Unions angry over possible changes to social care (From Warrington Guardian)
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Unions angry over possible changes to social care
4:00pm Thursday 14th February 2013 in News
Unions angry over changes to social care
UNION chiefs in Warrington have hit out at council plans to set up a social enterprise to provide some care services in town.
Warrington Borough Council is looking at moving some of its adult social care services and day care centre into a non-profit co-operative.
But the unions say they will not be supporting the move.
Jason Horan, from Unison, said: “We will not be supporting any proposal that will see the mass outsourcing of local authority services.
“Council officers are being far from truthful with staff.
“The trade unions are fully aware of budget proposals that include the outsourcing of day centers, such detail being excluded from information shared with the general public.”
And he says the plans will hit the most vulnerable.
He added :“It’s about time that Labour Councillors stood up and fought against the Conservative policy of abolishing local council services.”
Bob Pinnock, GMB, said ”Outsourcing doesn’t save money, once the services are gone they will never be brought back in house. You will end up with a social enterprise that will only be interested in putting profits before clients care.”
Steve Reddy, assistant director of adult social care at Warrington Borough Council, said no decisions have yet been made.
He added: “These investigations are about looking at alternative ways of delivering the same high quality care in a way that is sustainable given the increasingly challenging financial picture.
“In other areas these types of staff mutuals have demonstrated they are able to increase their available resources by tendering for additional business and applying for specific funding not available to local authorities.”
Comments(4)
Geoff Siddall
says...
6:16pm Thu 14 Feb 13
The words high quality care worries me when you consider the staff on poor wages, long shifts, and not enough holidays to take a break from the very hard job they do.
It would be interesting to have a debate on here and I encourage service users, families and care workers to join the debate.
It would also be interesting to know how many care staff are from the EU keeping wages down.
old-codger
says...
8:35pm Thu 14 Feb 13
....................
....
What ??.
Who do these people think they are ??.
We pay their wages and then they do everything in an underhand fashion,
What happened to open governing, To be open and clear about what they are doing, This sort of behavior is unacceptable from people employed to serve the public, They already run the services so how can it be any cheaper for them to do it just by setting up in another name, I think they are planning on using cheap labour and its about time our elected councillors got off their ar5es and represented us.
It would be interesting to know how many care staff are from the EU keeping to
wages down.”
SAC_in_Warrington
says...
11:11pm Thu 14 Feb 13
Geoff Siddall says...
6:07pm Thu 14 Feb 13
..PUTTING PROFITS BEFORE CLIENTS CARE!
I thought that Warrington Borough Council is looking at moving some of its adult social care services and day care centre into a non-profit co-operative……
.NON-PROFIT CO-OPERATIVE!