Jobs To Earn Cash Fast - Home Care worker

This is the third in a series of articles on jobs to earn cash fast, and focusses on working as a home care worker. In the current economic climate, many of us need money in a hurry, and working as a health care worker can bring a wage in within a week to a month.

The first two articles focussed on working as a residential or nursing home care worker and an agency care worker. click on the highlighted links to read these articles.

There are fewer home care agencies than nursing agencies, but they all need good, reliable carers and the best place to find an agency is to look in the yellow pages and see which ones are local to you.

 Home care workers are employed by an agency to visit people in their own homes who can no longer manage without some sort of help.  The work may be as quick and simple as a safety check and making a cup of tea for an elderly person, to more complex work caring for someone who is dying.

The majority of people have one visit a day, but others may need two to four visits.

1. No educational qualifications required. All training given is ‘on the job.’ Most employers provide really good training and will encourage you to undertake NVQ study if you wish. 
2. You need to be reliable – turn up when you are supposed to.
3. You need to be prepared to work HARD.
4. Empathy.  You must be kind to the people you are looking after.  They are people, not packages.
5. Police check.  Within the first month, the agency should run a police check on you to see whether you have any convictions or are on any police register.  You can sometimes still work while this is being run, but some agencies may make you wait until they receive the confirmation that you are squeaky clean.
6. Transport.  As you will be travelling to different places for your work, it’s important that you have access to some form of transport.

Most home care agencies pay around £6.00 per hour, with an enhancement for evening and weekend work, so working a sunday could pay around £8.00 per hour.  Mileage is also paid, which is enough to cover petrol, wear and tear, plus a little profit to add to your wage.  If you have a visit a long way out of your usual patch, negotiate, because some agencies will agree to pay you a bonus if you will take the visit. 

Home care work takes place during the day and evening. The majority of visits are in the morning, beginning about 8am and these usually run into the lunch time visits. You then usually have a little gap for a meal etc, then begin afternoon and evening visits. The last evening visits are around 10pm.

Most agencies will let you choose which days you wish to work, and whether you work weekends and bank holidays.

Freedom. You have the freedom of working on your own and being able to organise your own visits to some extent, however, you need to be a confident person.

Choice of shifts. You have some choice over when you will work and how far you are prepared to travel.

Weekly pay. Most agencies still pay weekly, so you don't have to wait a whole month for your first wage packet.

Caseload.  The more reliable you are, the more work the company will give you.  There is currently a big push for people to be looked after at home, rather than to go into a nursing or residential home, so this is an area of work that will continue to expand over the next few years.

 Time.  Agencies are paid by Social Services for face-to-face visits only, so this is what they pay you.  Your travel time is not paid.  Most agencies will try to group your visits together, but sometimes you will have to travel a little distance to reach someone, which puts pressure on you to complete your other visits quickly in order to fit everyone in.

Pay.  It's not possible to earn as much working home care as it is working via a nursing agency, although the work is more reliable.

Nevertheless, if you need jobs to earn cash fast, home care worker could be right up your street.  it's well worth looking into.