As a referral I was asked to see a woman employed as a dom. care worker in a very rural area. She had been off sick for a year and was now back at work. She has worked for the organisation for some years without a contract but doing around 25hrs./week. As you can guess once taking on a client she wishes to maintain that care. Many of her clients in such a rural area will be known to her over a long time. Now because of staff shortages, sicknesses etc she is doing up to and over 37hrs spread over 7 days with first appt. of the day at 07.30 and last at 21.00. She has no days off a week and works every evening putting 'her' clients back to bed. She does not have 11hrs off at night before starting again the next morn. Now I understand that she has no contract and could refuse some of this but she wont as there does not seem to be anyone able to take over from her except other carers who are doing the same anyway. Personnel say it is her problem as she can knock this work load back just as we can if we do agency work but I wonder do we have a duty of care to her and is it reasonable for her manager to put her in this position?