[Edinburgh-carecampaign] Fw: [SWANedinburgh] The Collapse of Southern Cross

[Danny]

--- On Tue, 12/7/11, SWAN Edinburgh <swanedinburgh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

From: SWAN Edinburgh <swanedinburgh at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: [SWANedinburgh] The Collapse of Southern Cross
To: "Swan Mailing List (no flag)" <swanedinburgh at lists.noflag.org.uk>
Date: Tuesday, 12 July, 2011, 23:21



 THE COLLAPSE OF SOUTHERN CROSS

 

Edinburgh
Support Workers’ Action Network looks at the disastrous effects of
privatisation on the care of our elderly and speaks to a worker at a Southern
Cross home in Edinburgh

 

When the
UKs biggest private care home provider Southern Cross announced on Monday that
it could no longer afford to pay rent for its care homes and would cease
operations it blamed falling local authority funding and rising rent prices.
However, a closer look at the causes demonstrates the danger of allowing
private companies to run essential public services. 

Southern
Cross, whose 750 care homes receive substantial funding from the tax payer, was
purchased by US private-equity firm Blackstone in 2004. Blackstone floated the
company on the stock market, making £630million in the process, and proceeded
to strip its most profitable assets, making £1billion by selling off property
belonging to the company. Southern Cross then continued to provide services by
renting the care homes it previously owned. Blackstone sold its shares in
Southern Cross in 2008 making a further £1 billion in profit and leaving behind
a company crippled by the rising cost of rents. 

Now Southern Cross has announced it cannot afford
to pay its rent bill and the company will fold. As private investors make
billions, the 31,000 elderly residents of Southern Cross' care homes face an
uncertain future. 

SWAN spoke to a care worker employed by Southern Cross who gave a worrying description
of care standards at the private company; 

“Very little of
the profit the home made went towards funding the home as Southern Cross were
clearly only interested in making money and didn’t seem to know or care about
giving appropriate care”. 

The care worker also
informed us that very little had been communicated to residents or staff at the
care home about their precarious future;

“I was told by
the administrator that he had heard something but had been forbidden to tell us
anything.  As far as I know residents
haven’t been told anything about what will happen to the home”.

 

The Council and
the landlord at this home are now searching for a new provider to deliver the
service.

This is a particularly disturbing example of what
happens when vital public services are put in the hands of private companies;
taxpayers' money generates huge profits for investors while leaving
service-users exposed and vulnerable and the taxpayer yet again to foot the
inevitable bill of cleaning up the mess that is left behind.





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.
-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

_______________________________________________
Swanedinburgh mailing list
Swanedinburgh at lists.noflag.org.uk
http://mail.lists.noflag.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/swanedinburgh_lists.noflag.org.uk
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.aktivix.org/pipermail/edinburgh-carecampaign/attachments/20110713/8659172e/attachment.htm>