Rosanna

Rosanna did not exist before this episode. What they are about to describe is happening across Yorkshire and The Humber as you listen. This is their story. In Leeds Central and Headingley, experienced carers sit unemployed while care homes struggle with chronic staff shortages, not because the people lack skill or dedication, but because the funding structures treat essential care work as an unaffordable luxury rather than the foundation of a functioning society. I always knew I wanted to work in care. When I was 16, I left school to look after my nan who had dementia. Those three years taught me what good care meant to a family. I watched the professional carers who came to help us, saw how they could make nan smile even on her worst days, how they knew exactly when to be gentle and when to be firm. I wanted to be that person for other families. I wanted to make that difference. Life got in the way, as it does. I had my two kids young, raised them on my own while doing cleaning jobs around Headingley. But I never stopped planning. Once they were older, I told myself, once they didn't need me at home every day, I'd get my qualifications. I'd finally do the work I was meant to do. When my youngest left for university last year, I thought my time had come. I started with Leeds City Council. They used to run a care worker training programme that took people like me, people with life experience but no formal qualifications, and gave us the NVQ Level 2 we needed to work in care homes. I filled out the application forms, wrote about my experience with nan, explained why I wanted this career. Two weeks later, they wrote back. The programme had been cancelled. Funding had been cut. There were no places available this year, and they couldn't say when there might be again. I thought maybe I could go directly to the care homes. Anchor Hanover Group runs several homes in Leeds Central. I walked into their office on Kirkstall Road and asked about training opportunities. The manager was sympathetic but blunt. "We desperately need staff," she said. "But we can't afford to train new people. The council pays us £18 an hour per resident, but it costs us £22 an hour to provide proper care. We're barely keeping the doors open as it is. We can't take on training costs when we're already losing money on every resident." Next, I tried the private agencies. Bluebird Care Leeds had a big recruitment banner in their window. Inside, the coordinator explained their situation. "We're crying out for carers," she told me. "But here's the problem. We can only charge what the families can afford, or what social services will pay. That means we can offer £10.50 an hour to start. People do the training, work for us for three months, then leave for warehouse jobs that pay £12 an hour and don't require dealing with difficult situations or shift work. We can't justify spending £1,200 training someone who'll be gone by Christmas." At the job centre on Eastgate, my advisor pulled up their system. "Look," he said, showing me his screen. "47 care vacancies across Leeds right now. But every single one requires NVQ Level 2 or equivalent experience. We've got no funding for qualifications. I can put you forward for the jobs, but you won't get past the first stage without the certificates." Walking home through Quarry Hill, I noticed something strange. The old community centre still had signs in the windows advertising care training courses. The building looked empty, but I could see through the ground floor windows. There were classrooms set up for training, complete with hospital beds for practicing transfers, wheelchairs, even bathroom equipment for learning personal care techniques. Some of the gear was still in plastic wrapping, like it had been delivered and never used. The building was just sitting there, fully equipped for exactly the training I needed. That's when I started thinking about my neighbour Marcus. He's been out of work since his construction job ended eight months ago. He's patient, reliable, good with his hands from years of building work. His own father is in a care home now, and Marcus visits twice a week. He'd be brilliant at care work, but he's stuck in the same gap I'm stuck in. The jobs exist, we're both ready to work, but someone somewhere decided there was "no money" for the training that would connect us to the work. I used to accept that explanation. "There is no funding." It sounded reasonable, like something that couldn't be helped. Everyone accepts it. The council accepts it, the care homes accept it, the job centre accepts it. But then I started looking at what was actually there. The people exist. Marcus and I exist. The families who need care exist. The care homes with vacancies exist. The training equipment exists, sitting unused in that locked building. The only thing that doesn't exist is the political decision to connect them. The government that prints the pound notes told me it couldn't find enough of them to train the people who were standing right there, ready to work. But I can see the contradiction with my own eyes. It's not that the resources don't exist. It's that someone chose not to deploy them. They chose to let training equipment gather dust rather than use it. They chose to let people like Marcus sit unemployed rather than train them. They chose to let care homes struggle with shortages rather than fund the training that would fill those gaps. I understand now what I didn't understand when I first filled out that council application form. The excuse was never about money. It was about priorities. The government that issues the currency chose not to spend it into the places and the people who needed it. They dressed a political choice in the language of accounting, made a decision about what mattered sound like a law of physics. I'm still here, still ready to do the work. So is Marcus. So are the families who need us. The real question was never whether we existed or whether the need existed. The real question was whether the people making the spending decisions believed we were worth the investment. Every time they said "there is no funding," they were really saying "you are not the priority." That's the truth they wrapped in talk of empty coffers and budget constraints. It's the same story in every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare. What Rosanna experienced has a name: Logical Fallacy. A false analogy compares two things that are fundamentally different, treating them as equivalent when they are not. You might compare a goldfish bowl to the ocean because both contain water, ignoring that one is a closed system with fixed boundaries while the other connects to rivers, rain, and underground springs. The household budget myth operates exactly like this false analogy. Every time someone told Rosanna "there is no money," they were applying the logic of a household budget to a currency issuer. A household must find money before it spends it. It earns wages, receives benefits, or borrows from someone who already has money. The household budget is constrained by income because households do not create money. But the UK government issues its own currency. When HM Treasury spends, it instructs the Bank of England to credit accounts electronically. The government does not need to find pounds before it spends them into existence. The false analogy appeared every time a department cited "budget constraints" or "affordability" as though the government faced the same limits as Rosanna's household. Leeds City Council cancelled training programmes because central government grants were insufficient. Care homes couldn't afford training costs because council fees were set too low. Private agencies couldn't justify investment because rates were capped by what "the system could afford." Each decision treated government spending as a finite pool that might run dry, rather than as the mechanism by which unused resources are activated. The UK government issues its own currency. It does not need to find pounds before it spends them. The real constraint is resources: people, skills, materials, time. And in Leeds Central and Headingley, those resources were sitting idle. The training equipment existed in that locked community centre. Marcus and Rosanna existed, ready to learn. The care homes had vacancies. The families needed support. The resources existed. The people existed. The decision not to connect them was political, not financial. Leeds Central and Headingley ranks 200 out of 543 English constituencies for deprivation (English Indices of Deprivation 2025, MHCLG). The constituency has 1631 registered charities (Charity Commission Register). These organisations received £35.5 million in total grants (360Giving GrantNav). All sources are published at Blocked Britain dot Co dot UK. Blocked Britain tells the stories of people whose lives are shaped by the gap between what Britain needs and what its institutions choose to provide. Every character is fictional. Every situation is drawn from official statistics. Produced by Blocked Britain.