[Edinburgh-carecampaign] Minutes of meeting and update on campaign re Care and support tender

[Marlyn Tweedie]

Hi    I'm still not able to attach minutes so I'll send them in this e-mail.

First some really good news.

Edinburgh Council have been forced to scrap their plans to tender care and
support services to agencies like Choices who pay £6.05 p an hour.
This is completely down to the brilliant campaign that staff ,service-users
and their familes  had.

They exposed the shambles and lies that are part of the tender process.
I've tried to forward the info re. it

you can read the article in Tues 2cd feb Evening News   titled Care Fiasco
"must never be repeated"    By Michael Blackley

If anyone wants to try and attach the link, I'd be very grateful.

The truth is all the tendering processes are shambolic and do nothing to
protect standards or services for vulnerable people.

We know this from the results  especially in homecare. Just a few nights
ago, I heard from a careworker about a woman who slipped through the hoist
while being attended to by an agency staff.

However the SWAN campaign because it involved so many people  in rallies and
deputations forced this truth to come out.

Their fight isn't over  but what they've achieved should inspire us all.
campaigning; getting organised and saying No can make a difference.

Let's hope this is the start of such struggles!


2)   Minutes of Homecare campaign meeting    Wed. Jan 27th '10

Present   Ian; Flo; Lorrainne; Sheila; Marlyn

Spoke of an example of a 95 year old who has a carer from Ardmore at night.
Carer left door unlocked!

Ian said his neighbour, who receives care, has  a survey re. questions
whether she's satisfied with the care etc.  We don't know if everyone is
getting this survey. It's a similar survey to the one done about a year ago
where there was a mix up in the results which stated that the agency care
was better.  However this was wrong   The survey clearly showed that the
in-house care was better. The campaign pointed this out to Councillors!

Ian mentioned that his neighbour has dementia. Her GP feels she needs more
care but,as he says, "the bar is so high"  Quite!

Marlyn spoke of her concern that domiciliary care staff are being asked to
give medicines.
It wasn't so long ago that staff were instructed never to give medicines
unless from a dosette.

How the rules change.

The reason staff are now being told to take on yet a further task  is
because pharmacists are quite rightly refusing to make up dosette boxes for
no pay.
The health board and Social Work management want to put it onto staff.

The obvious solution is to pay pharmacists to make up the dosette boxes.
That is the safest, most straightforward  way.  Instead we see all the time
attempts to save money and scrimp on decent care.

As one of the campaigners said, h/helps give all sort of personal care   -
yet this was not recognised during pay modernisation where they got a small
increase - onto a very low pay rate.
Other authorities gave more.

more and more care workers and homehelps are having to have nursing  - or at
least what could be described as semi nursing skills.

Reminded Unison members that the AGM is Wed. Feb 10th  at Assembly Rooms at
6pm

Campaign agreed to make our meetings 4 weekly for the following 2-3 months.

Felt we could "consolidate" work; update examples of poor practice and
perhaps continue visits to Community Councils etc.

Agreed  so next meeting is Wed.Feb 24th  '10 at 6pm  Council Chambers

Please let us know if you have any examples of poor practice from agencies.

We need as much evidence as possible to give to Councillors; etc.

It will all be "anonymised"   please 'phone me 078 111 856 10   (Marlyn)

minutes Marlyn
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