Delroy

My grandmother Ruby lived with us in Small Heath for the last three years of her life. She had dementia, and I watched her slip away bit by bit until she didn't recognise my face anymore. What kept her comfortable wasn't the medication or the doctor visits - it was Pauline, the carer who came twice a week. Pauline had this way of talking to Gran like she was still fully there, still the woman who'd raised six children and run a corner shop for twenty years. She'd brush Gran's hair and tell her about her own grandchildren, and for those moments Gran would smile and nod like she understood every word. When Gran passed in 2019, I knew I wanted to do what Pauline did. I wanted to be the person who could reach someone when everyone else had given up trying.

I enrolled in the Health and Social Care Level 2 qualification at South Birmingham College that autumn. The course was brilliant - we learned about nutrition, medication management, safeguarding, how to move people safely. I genuinely loved it. The tutors kept saying there were jobs waiting for us, that the sector was crying out for trained staff. I graduated in March 2020 thinking I'd walk straight into meaningful work helping people who needed it most.

The first place I tried was Bupa. They had care homes across Birmingham and their website made it sound like they valued their staff. When I went for the interview, the manager was honest enough. "We'd love to have you, Delroy, you've got the right attitude and the qualification. But I have to tell you, we start at £9.50 an hour and we can't guarantee your hours week to week. Some weeks you might get thirty-five hours, some weeks fifteen." I asked why the wage was so low when the work was so skilled. She shrugged. "It's what the market pays. We're competing against agencies that pay even less."

I thought Four Seasons Health Care might be different - they're one of the big operators, surely they could afford proper wages. The area manager I spoke to seemed genuinely frustrated about it. "Look, I'd pay you £15 an hour if I could. You're worth it. But Birmingham City Council hasn't increased their fee rates in three years. They pay us £16.80 an hour for each resident, and out of that we have to cover your wages, the building costs, food, utilities, management overhead, everything. There's just nothing left." He offered me £10.20 an hour, which was better but still meant I'd be earning less than I made stacking shelves at Tesco.

I decided to try Birmingham City Council directly. If they were setting the fee rates, maybe they paid their own staff better. The woman at their adult social care recruitment team was apologetic but clear: "We've had a recruitment freeze since April. Central government has cut our funding and we literally cannot afford to hire anyone new, even though we're desperately short-staffed. The Treasury sets our spending envelope and adult social care isn't a priority."

That's when I started looking at agency work. Randstad Care had adverts everywhere promising flexible hours and competitive rates. When I called them, they explained they could place me at various care homes across Birmingham. "The homes pay us £18 an hour for your services, and we pay you £8.50 after our commission." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The council was paying £16.80, the agencies were charging £18, and I was being offered £8.50. Where was all that money going?

I remembered the tutor at South Birmingham College mentioning something called the Skills Bank West Midlands, which was supposed to fund additional training for people in growing sectors. When I contacted them about advanced care courses, I was told: "The budget has been cut. We cannot afford to run that programme anymore. The adult social care training stream was defunded in the last spending review."

As a last resort, I called the West Midlands Combined Authority. They'd been talking about an adult social care workforce strategy, investing in local people for local jobs. The response was blunt: "There is no funding for wage subsidies. The Treasury sets the spending envelope and we have to work within it."

For months, I accepted these explanations. Everyone kept saying the same thing - there's no money, the budget's been cut, we can't afford it. It sounded reasonable. Money doesn't grow on trees, after all.

But then I started noticing things that didn't add up. Walking down Coventry Road, I passed the old training centre where my mate's sister had done her care qualification five years ago. The building was boarded up now, but it was perfectly good - classrooms, equipment, everything just sitting empty. On my street alone, I counted twelve people who were either unemployed or working part-time retail jobs who'd told me they'd love to do care work if it paid properly. My neighbour Zafira had tried to get into healthcare and faced similar problems, but at least the NHS had some career progression and training budgets. In care, there was nothing.

I started asking different questions. If the people existed - and they did, they were standing right there on my street - and if the buildings existed, and the need definitely existed, what exactly was it that "there was no money" for? The government that prints every pound note and mints every coin was telling me it couldn't find enough of them to connect trained, willing workers with care homes that had empty beds and waiting lists.

That's when I understood. The constraint was never really financial. Her Majesty's Treasury issues the currency. When they say "there's no money," what they mean is "we've chosen not to create the money for this purpose." They found £895 billion for quantitative easing after the financial crisis. They found whatever was needed for Covid support. But for care workers in Birmingham? For decent wages that might attract people to this essential work? Suddenly the cupboard was bare.

The government that creates pounds chose not to spend pounds into care wages. That's a political decision dressed up as an accounting problem. They could have funded councils properly. They could have set minimum wages for care workers. They could have reopened that training centre and filled it with the unemployed people from my street who wanted this work. All the real resources were there - the people, the skills, the buildings, the genuine human need. The only thing missing was the political will to deploy them.

I'm still here, still watching, still ready to do this work properly when someone in Westminster decides that caring for vulnerable people matters enough to fund it adequately. I understand now that my story isn't unique to me. It's the story of every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone in a government office says the money isn't there.