leaving the profession … they are switching to self-employed status.

This was a situation that Emma Harding found herself in.

As a carer with 20 years’ experience, she wanted to stay in the sector, but needed to find a way to do it on her own terms.

“I was working 13-hour shifts and we were chronically understaffed,” she says.

“So I looked at live-in care; I was spending all my time at work anyway so I thought I would give it a try.

“It meant becoming self-employed but it also meant I was working on my own terms; I could pick and choose clients and they could pick and choose me and I could decide on terms and rates. It was a real eye-opener and I have never looked back.”

But making the move to self-employed status isn’t for everyone and often the mountain of paperwork and business-related admin can put people off.

This became an issue for Emma in the early days, with admin proving a big drain on time and energy.

She found herself using various apps and websites for invoicing and finances, managing time and contracts, risk assessments, record keeping and much more, and it was a time-consuming and exhausting process.

During the first lockdown, however, she found herself trying to think of ways to make her own life easier and the germ of an idea for her now burgeoning business PocketCarer was born.

Now she is on a mission to provide all the support, advice and training needed to help other carers who may be thinking about becoming self-employed, or are self-employed already but feeling a little isolated and lost.

“Life as a carer can be highly rewarding, but it can also be tough mentally, physically and emotionally. Anything that can ease a little bit of the pressure is welcome,” says Emma.

“I was a self-employed carer for five years and I struggled to get the tech that was needed.

“I decided there had to be an easier way and while there were plenty of care management apps for businesses, I struggled to find one for self-employed carers.

“I started to write down lists, I outsourced a software company to create the tech, and a very steep learning curve began. It’s been a hard, but hugely rewarding process.”

Emma says there are around 480,000 selfemployed carers in the UK and around 50,000 carers a year are moving over to self-employed status, so it is a growing area.

Emma says many think that shift is because of money, but in fact, pay comes quite far down the list of reasons.

“A lot of it is being run ragged and being burnt out by working for an agency,” she says.

“These people have often been carers for a long time and they don’t want to leave the industry. They want to care for people, but they can’t do it under these conditions, so they are looking for a different way.”

As well as the app, there is also a PocketCarer Facebook group and Emma offers training sessions and a wealth of blogs and articles on her website to help carers who are considering moving over to being self-employed or are self-employed already.

And the business is growing.

Emma, based in County Durham, is now no longer working as a carer. Instead, she is devoting her time to her growing business, taking on new members staff and developing the app further.

She says feedback so far has been positive and constructive and a new version of the app will have updates and extra features in response to that.

If you would like to find out about how PocketCarer can help you, visit the PocketCarer website here.

Source

Skills for Care, “The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England”