A day with a care worker in Bury showed me the intolerable pressures of her life – and then I heard the news of a new squeeze on benefits

Just under a fortnight ago, my working day began at 6.45am, on a silent cul-de-sac near Bury, in Greater Manchester. I was there to shadow Julia, a domiciliary care worker, on her daily morning rounds. She was about to let herself into the home of a 93-year-old woman. “She’ll be asleep in bed,” Julia told me. In 30 packed minutes, she had to wake her up, get her dressed, deal with any overnight accidents and mishaps, make her breakfast and “have a good chat with her, and get her communicating”.

Julia was in the middle of a seven-day working week, with between 10 and 15 “clients” to look after on each shift: elderly people, mostly, but also a 42-year-old mum of two recovering from a stroke. And as we drove from house to house, she explained the tension that runs through her working life: between the squeezed budgets that dictate how she does her job, and the profoundly human needs that she has to see to.