There have been another two ‘gig economy’ court cases. In the latest, Hermes was found to be employing delivery drivers it had tried to class as self-employed . Each time there is a case of this kind I get enquiries about the implications for Shared Lives, as Shared Lives carers are self-employed. On one level, there are no implications, because every court case so far has found companies not giving workers the rights, choices and autonomy of genuine self-employment, whereas the extensive legal advice we have taken has consistently found that, done properly, Shared Lives roles are self-employed, partly because people choose who to work with, and work from home with a high level of autonomy, rather than in tightly-prescribed or micro-managed roles.
Each of these court cases though, does reinforce the importance of following the national guidance on Shared Lives. Shared Lives organisations can’t have it both ways, as one or two have tried in the past: wanting all the value of what Shared Lives carers and their families bring, including the unpaid contributions people will make to someone’s life if they see them not as a ‘client’ or ‘customer’ but ‘one of the family’, but also wanting to manage Shared Lives carers more tightly than the role – and the law – allows. There is a reason Shared Lives carers are recruited so carefully over three to six months and then helped to find mutually compatible matches: it’s to ensure that the local organisation has a high degree of trust in them, knowing they have the right motivations to do the best for the person living or staying with them, not just ‘working to the contract’.
I wrote about this last year and came to the conclusion that whilst the law is complex (and each organisation must take its own expert advice), the best way to approach staying on the right side of employment regulations in Shared Lives is to keep things simple: recruit the right people then trust them and treat them fairly, in other words, do the right thing.
Escaping the invisible asylum 