ACC pays carer $9.37 per hour

A wife who looks after her brain-damaged husband has had her pay cut by the ACC to less than the minimum wage.

This case comes after a Hawke's Bay woman was paid only $9.33 an hour for 28 hours a week, and $14.40 for seven hours, to care for a friend's 5-year-old granddaughter in Foxton after an accident.

In the latest case Linda Barlow, whose husband Bill, 69, suffered a brain injury as a jockey when he was 32, has been told she will get only $9.37 an hour to provide "oversight supervision" for 34.5 hours a week, from July 30.

The ACC will keep paying her $14.95 an hour to give Mr Barlow "attendant care" for 10.5 hours a week, down from the 42 hours it pays at the moment. That will cut her total pay by about $148 a week, from $628 to $480.

Wellington lawyer John Miller is challenging the cut and said it was "part of a widespread attack by ACC" to reduce the amount it paid families for providing attendant care to the seriously injured.

"Whenever there is a big push to save costs, attendant care is one they look at," he said.

The tougher line comes just as the Ministry of Health is working out how to implement a landmark Appeal Court judgment in May declaring it illegal to discriminate between family members and outsiders who provide care for disabled people.

Until now, the health system has funded home care for non-accident victims only if the care is provided by non-family carers.

In contrast, the ACC has long funded family members to care for accident victims and is seen as the health system's likely model for funding non-accident victims.

But the ACC Act says it must consider "the extent to which ... family members might reasonably be expected to provide attendant care [without pay]".

People caring for family members said the ACC paid up to $17 and $21 an hour for attendant care if the family carer was paid through an agency such as McIsaacs or Geneva.

Labour MP Andrew Little has taken up the woman's case and said no one should be paid below the minimum wage of $13.50.

In the latest case in South Auckland, the ACC has told Mrs Barlow that her new pay rate of $9.37 an hour for "oversight supervision" is only a "contribution" towards her care for her husband, rather than a wage.

"It acknowledges that the family member can undertake normal household activities at the same time as providing oversight supervision," it says.

Mr Barlow, who suffered brain damage when thrown off a horse in 1974, kept working until 2004 as a boilermaker, caretaker and supermarket storeman, despite sporadic fits. He once had a fit inside a boiler and narrowly escaped injury when he had a fit next to a machine that squashed boxes.

Mrs Barlow said he needed her to watch out for him.

Although they married in 1985, they did not know at first that they were entitled to ACC help and Mrs Barlow had been paid for attendant care only since 2005.

"No matter what they say, the minimum wage should be the minimum wage for everybody," she said.

But a spokeswoman said the ACC did not employ caregivers, who were employed by other agencies or, like Mrs Barlow, were self-employed.