Light at the end of the tunnel  

Portraits by Marcus Rose

Sam Thornton and Jill Cartwright are dedicated public service workers. Sam has been a support worker, caring for people with profound learning disabilities, for 34 years; Jill has been a teaching assistant for 28. They can’t imagine doing anything else.   

 But these are also demanding roles, with little in the way of recognition or remuneration. No one is in it for the money. And, like thousands of other UNISON members who work as adult social care workers or school support staff, Sam and Jill pay a personal price for their commitment.   

 Finally, though, help is on the way. This spring the Employment Rights Bill (ERB) is making its way through Parliament, towards enactment and what UNISON believes is one of the most significant improvements to workers’ rights in decades.  

Two of the bill’s major initiatives, both lobbied hard for by the union, will directly benefit Sam and Jill’s sectors, creating new collective bargaining bodies for care workers and school support staff.  

 The School Support Staff Negotiation Body (SSSNB) will negotiate pay, terms and conditions, as well as training and development, for all school support staff in England, including those in academies and academy trusts.   

 And the Adult Social Care Negotiating Body will be responsible for negotiating a new, legally enforceable fair pay agreement (FPA), covering pay, terms and conditions for the adult social care sector in England – lending proper recognition to another group of workers too long ignored.   

 Sam and Jill spoke to U magazine about their jobs, and how they feel the bill represents a long overdue light at the end of the tunnel.   

 Sam Thornton  

 Sam’s introduction to what would become a lifetime career came when she was just was 16 years old, taking a Youth Training Scheme course that involved working at a centre for people with learning disabilities. “For the first three, four weeks I was terrified,” she recalls now. “And then, all of a sudden, I thought ‘I can do this’.”   

 For many years she was a nursing assistant for the NHS, working in residential care. Eventually the service became outsourced, its commissioning and funding passed from the NHS to local authorities. For the past eight years she’s been a support worker with Dimensions, a not-for-profit organisation that provides supported living for people with learning disabilities and autism across the country. Sam works at a small house, in Oxfordshire, where eight part-time staff support four individuals.    

 She jokes that the role involves “everything you can imagine, and everything you couldn’t,” from intimate personal care, cooking and housework, to peg feeding and medication, including emergency medication. “They trained us to do the nursey stuff,” she smiles. “Roll on 34 years and we’re doing it all now.”  

 What does she love about the job? “That I’m still passionate about the people I support. It’s definitely not the pay. It’s about still having that fire, that drive. I always say this: it’s a vocation. It’s not something that everybody can do. We’ve had new starters who have only lasted weeks, who go, ‘We don’t want that responsibility, for that little pay.’ And the responsibility is absolutely immense. These people’s lives are in our hands.”  

Sam relishes that challenge. “Somebody can be OK one minute, and then they can be really poorly the next. You have to be on the ball.” That can mean calling out a GP in good time for someone to receive treatment, which could be lifesaving.   

You live on your overdraft. I mean, everybody does

 But she wasn’t joking about the pay. “Support workers are highly skilled now, but, unfortunately, the pay hasn’t followed us. When we got TUPE’d over, I was on NHS band 4. My wages are certainly not on par with a band 4 now. It’s like I haven’t gone up any increments.”  

 Put another way: in 1990 she was paid around £6.50 an hour, which would be around £17 or £18 in today’s money. Now, she’s paid just over £12.   

“In December I’d done seven sleep-ins, 30 hours overtime, and I got my long service award. And I looked at my pay and went, ‘Oh my God, I might not actually go overdrawn this month’. You live on your overdraft. I mean, everybody does. But then I looked at my bank balance today, and I’d gone £30 over, because everything’s gone up.  

 “That’s what we’re all fighting for – better pay, for what we deserve. Nobody sees how little support workers and carers get, and we’re looking after the most vulnerable people in our society.”   

 Even though Dimensions “have got the people we support at the heart of the business,” she says, local authorities have not had the cash to increase funding so that staff can have better pay and terms. That is hopefully set to change with the new Westminster government’s fair pay agreement.   

Sam chairing a national social care committee for England meeting

 Sam has been representing her colleagues for some time, both as a member of Dimensions’ own staff forums, in which employees can air issues and ideas for best practice, and as one of the UNISON reps at the organisation.   

 And now, as the first chair of UNISON’s new national social care committee for England, she’s at the forefront of the union’s campaign to bring change to the whole sector.   

 Composed entirely of adult social care workers, the committee’s long-term aim is the creation of a national care service. The first plank of that ambition is the fair pay agreement, which is already on course as part of the Employment Rights Bill and will introduce consistent minimum standards for pay and training for all adult social care workers in England (potentially extending powers to cover Cymru/Wales and Scotland as well).    

 “We’re all striving for the same thing. And I think this will make a massive difference. People are not going to be working themselves to the bone, doing as much overtime, maybe two, three jobs, just to make ends meet. And that will also mean more quality time with their families. The number of Christmases I’ve missed, and barbecues and weddings and everything else, just because that’s my job.”  

 It will also benefit migrant care workers, she says, who face their own pressures, whether from unscrupulous agencies, or the need to send money home to their families while sustaining themselves in the UK.   

Together with the improved job security that other parts of the bill will bring in, the FPA could be a game-changer in helping the care sector attract and keep good staff.  

 For Sam, it could certainly begin to heal another injury felt by her colleagues across the sector – a lack of understanding and respect.  

 “Recognition starts with the pay,” she says. “The fundamental thing is to get the pay that we deserve. If we can get that in place, the rest will follow. I feel we’ve got a voice now. I am so chuffed to be a part of that.”  

 Jill Cartwright  

 When teaching assistant Jill Cartwright first started working at St James’ Junior School, in Derby, it was meant to be for just a few weeks. That was 28 years ago.    

“The job was to work one-to-one with a boy with ADHD. It was only going to be until they found somebody else, but he just took to me,” she says, smiling. “I was with him for four years, with one boy, till he left to go to senior school. A permanent post came along, and I’ve been there ever since.”  

Her career since then has been as a class TA, not just with children who have special needs, though that first experience has clearly informed her approach.   

“The positive thing is seeing the children thrive. I’ve got one girl who stresses if she fails anything, and I deliberately do daft things so that she knows that it doesn’t matter if you fail. I put my hand up and say the wrong thing – the teacher knows I’m doing this – so the girl will then put her hand up and say, ‘No, Miss Cartwright, it’s this.’”   

 Jill is a higher level teaching assistant (HLTA), teaching one day a week at the school, when she has another way of empowering the pupils. “At the moment, I’m doing computing with the children. They know more about computers than I will ever know. So, my thing is, ‘Right, who’s going to be the teacher now?’”  

She describes the support staff at St James’ as a family within the school. “Our cook knows each and every child and she knows which ones need extra food. And the cleaner knows which ones to high five, to make sure they’re alright. We’ve had people come into the school and say, ‘It feels so calm’. Everyone wants things to work well.”  

 But, like Sam, Jill’s enthusiasm for the job doesn’t obscure the issues affecting herself and her colleagues. From 2016 to 2017, UNISON support staff in Derby City’s schools were involved in a 10-month dispute with the council, culminating in all-out industrial action, after it imposed term-time contracts that reduced their hours and cost individuals around a quarter of their pay.   

 While the council settled the dispute, that didn’t resolve the underlying issues. “We’ve had a couple of pay rises since, but in effect I’m on about the same pay now as I was eight years ago. By the end of the month, I’m literally on the last couple of pounds in my bank account. A lot of the support staff are living month to month.”  

I think Labour do recognise what we do and the input we have on children’s lives

 Term-time contracts are Jill’s biggest concern, along with the consequent effect on pensions. “People assume you do this job ‘because you’ve got all these holidays’. It really annoys me, because I only get paid for five weeks of those holidays. I don’t get paid for eight weeks of the year, guys!”  

 St James’ is part of the Derby Diocesan Academy Trust (DDAT). Jill is the UNISON branch rep for her school and the schools lead for the nine DDAT schools within the city. When asked why she perseveres with the low pay and lack of career development, it’s a question she says many of her fellow members also think about.  

  “I go around other schools, and whoever I talk to it’s always the same answer: ‘The kids come first’. Always. Look, we’re not here for us. We’re here so that kids can get the best out of school. They are the priority.”  

Jill is informing her DDAT members about the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB), which she sees as a much-needed alternative to the NJC in determining their futures, boosting the status and pay for their sector. She’s hoping some will join the ranks of UNISON’s SSSNB Champions, further spreading the word.   

 The option for support staff to move to year-round contracts is one of UNISON’s priorities for the SSSNB that strikes a chord with her; others are a move towards a harmonised package of terms and conditions across the country, and opportunities for professional development.  

 She also values the fact that the SSSNB will finally give support staff a voice in the education conversation. “Compared to the Tories, I think Labour do recognise what we do and the input we have on children’s lives. Michael Gove wanted to get rid of TAs for years. He thought we were mums who painted pots.”