Colette

I never planned to work in care, but life has a way of choosing for you. When I was sixteen, my grandmother developed dementia, and I left school to look after her. Those years taught me something you cannot learn from a textbook: how much difference one good carer can make to a family when everything feels like it is falling apart. My grandmother used to forget my name, but she would always smile when I made her tea exactly the way she liked it, two sugars and a splash of milk first. That smile reminded me who she was underneath the confusion.

After she passed, I trained as a care assistant. It felt like the right path, using what I had learned to help other families through the same struggles. I worked in care homes around Reading for fifteen years, building relationships with residents and their families, learning how to manage challenging behaviour, how to spot the early signs when someone was declining. I loved the work, even when it was difficult. There is something deeply satisfying about making someone comfortable when they are vulnerable, about being the person who knows exactly how Mrs Patterson likes her morning routine or what will calm Mr Henderson when he gets agitated.

Then in 2019, redundancy hit. The care home where I worked closed a wing due to what they called "funding pressures." Twenty of us lost our jobs. I assumed I would find something else quickly. I had experience, good references, and I knew the demand was there. Care homes were always advertising for staff.

But when I started looking, the same pattern emerged everywhere. I would call about a vacancy and they would say yes, they desperately needed people, but the wage they could offer was minimum wage with no guarantee of full-time hours. With a teenage son and rent to pay in Calcot, the numbers simply did not work. After paying for travel and occasional childcare when shifts ran late, I would be worse off than on benefits.

I decided to retrain, to update my qualifications and perhaps specialise. In early 2020, I applied to West Berkshire Council for retraining funding. The response was polite but final: the adult education budget had been cut by central government and there were no places available for care courses. They suggested I try the JobCentre Plus office in Reading.

The JobCentre referred me to a private training provider who ran care courses. I was hopeful when I called them. The woman on the phone was sympathetic but clear: "There is no funding to make the care courses viable anymore. We had to stop running them last year." She explained that without government subsidy, too few people could afford the fees, and without enough students, they could not run the classes.

I tried a different approach. I contacted Reading Borough Council's social services department directly, explaining that I had fifteen years of experience and just needed to update my qualifications. The social worker I spoke to was almost apologetic. "We desperately need care workers," she said. "The waiting lists are getting longer every week. But the fee structure from HM Treasury means care homes cannot afford to pay wages that would attract staff. The rates we can pay providers have been frozen for years."

I started applying to care homes anyway, thinking perhaps I could negotiate or find one with better funding. I applied to three places in Theale and Pangbourne. Each conversation followed the same script. The managers would get excited when they saw my experience. Yes, they needed staff desperately. Yes, I seemed perfect for the role. Then would come the pause, the awkward explanation about wages.

The manager at one care home in Theale was particularly honest. She showed me their staffing rota on her computer screen. Twelve vacant shifts that week alone, residents not getting the attention they deserved because there simply were not enough hands. "I would love to hire you," she said. "But the local authority rates are so low I cannot offer more than minimum wage. I know that does not cover childcare and travel costs for someone in your situation. It is not fair, but it is what we are working with."

I kept walking past the old Adult Learning Centre on Oxford Road where I had first trained as a care assistant twenty years earlier. Now it was locked up, with a sign saying "Service relocated due to funding constraints." Through the window, I could see twenty empty desks with computers still sitting there, unused training materials stacked on shelves. The building was fine. The equipment was there. But apparently there was no money to run the courses that would train people like me.

That was when I started to question what I was being told. If there was no money for training, why were the computers sitting unused? If there was no money for wages, why were there twelve empty shifts at one care home alone? I started to see the contradiction everywhere. People like me who wanted to work in care but could not afford to. Care homes with vacant positions they could not fill. Training centres with equipment gathering dust.

I used to accept the excuse that "there was no money." I hear it differently now. The government that prints the notes and mints the coins told me it could not find enough of them to train the people who were standing right there, ready to work, or to pay wages that would let those people take the jobs that were crying out to be filled. The real question was never about money. It was about whether the people existed, whether the skills could be taught, whether the need was there. They were. All of them.

The excuse was not a fact. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. HM Treasury sets the rates that local authorities can pay care providers. Those rates determine what care homes can offer staff. The same Treasury that issues the currency decided those wages should be too low to attract workers, even while families waited months for care and experienced workers like me stood ready to provide it.

The limit was never the money. The limit was the willingness to spend it into the places and the people who needed it. I understand now that this is not just my story. It is the story of every constituency where people and skills exist side by side with desperate need, while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare. But the cupboard belongs to the people who stock it.