Remote workers for Care workers campaign

After read­ing that care work­ers are fac­ing hunger and hard­ship as they go into self-iso­la­tion, we at ODA want­ed to do some­thing to help.

We’ve worked with HC-One and seen how amaz­ing care work­ers are and how they’re so often over­looked. We had the idea, approached The Care Work­ers Char­i­ty, then out a call for help to exe­cute, and Dutch Uncle and Joel Hol­land, a typog­ra­ph­er in lock­down in NYC, answered the call. Togeth­er we are now call­ing on friends, the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty, and the wider busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to help sup­port care work­ers through the crisis.

“Care work­ers are on the front­line look­ing after our most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, tak­ing risks, but if they catch COVID19 there’s no one to catch them. A lot of care work­ers are not even enti­tled to statu­to­ry sick pay and some must shield for 12 weeks with­out pay because of pre-exist­ing health con­di­tions. Even if they get SSP they can’t always keep their fam­i­lies going on the amount they receive. We’d heard a few friends in the cre­ative indus­tries say­ing how they’re actu­al­ly sav­ing mon­ey by work­ing at home and thought, ​‘what if that sav­ing could be put to work for oth­ers?’”, says ODA Cre­ative Strate­gist Sarah Westwood.

“The think­ing was to tar­get salaried work­ers who are now remote work­ing and see­ing some lit­tle dai­ly sav­ings. Maybe they’re not buy­ing a dai­ly cof­fee or their usu­al work lunch, or they are cut­ting com­mut­ing costs. By donat­ing those lit­tle sav­ings to this fund, togeth­er we can make a huge dif­fer­ence. It’s com­mon to feel quite use­less work­ing at home know­ing that these peo­ple are going out and risk­ing their lives to look after oth­ers, so we designed this ini­tia­tive as a lit­tle way for all of us to help begin to pay them back. Even donat­ing the cost of a week­ly cof­fee, say £2.50 (£10 a month), if we all do it we could make a big dif­fer­ence to keep­ing care work­ers and their fam­i­lies going dur­ing the crisis.”

The Care Work­ers Char­i­ty has set up a Just­Giv­ing page and all mon­ey raised from the cam­paign will do direct­ly into this Care Work­ers COVID19 relief fund. The char­i­ty will give out grants to peo­ple apply­ing who are strug­gling finan­cial­ly because of the cri­sis. There are almost 2 mil­lion care work­ers in the UK, con­tribut­ing to one of the largest work­forces. They spend their careers assist­ing oth­ers, but when cir­cum­stances change, some­times it is the care work­ers who need help.