Thursday 18 April 2013

Your Choice the Wrong Choice

This weeks Council meeting was very reminiscent of the Thatcher years withthe old battle grounds drawn. One Party on the side of the vulnerable and the other kicking the weak when they are down.The ‘Your Choice’ debacle just highlights the case.
A Your Choice Care worker said:

"There is a sinister undertone to these proposals. The people who will lose out as always are the vulnerable service users who take second place in what is now a business not care provision."
 
The Leader himself has openly admitted that the Council face a difficult challenge as the number of elderly and disabled residents requiring support is likely to increase 10 fold over the next 10 years. Is it therefore right and proper that a company interested in profit should be tasked with delivering these services?

We know that not all services provided by the Council need to be provided in house, but the business case needs to be proved. And in this case it has not, the process like the outsourcing project is deeply flawed.

But there are inconsistencies in their argument. They leap like lemmings off a cliff chasing the mantra of more for less although we have always felt that this just another con trick.

They never planned to get more for less, but provide less for less. But out of the blue they decided to keep the refuse service in house and bring back the recycling service. So why farm out services to the vulnerable for profit and not the bins? Just like their counterparts in Westminster the veneer has slipped the nasty Tories never went away.
 
The proposals are exceedingly questionable and need to be revisited. The recent decision to outsource back office services to Capita has led to a series of statements from the Council. "We will have £120 million to spend on public services in Barnet which we would not otherwise have. This will help to protect frontline services such as social care and libraries."

In which case the Council should follow the example set by Stockport Council and bringing back these services under the direct control of the Council in order to ensure there is no erosion of service delivery to vulnerable adults in the London Borough of Barnet."

You don't need a great mind to understand what effect this will have on services.

 One example given by Unison is: "For continence issues, those who require changing in the night do not require the use of hoists as they are already in bed. It takes two staff to safely use a hoist" - the implications if the above cut is implemented is that if a service user is incontinent during the night they will have to wait until the morning before they can be helped."

It must be absolutely clear now that those who are wilfully rushing ahead with the implementation of One Barnet ideology in this borough are a bungling group of ideologists totally removed from the realities of real world.

But they can put a stop to this. We have spoken of legacies this evening and if they do not heed the cautions the Tory legacy will be a borough that is left bankrupt with local services damaged beyond repair.

Conviction politics is all well and good if it delivers for all and particularly the most vulnerable but it is not always the right choice.  

And Your Choice is clearly not the Right Choice.

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