A care worker is someone who helps people who are physically and/or mentally impaired with their day to day living. A care worker may work in a care home or in people’s homes. Those working in people’s homes are often referred to as domiciliary carers.

Carers tasks typically consist of:

• Helping people to eat, drink, wash and dress.
• Helping people with social and physical activities.
• Organising and taking people to appointments.
• Helping to give people their daily medication and monitoring their health conditions through taking and recording their temperature, pulse, respiration and weight.

A carers job involves a lot of physical activity, carers can suffer from injuries including:

Repetitive strain injuries: Constantly having to do the same tasks over and over may lead to repetitive strain injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome or bursitis.

Manual handling injuries: Being a carer means that you are likely to be required to lift up and move the person you are helping. If you do not have the proper assistance equipment to hand this can lead to injuries such as strains and sprains to the hands, wrists and spine.

Burns or scalding injuries: which can occur when making and preparing food or hot drinks.

Physical assaults: It is sadly not uncommon for care workers to be physically assaulted by their patients.

Your employer is legally responsible for your health and safety in the workplace. This includes providing staff with the appropriate equipment and training to allow them to be able to do their job safely.

If your employer fails in their duty of care to protect your safety in the workplace, which leads to an injury, you may be entitled to make a claim against them.

Examples of how an employer may have been negligent include:

• Failing to provide training on how to safely lift and move patients.
• Failing to provide the necessary equipment to help carers move patients safely without injuring themselves or the patient.
• Failing to maintain and check equipment is in good working order.
• Failing to provide the correct PPE.
• Failing to have the right number of staff on duty to provide a safe working environment.
• Failing to carry out risk assessments.