Home support workers are turning down shifts, with some considering leaving the jobs they love as fuel costs continue to rise.
Support workers enable sick, elderly and disabled people to remain in their homes for longer, helping ease pressure on rest homes and hospital beds.
They provide personal care, catheter care, compression hosiery changes, showering, end of life care and dementia support.
They also ensure medication is taken, meals are eaten, homes are cleaned and, as one worker puts it, do “basically anything a district nurse isn’t available to do”.
“We do anything that the patient needs to be comfortable and be able to stay at their own home,” support worker Laura Lusk says.
But, with many travelling hundreds of kilometres each week and being paid a flat $2.35 rate to travel between clients, some say the work is no longer financially viable.
Laura has ditched her car and now travels by moped to keep costs down. Based mostly in Motueka, she is on the casual list to cover clients from Golden Bay through to Hira.
She explains the two travel allowances support workers are entitled to.
In Between Travel is a single payment of $2.35 to contribute towards vehicle costs between clients.
If clients are 15km apart, that works out to just 15.6 cents per kilometre. The allowance is meant to average out at 63.5 cents per kilometre, based on an average distance of 3.7km between clients. After 15km, workers are paid an ‘Exceptional Travel’ rate of 64 cents per kilometre.
The current Inland Revenue reimbursement rates for business vehicles are $1.17 per kilometre for petrol vehicles or $1.26 per kilometre for diesel vehicles.
“I got the moped because I worked out what the travel rates were. This is before Iran, and before everything went insane, even before the world went crazy and prices went up, it was still too expensive,” Laura says.
Golden Bay support worker Quinn Lake says they feel “invisible”.
“I run a diesel vehicle so instead of $150 a week, it’s now $300 basically.”
Quinn says, for many clients, support workers are the only people they see in their day.
“And we often help them to cope emotionally when their lives are tough, and at the moment, we are struggling with our own situation of how we’re going to make ends meet.
“We’re the lowest paid workers in New Zealand, and we can earn more in a supermarket. And right now, we’re effectively also providing our fuel and running our vehicles at our own expense.
“All New Zealanders will need this care for a family member or for themselves at some point, to help maintain their dignity and live well as independently as possible, appreciated essential and beyond important.
“As of right now, we’re losing staff fast, because many just can’t afford to go to work. Is that dire? Yes.”
Another support worker says she has gone from putting $85 of fuel in her car to needing $115. Last week, with her car on empty, she expected to spend $140. Living in Motueka but supporting clients in Nelson and Stoke, she travels 550km a week.
With costs escalating, she took leave last week after finding it too hard to make ends meet.
Sitting with eight support workers on Thursday, not one was entitled to the $50 increase to the In Work Tax Credit announced by the Government as temporary fuel support.
The payment automatically goes to workers with dependent children who earn under the income threshold.
The Public Service Association says the increases to income support for working families fall well short of what home support workers need, given many are filling their cars at least twice a week and many do not have dependent children.
Labour MP for Nelson, Rachel Boyack, says the Government should increase the mileage rate for care and support workers.
"Especially because many of them have missed out on the $50 payment and are having to pay out of their own pockets for fuel. That’s unfair and needs to be addressed.”
“My thoughts go out to these support workers. They do incredible work, and it would be a great loss for communities if they and other support workers couldn’t do their jobs because the cost of living is so high,” Rachel says.
