Crisis in funding of social care

Over 30 years in l.a. and other government agencies Anja. I remember the 90's as you do and like many, joined in the resistance by Unions, to no avail.
As you say, anyone with any sense or commitment to good public services could see the writing on the wall.
It's simply deteriorated since then.

It wasn't helped at that time by the closure of small cottage hospitals which cared for people after acute illness, mostly elderly, who were not fit to return home. This area lost many beds with that cull. As usual it's about short term saving without long term planning. We are being sold the myth by the government of "improved patient care" with Future First at the moment, when in reality it's about cost saving. I am holding my breath for my mother's care package at home, on which she is totally dependent. Many do not realise the seriousness of the whole care sector unless they are involved first hand.

I only spent the last 8 years of my working life with the LA (actually the LEA) but it didn’t take long to suss out the crass stupidity and egoism at work there Iam

So much money is wasted by this outsourcing. An example: young man with severe behaviour problems housed in a privately run "specialist unit" which was just a house with two flats; there was no specialist input whatsoever and indeed the staff had no training in dealing with these sorts of problems and were so afraid of him that they just put his food on the stairs for him to pick up - and that was it - no guidance about jobs, benefits etc. - just nothing. The cost to the LA?.......£2,000 a week!

Perhaps if they worked smarter they could better fund those in need.
I did hear that the care workers don't get paid for he time spent travelling between clients which is shocking.

I agree, more and more is expected of LAs but the funding is not being given to provide these services.

Some agencies pay travel time between clients, a lot don't, but social services are looking for the agency which will take on ever increasing workloads without sometimes even having the staff to cover shifts.
The women who came to my mum were lovely, for the most part, but they left a lot to be desired in the care practices.

I agree about the care workers MissA. The ones who visit my mother are mainly nice but practices are not always good, and there have been some incidents which would have been recorded as serious if she’d been in hospital. Most are on low wage, inadequate supervision & training & expected to deal with things above their pay grade, including controlled drugs.

My biggest concern is around supervision, support and training. At least when it was all in-house these standards were a given.

Anja - I do hope you aren't including people like myself and Luckygirl in your reference to crass stupidity and egoism. We weren't in those higher echelons. I did manage a team for a couple of years, happy days but - I went back into practice in a specialist role to avoid the onset of expectation that we would manage budgets, ie cut services to our service users and say we were improving things. I understand I could be criticised for not staying and fighting but I'd have felt like the boy with his finger in the damn - changes were happening, no matter how much we practitioners on the ground shouted the changes were not positive.

By the way Anja - reading my first sentence leaves me feeling I could be accused of being passive aggressive (never mention another thread of course). I do not mean to be pa. I simply wanted to stress that it wasn't practitioners who led these regrettable changes, but I suspect you know that.

What about local councils, what are they spending their money on ? Besides their own wages of course ! Then there's all the other non-jobs.

Roads are still riddled in potholes, weeds growing in grass verges and pathways and bins not getting emptied.
someone's making a packet somewhere at the expense of us council-tax payers !

What's happened to council-run care homes ?

EllanVannin - I suspect your question isn't a genuine one it's aimed at irritating those of us who don't share your political and simplistic view of the world. I don't often post such an irritable response but honestly if you had any idea what is happening to front line services you wouldn't be making such outrageous comments.
End of rant.

When profit comes first - services usually suffer. By all means, they should be cost efficient - but that is vastly different to being profit driven. We all know why that is in todays society.

I believe that public services should be run by the public service and not for profit as others have already said. There is no reason why this could not be more efficient than the private sector. Public running of NE railways let to profit. Why are we subsidising private companies with our taxes? I’d rather subsidise the tax payer.

^What about local councils, what are they spending their money on ? Besides their own wages of course ! Then there's all the other non-jobs.

Roads are still riddled in potholes, weeds growing in grass verges and pathways and bins not getting emptied.
someone's making a packet somewhere at the expense of us council-tax payers ! ^

I think you make a valid point EllanVannin . Our council tax is set to rise yet again and I cannot see any justification for this whatsoever except perhaps to pay for wage rises, increased pensions and non jobs for council workers etc. The pot holes are as bad ( if not worse) than ever and the council run community centres etc. have long gone all "services" have already been cut back to a bare minimum or else gone altogether. So where is the justification in yet another 3.6% rise?

Regarding the emptying (or not) of bins, I now see that some poor souls in Wales are having to wait 4 weeks for their bins to be emptied.

This will surely lead to an increase in fly tipping, which will cost the council to clear up. WHY can they not see that?

Some European countries (Spain or Italy?) have their rubbish collected DAILY, and they are relatively poor countries with struggling economies, unlike ours which is flourishing.

If they can do it, why can't we?

As gillybob says, despite the cuts in services, council taxes continue to rise. Where is it going?

This will surely lead to an increase in fly tipping, which will cost the council to clear up. WHY can they not see that

None so blind..... JenniferEccles I am sick to death of saying the same thing over and over again, but it falls on deaf ears in our (labour controlled) LA !

Our Tory County Council is utterly useless, but their budget has been axed by the Tory Government.

Fortunately our local District Council is Liberal Democrat, so far better run in spite of the cuts, and we do have weekly bin collections for recycling and fortnightly for non-recyclable (which is mainly certain types of plastic)

The key problem is that the financial support for councils from central government has been slashed. there has been no reduction in expectations that councils will support statutory services. this means that charities that previously filled gaps in Council services no longer exist. I can think of one particularly good local service that offered safe spaces for non residence parents to see their children. These are vulnerable children where one parent (usually the mother) has been subjected to domestic abuse or the children are at risk of significant harm if they spend time with their non resident parent (usually their father) so the charity set up an excellent centre, run by volunteers. it's had to close because the three local councils that provided financial support haven't been able to do that. Of course their limited resources go on statutory services.

And efficiency is now only measured in monetary terms - never mind the quality. Political dogma must be master.

Well........*the moral test of a government is how it treats the children, the elderly, the sick, the needy and handicapped*. Hubert Humphrey (paraphr). Not scoring too highly on that one are we? Ofcourse the government cutting grants to local councils are shifting the blame for lack of services to the councils, some of which are going, or have gone bankrupt. Tory ones at that. I wonder if anyone saw 'Skint Britain' last night. It was a graphic description of what the government is reducing people to, and regardless of political persuasion I don't think anyone could fail to be moved by the chap in a telephone booth phoning DHSS and crying, because he had no money, whilst being kept on hold for lengthy periods whilst " The Four Season's" played on a loop.

Some 25 years ago my FIL developed Dementia. MIL cared for him at home but there was a crisis when she broke her hip and was admitted to hospital. FIL was then assessed and admitted to a pshycriatic hospital/care facility, where he remained, happily until he died. MIL went home with help and support from us and a Home Help who did her shopping, prepared her meals and became her best friend. There was no charge for either of these NHS/LA services.

Fast forward to now. DH with Dementia and me as his Carer have been assessed as requiring 2 days per week of Day Care and 6 weeks per annum of respite care. 2 years on still waiting for the 2nd day of Day Care (provided by Alzheimers on behalf of the LA) to become available and only 2 weekends and 2 full weeks of respite because of lack of availability. Payment required for both day care and respite stays. (approx. £1000 per week with 20% discount for Free Personal Care). Both facilities can only accommodate 8 people at a time.

DH's appointed Social Worker has been off sick (stress) more than she has been at work this past year, but is hanging on in hopes of an enhanced redundancy package. This with a background of more people living longer but requiring longterm help with their care needs.

I accept that there have been some very radical government cutbacks to funding given to LA's which has undoubtedly lead to huge cut backs in services and closures of much needed facilities....however.... my argument is that in my LA we have been inflicted with yet another 3.6% rise in council tax and for what reason? the pot holes are still there, facilities have already been closed and/or cut to the very bone, so where is that extra money going? Do LA's think that the ordinary working man or woman has a money tree that grows at the same or higher rate? The executives within our council command alarmingly high salaries (and there are a lot of them) could it possibly be that the rise in council tax is to pay for a rise in their wages and pensions?
Could it be that we are paying to safeguard the non jobs that our LA seem very fond of? Are we paying for the luxurious refit of our town hall, complete with state of the art bathrooms, top of the range new furniture, the most expensive coffee machines in every room? the new gym? the free pilates and yoga classes provided to council staff?

It stinks.

Undoubtedly some of the above accounts for the dire situation local councils are in.

BUT the main problem is government funding: between 2010 and 2020, councils will have lost 60p out of every £1 the Government previously gave them to provide for services.

Those tax cuts for the wealthy (and some unnecessary or wasted projects) have meant less for local council services.

Sadly grannypauline it is political dogma as Luckygirl said up thread. The survival of the fittest!