Working as a carer part-time or alongside another job

Carer resources has the full set of guides for carers. This one is for somebody with a few hours a week to give, whether that is around a job, a course or children at school.

The visits that fit most easily around other work are the ones with a set time: a morning call before your shift, a teatime visit, a weekend, or a night. Night work covers sleeping and waking nights. A single visit of six hours or more is charged at our lower 15% commission, so a carer advertising £18 an hour for a long weekend shift keeps £15.30 of each hour. Shorter visits are at 20%, so a £20 hour pays you £16. Leave time for travel between a job and a visit, because travel is not paid unless the client agreed it in advance, in writing.

Live-in work is booked by the week rather than by the hour, so it does not fit around a weekly job. Some live-in carers work a week or two at a time, sharing a placement with another carer. What families are told about part-time live-in care explains the patterns they are offered.

If your job's hours change and you can no longer do the visits you agreed, give the notice above rather than stopping. Without it, the contract lets the client recover reasonable costs of replacement care. The carer terms also ask you to tell PrimeCarers if you can no longer accept work, and allow a profile to be removed where jobs are frequently turned down, so keep what you tell families about your availability accurate. The full contract sets out both sides.

When you know which hours you can offer, you can register as a carer on PrimeCarers and set your own rate, or first see the carer jobs open near you.

Your job is taxed through PAYE. Your employer uses your tax code, which gov.uk says is 1257L for most people with one job, to give you the standard £12,570 Personal Allowance through payroll and take tax and National Insurance before you are paid. Nothing is taken from your care income before it reaches you.

Your care work is self-employment. Gov.uk says you must register for Self Assessment as a sole trader if you earn more than £1,000 in a tax year, before any expenses. Below that, the trading allowance means you may not need to tell HMRC, though you still keep records. Your return then adds your care profit to your pay and works out the Income Tax on the total, allowing for what payroll has already taken.

Class 4 National Insurance is 6% on self-employed profits over £12,570, and it looks only at your care profit. So a carer with a full-time job and a few visits a week usually owes Income Tax on the care work but no Class 4.

If you owe less than £3,000 and already pay tax through PAYE, HMRC can collect the bill through your tax code over the following year, as long as you file online by 30 December. Otherwise you pay it yourself by 31 January. How to pay tax as a self-employed carer walks through registering and filing, and allowable expenses covers what lowers your profit.

Read the Acas guidance on exclusivity clauses, then the contract itself. If a clause is unclear, ask your employer in writing before you start rather than after.

For visas, the rules are on gov.uk: the Student visa page, and taking a second job on a Health and Care Worker visa. For your own case, speak to an OISC-regulated immigration adviser. Visas and self-employment and right to work checks for carers go further. PrimeCarers checks your right to work when you register, with your identity, an enhanced DBS check issued within the last 18 months, and a recorded online interview.

The rules come from self-employment and Universal Credit on gov.uk. Self-employed carers and Universal Credit sets out the start-up period and the floor in full, and your work coach decides how they apply to you.