[Edinburgh-carecampaign] URGENT ACTION needed for care services

Tue Feb 9 01:00:38 UTC 2010

The campaign against the tender process for care and support services has achieved a huge success as the tender will now be scrapped.
However, we stand to lose much of these gains if the Council's plans to set rates for Direct Payments and Service Level Agreements at £15.04 per hour are agreed at Thursday's Full Council meeting.
We need everyone to act now - if we lose the vote on Thursday it will mean a 17.5% cut for the services that were put out to tender. Once approved by full council there will be nowhere left to go (except costly legal challenges). 
Please take some time this week to take action - we have won a vote at the full council meeting before - we can do it again but it needs pressure from all of us.
Please read on for what you can do;

Lobby
 the Council 9am this Thursday 11th Feb 9am
Come along to the full Council meeting and make your feelings felt. The meeting starts at 10am so come along for 9 and bring placards / banners etc.

Visit Tory councillors surgeries
To win the vote on Thursday we need to win the support of the Conservative group. This is the only way the administration can be defeated. The best hope we have of convincing them is through face to face meetings. See advice for arguing the case below under "emailing Tory councillors".
Surgery details; 

TUESDAY 9th:   Jo Mowat, Central library, 6.30 p.m,

WEDNESDAY 10th:  
Cameron
Rose -  Marchmont - St.Giles church cafe, 1230-1 p.m. or Southside
Community Centre, 6-630 p.m. or Cameron House Community Ctr 6.45 p.m.

Iain Whyte - Blackhall library, 7p.m

E-mailing Tory councillors

Kate.mackenzie at edinburgh..gov.uk

Alastair.paisley at edinburgh.gov.uk

Allan.jackson at edinburgh.gov.uk

Iain.whyte at edinburgh.gov.uk

Jeremy.balfour at edinburgh.gov.uk

Elaine.aitken at edinburgh.gov.uk

Jason.rust at edinburgh.gov.uk

Gordon.buchan at edinburgh.gov.uk

Mark.mcinnes at edinburgh.gov.uk

Joanna.mowat at edinburgh.gov.uk

Cameron.rose at edinburgh.gov.uk
 Here are some points you may want to make;
Funding rates should not be based on flawed tender process
The administration proposal is to base the Direct Payment rate on an average taken from the bidders that were successful in the tender process. This is how they arrive at the figure of £15.04 and they intend to use it as a basis for Service Level Agreements as well as DPs.This figure is lower than it would have been if the tender process was not flawed. During the tender process a 'quality assurance process' was used to review quality assessment information. Two members of the assessment team had access to price information while
 carrying out this review of quality. The independent review into the process found that this led to cheaper bids being approved, thus driving down the average price to £15.04.
A rate of £15.04 amounts to a 17.5% cut
The rate of £15.04 is applied across all the contracts that would have gone into the tender this amounts to a total cut of 17..5% from current funding rates.
The conservative group stated at the full council meeting on the 17th November although they agreed with the 10% efficiency savings originally outlined in the administration's proposals they could not back cuts of 20% and that no council department would be expected to take
 such a cut.The proposals the council now has in front of them amount to a cut of almost 20%. 
The 10% cut originally outlined would mean a DP rate of £16.50.

Direct payment rates should be based on individual need

We question whether the Council actually has the legal right to set a blanket rate of direct payments for any group of service users. The National Guidance on Self-Directed Support 2007 - issued under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 - makes very clear that the amount of an individual's support package is to be determined through a full, face-to-face assessment of indvidual needs. In addition, legal precedent such as Breakwell vs. Hammersmith has shown that local authorities may not cap the level of direct payments where this amounts to a cut in support, except after such a personalised
 assessment.
As the Minister for Public Health recently confirmed in Parliament, the 1968 Act mandates that any direct payment package must be sufficient to buy support of an equivalent standard to that which the local authority would provide. Edinburgh Council's in-house hourly expenditure for housing support services is considerably more than virtually any other provider. 

Actual effect of funding cuts on services
Examples of ways organisations are looking at cutting their budgets due to funding cuts;

LOSS OF CLUSTER PROJECTS
Some service-users depend on having staff based in an office in the same block of flats or nearby. Without this some would not be able to live in their own flats and would have to move to residential care if staff offices moved to distant central locations.

NO ANNUAL INCREMENTS PAID TO NEW STAFF
Some organisations have already or are planning to
 stop annual incremental wage increases for new employees. This would mean staff would remain on their starting salary however many years they stayed working for the organisation. This would seriously damage companies' abiltiy to retain experienced, well trained staff and this would negatively impact on qualtiy of care.

LACK OF TRAINING
The proposed funding rates would have a serious impact on the ability of organisations to fund training for staff including achieving minimum qualifications.

LOSS OF TRAINED / EXPERIENCED STAFF
Such a big cut to care and support services will lead to lower wages for frontline staff. Some organisations are already cutting their starting salary by up to £2000. This will mean that the sector will be unlikely to retain experienced / well trained staff as few people will be able to afford to remain in such low paid work for a long period of time.

www.swanedinburgh.org.uk 
Edinburgh Support Workers' Action Network (SWAN) is a network of care and support workers set up to fight the budget cuts and competitive tendering being imposed by Edinburgh Council which threaten our jobs and our service-users' quality of care.

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