Naomi

I've always been drawn to caring for others. When my nan developed dementia in 2018, I left my job at ASDA to look after her properly. Watching her struggle, seeing how much difference the right care could make, I knew this was what I wanted to do with my life. After she passed, I completed my Care Certificate and got a job at Meadowbrook Care Home in Hyde. I loved that work - the residents, the variety, knowing I was making someone's day a bit brighter. Then the pandemic hit and Meadowbrook closed permanently. I've been trying to get back into care work ever since.

In early 2023, I contacted Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council's adult social care department asking about care worker positions. The woman I spoke to was sympathetic enough. She said there was "significant demand" for care workers but that providers were struggling with "budget constraints from central government funding." She gave me a list of care homes to try directly, saying they'd know their staffing needs better than the council.

I applied to four care homes in Stalybridge and Hyde. The manager at Ashton Lodge Care Home interviewed me the same week. She looked at my CV and said straight away, "We'd love to hire you, Naomi. You've got exactly the experience we need." Then came the but. "But we can't offer more than £9.50 an hour because the council rates don't cover our costs." £9.50 an hour, with my son to support and rent to pay. I'd have been worse off than on benefits once I factored in travel and work clothes.

Hillside Residential Home gave me the same story. The owner, a woman who'd been running care homes for twenty years, sat me down and explained it like she was apologising for something beyond her control. "We're capped by what the council will pay us per resident," she said. "The local authority rate hasn't kept up with inflation, let alone staff wages. I wish I could pay you what you're worth, but the sums just don't add up." She showed me a spreadsheet with columns of red numbers. It looked very official, very final.

I accepted this explanation. Everyone seemed to accept it. Care homes were struggling, councils had no money, the government was being responsible with public finances. It sounded reasonable when every manager said the same thing.

Determined to improve my prospects, I enrolled in a Level 2 Diploma in Care at Tameside College. The course coordinator, a lovely woman called Helen, welcomed me but seemed almost embarrassed during the enrolment meeting. She explained that half the course places were unfilled. "There's no point training people for jobs that don't pay enough to live on," she said. "We get the funding for twenty-four students but we're running with twelve because people can't afford to train for poverty wages."

Walking past the college's health and social care building one afternoon, I noticed entire computer labs and simulation rooms sitting empty. The lights were off, chairs pushed under desks, expensive equipment unused. I asked a maintenance worker about it. "The council cut funding for evening classes," he told me. "These rooms are empty three nights a week now. Shame, really - we could train twice as many people if we used them properly."

That's when I started noticing the contradictions. My friend Sarah, who worked at Meadowbrook with me before it closed, was still unemployed and desperate to get back into care. My neighbour Mark had lost his job at the car parts factory and asked me about care work - he'd looked after his disabled brother for years and had all the right instincts. Down my street alone, I could count six people who'd expressed genuine interest in care work. All unemployed, all willing to train, all blocked by the same excuse: there was no money.

But the people existed. I could see them every day. The training facilities existed - I'd walked through them, seen the empty classrooms and unused equipment. The need certainly existed - every care home I'd contacted was desperate for staff, turning away potential residents because they couldn't safely staff more beds. So what exactly was it that "there was no money" for?

I started to think about it differently. Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council sets the rates it pays care homes. The Department of Health and Social Care sets the grants it gives councils. HM Treasury controls government spending. At each level, someone with the power to spend more chose not to. The government that issues the pound told me it couldn't find enough pounds to pay care workers a living wage. But governments don't find money like households rummaging down the back of the sofa. They create money when they spend it.

The real question was never whether the money existed. It was whether the people existed - they did. Whether the skills could be taught - they could, in the empty classrooms I'd seen. Whether the materials were available - they were, gathering dust three nights a week. Whether elderly people needed care - anyone who'd spent five minutes in a care home knew they did.

The excuse wasn't a fact. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. The same government that found money to bail out banks and cut taxes for corporations claimed it was powerless to fund care work properly. The limit was never the money. The limit was the political willingness to spend it into places like Stalybridge and Hyde, into people like me and Sarah and Mark.

I'm still here, still watching, still trying to get back into the work I love. But I understand now what I didn't understand at the start. When someone tells me "there is no money," I hear it differently. I hear a political choice dressed up as an accounting problem. I see the empty training rooms, the unemployed carers, the care homes turning people away, all existing side by side while someone in Westminster claims the cupboard is bare.

This isn't just my story. It's the story of every constituency where people and needs exist in abundance while the government that prints the money says it cannot afford to connect them. The resources were always there. Someone just chose not to use them.