PUBLIC SERVICE CUTS

[Stanley]

See Margaret Hodge for the latest criticisms of the CQC which is being forced to take on new roles and is under funded and staffed.

[Nolic]

Agree Comrade. I have a former colleague who had worked in children's residential care all his life but was by passed on the transfers to Ofsted was bemused in his new role of registering and inspecting medical services. I wonder how well qualified he is to be inspecting abortion clinics. This is real tick box mentality. Nolic

[Stanley]

Comrade, just one more example of essential functions being eroded by under-funding and tick-box bureaucracy. Private Eye is about the only source of investigation and criticism.

[Stanley]

Don't forget that the full effects of the public service cuts haven't hit home yet. The damage is ongoing. Did you see the report this week on the growing effects of the cuts in Arts Council funding? Not seen as a priority by many people but an essential part of our culture.

[Whyperion]

never mind , we need to pay for the corporation tax rate cuts , and with their new found wealth private enterprise will step in to sponser such cultural events (BP , Dow , Barclays Bank )

[Stanley]

South Yorkshire police are considering taking all officers off the streets and replacing them with 'community support officers' who of course cost less. However, CSOs are not allowed to intervene in anything that involves confrontation and do not have the same powers as a sworn officer. How can this be better policing? Is it worse policing? One more example of the erosion of services caused by the cuts.

[Whyperion]

I think it loses a bit of policing intelligence, but its a return to victorian values of the considerations of what by policing we actually mean , of course if 2 PCSOs can replace one PC then that is good and re-assuring, ( and community wardens also have recieved additional powers as well so there are more eyes of authority around to keep us in control )

[Tardis]

With all this arguement over Tax, the simple fact of the PCSO's on the beat is economics.

It obviously costs too much for a police officer to stroll around the streets not detecting crime.

In Lancashire we will be able to vote for the main man in October I believe although at the moment I can't be bothered to wade through the website

[Whyperion]

South Yorkshire say no police officer numbers will be removed from force strength , but its a deployment of the appropriate form of policing in its area , so lets belive them - If they gave them a bright green uniform they could be mobile police call boxes .

[Stanley]

The latest target is the benefits of persistent truant's parents. Will it lessen truanting?

[Stanley]

Bumped

[Stanley]

The Care Quality Commission comes under attack again on tonight's Panorama programme. This latest incident is the result of a woman installing a digital clock with a camera that reacted to motion in the room. She captured images of her mother who was severely arthritic, suffering from Altzheimer's's and totally dependent being abused by some staff. One staff member was gaoled for assault and faces deportation. The CQC inspected the home shortly after the incidents and gave it a good rating. Even though the footage the lady had filmed was known to them, the inspectors never asked for the footage or interviewed her. Disturbing stuff, Panorama seems to be doing an annual programme on abuse of the elderly. See this week's PE for more revelations about the 'tick-box' culture the CQC is running because they are not adequate for the task of doing proper in depth inspections.

[Stanley]

I'm up far too early this morning (see 'Dreams') and so I spent a bit of time trawling for web reports on the effects of cuts. I'm not going to bore you but the overall picture is of a general deterioration in services across the board. Most of them due to bad management and incompetence but a large proportion can be credibly linked to cuts in funding. Problem is of course that we become almost conditioned to expect this worsening of service. Perhaps we should be looking much more closely at how cuts are targeted. What were the priorities when the decisions were made? The general impression is that party DNA and politics has had more influence than fairness based on protection of the worst off in society. Back to the 19th century?

[Stanley]

Remember when the cap on housing benefit was announced and some claimed it was akin to ethnic cleansing in London but were attacked by the government and accused of scaremongering. Have a look at this LINK. Newham Council are being accused of just that this morning because they asked a housing association in Stoke on Trent to home 500 families who will shortly be displaced by higher rents due to the Olympic development.

[Stanley]

I heard the Chief Executive of Newham defending their actions and he made sense. He says that this is the tip of an iceberg of possible evictions and if they hadn't made some attempt to find a solution they would have attracted even more criticism. Sounded reasonable to me... He reckons there are many more to come across London.

[Stanley]

I was talking to a friend the other day who has spent her life in the care professions. We were talking about the cuts and she said that while these are serious they mask what she sees as a far bigger problem, the quality of care being delivered especially by new entrants to the profession. She is a talented artist and uses drawings she has done of old people in her teaching of new entrants. (The Welcome Foundation are to do an exhibition of her work) She shows the students pictures of different old people and asks them to give a first impression based on what they see. She says that it is quite worrying that they place so much importance on a first impression. She gave the example of someone whose face had been twisted by a stroke giving them a forbidding appearance. Her point is that this first impression can affect all subsequent care and is more important than many realise. She tries to persuade her students to reserve opinions until they have actually taken the trouble to assess the patients properly.

[Nolic]

Comrade, I would say that the limited finance- in the public sector, and the unwillingness of the private sector to spend in order to maximise profit are still the basic reason for your friend coming across new entrants to the profession who lack the "vocation" that used to be the corner stone of people wanting to undertake social care work.
Colleges are no longer providing vocational training for young people who might want to consider social care as there is no money in it for them. The private sector contributes very little to the cost of training as many carers are now expected to fund themselves.
So we end up with people who accept the minimum wage or sometimes less to undertake stressful, demanding and frequently unpleasant work.
Says a lot about our society when the most vulnerable and needy are cared for by the least trained and lowest paid. Nolic

[Stanley]

I see that the police are having a protest march today against the effects of the cuts...

[Tardis]

I see that the police are having a protest march today against the effects of the cuts...

Hopefully they will be kettled by students, as it seems only fair

[Stanley]

A public information request has resulted in figures which show that the number of people receiving free care in the home has fallen and some (In Brighton) are being charged £20 per hour. (LINK)

[Tardis]

I agree Stanley

That Mr Beveridge should have put it into the NHS from the start, instead of insisting that it should be paid for privately

[Stanley]

I had occasion to ring the fire brigade for some advice about a carbon monoxide detector and rang 5 different numbers before I got any response. Could it be that there just aren't enough staff to answer the phones? By the way, this included the fire safety help lines......
Eventually I found a man in Nelson who consulted with his fire safety colleagues. The advice I got was to call a reputable retailer such as B&Q......

[Stanley]

I was listening to that nice man Mr Beecroft giving us some more pearls of wisdom about how to get the economy going. His current target is redundancy payments. He doesn't see why people should be paid for losing their job, it is a drag on the economy. He also said that knowing that they had a redundancy pot coming if they hung on was a disincentive for workers to be mobile and go looking for a better job.
Funnily enough I agree with his last point. When we were all made redundant at Bancroft Shed in 1978 two things struck me, anyone who reached retirement age before the closure date lost all their entitlement and anyone who left to find another job lost theirs as well. My solution to this is not to abolish the cushion of the redundancy payment but make it an annual award held by the firm on behalf of the worker. If the worker left or retired they got the reward for previous loyalty and could either transfer it to the new employer or cash it in. This would not cost industry any more except for the cost of removing the unjust penalty on retiring workers and would solve the problem of labour mobility. Mr Beecroft's solution is draconian, unfair and takes no account of long service. It is part of the attempts being made to drag us back into the 19th century in terms of employment law and should be resisted.

[Bruff]

One could make the argument that the greater disincentive, among many disincentives, to getting mobile and looking for another job is the extortionate cost of housing and in particular the encouragement to ownership rather than renting. Good luck to anyone who raises proposals to tackle this....

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Agreed Richard. Every time I hear some 'expert' talking about the need for social mobility (in terms of labour movement or even moving tenants to low rent areas) I wonder whether they have taken any account of the trauma to the families involved. How would any of us feel if we were suddenly forced to move house to a different area, cut off from our orbit of friends, family and support networks. It's very easy for a politician to give the economic justification for such policies but if they don't take account of the consequences to the families they are being callous.