Care workers in France are being rewarded with a £1,500 tax free lump sum.
Care home workers in France will get a tax-free bonus of up to €1,500 (£1,340) if they worked during the pandemic in the most affected areas. Those in less affected regions will get up to €1,000 (£890).
Care workers in the UK get a badge they have to buy.
The CARE badge was available to purchase in a minimum order of 100, and was supposed to be passed on to carers for free. The profits went to care-related causes. It’s unclear whether the badges can still be purchased.
A post on Facebook with 11,000 shares claims that care workers in France are getting a £1,500 tax-free bonus, and compares that to a badge available to UK carers and care workers to purchase.
The French government has announced that staff working in certain care settings and in those regions most affected by the Covid-19 outbreak will be paid a maximum €1,500 (£1,340) bonus tax-free.
Staff working in residential care homes for the elderly, as well as those working with adults and children with disabilities and some other groups will be eligible, if they are in one of the 40 areas in France most affected by the outbreak.
Those working in establishments outside of these areas may receive a bonus of up to €1,000 (£890).
People must have worked at least 30 days between 1 March and 30 April, although there are some exceptions to this—for example if they were on sick leave which was likely to have been Covid-19.
We’ve written about this claim before, but it was not clear at that time how much the bonus for care workers would be.
The badge the Facebook post is referring to is the “CARE badge”, which was initially launched in 2019 (before the coronavirus pandemic) for companies and charities to distribute to carers for free. Initially it was not a government initiative, but in April 2020 the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, announced in the daily coronavirus briefing that the government would be adopting it as “a single brand for social care”.
A website for the badge company, which was run by everyLIFE Technologies, currently says: “CARE badge brand rights have now been transferred to the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care.”
“To prevent the possible lopsided distribution of both CARE badges and information about their use, we have halted issuing badges and associated logos until the necessary new details are finalised.”
Elsewhere on the site, it says: “Badges are no longer available from the CARE badge Community Interest Company.”
It is unclear whether the badge is currently available to purchase elsewhere.
Badges were previously available from the website for £1.20 each plus VAT and for a minimum order of 100 badges. It said that all profits went to care-related causes and charities.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as true because it’s true that certain care workers in France will get up to €1,500 (£1,340).
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