Sunday 17 June 2012

What Next?

Hi,

The job is going well, thanks for asking!

I now work in the care industry looking specifically after people with Learning Difficulties (LD), or to be more specific looking after the money that Local Authorities pay to companies like mine to look after people with LDs. It is rewarding but it also reminds me that the battle is not over and we need to fight very hard to protect our way of life.

Strong words?!

  1. Bedford Borough Council is applying a blanket 2.5% reduction to is care fees for LD residents (in addition to pay freezes for previous years and no inflation uplift of 5% for this year). I note the Chief Execs still managed to get bigger pay packet! However, they do not expect the level of care to diminish because Care Companies should be able to absorb this cut. The people telling me this had an argument with me over the cost of raising a single invoice which he insisted was more than £50 and he suggested that to save money we invoice once a year against one a month currently (in arrears - giving them 12 months free credit). If it cost us £50 to raise a single invoice we would have gone bust a long time ago! How can you deal with people like this. To put it into context, our staff have had no pay rises for the last 3 years. We are not fat cats - just a company trying to improve the quality of life of others. We cannot absorb the
  2. Worcester Local Authority is moving people out of supported living back into residential services. This is a big deal because my company tries to operate a "Care Pathway". By this I mean that if a resident is admitted into one of our Homes we do not treat him as a captive cash cow until death. We operate services ranging from high need residential services, to low need residential, to leaving care, to supported living etc. and work in conjunction with local social workers and the Local Authority Care Managers to place our residents in the most appropriate setting. Some residents need everything done for them. Some residents can live independently with support. Some residents move from high need to low need to supported living, hence the term "Care Pathway". It may surprise you to learn than independent living costs more to deliver than residential care because some local Authorities I deal with demand savings. However, Worcester recognise this fact because they are moving all Supported Living residents back into residential. People who require care in Worcester have lost their right to choose the most appropriate services for their needs - is this a return to the bad old days of locking all people different from the norm away in big old houses. (In homes the most common care ratio is for 1 member of staff to 2 residents. Therefore1 member of staff can look after 2 residents during a shift whilst delivering full time oversight to both. In supported living the residents are generally not located in the same building so a member of staff on an 8 hour shift cannot adequately look after 2 residents in the same way because she is not on call to both residents over an 8 hour period and she may have travel time between the residents.) Supported living costs more and delivers more.

The overriding principle we work to is that every action must be taken in the best interests of the resident. It seems to me that the overriding principle the Local Councils and Authorities work to is that the disabled cost too much and they need to suffer like the rest of us, without any real understanding of the levels of suffering the disabled have to endure at present.

Expect to see legal challenges. If the CQC has any balls they will stop this.


Which brings me back to the title of this blog.

WHAT NEXT.

We made a noise with the Spartacus Report. We fought WRB valiantly. We told the government they were making us ill and killing us. They didn't listen and people that bravely fought them are now either dead or recovering from illnesses no doubt brought on by this Governments intransigence.

I read in the press that all the things we were told by the Fascists (Ian Duncan Smith, Grayling, Fraud, etc) were lies as the WCA is not fit for purpose, and the closure of Remploy has not been followed with any effort to include the disabled in the mainstream workplace.

Don't worry. The Paralympic are coming and the British Disabled are happy to perform like monkeys on chains for the establishment. I hope that our Paralympians have some integrity and don't forget us.

I'm not holding my breath. If they perform well they may get an honour and get to condemn the disabled to more servitude in future.

If we accept that the disabled have been targeted by this Condem government WHY are we supporting the Paralympics. 

The apologists for the Condems argue we mustn't allow Sport to be influenced by Politics despite the fact it was a political decision to bring the Olympics to London in 2012 and we are all paying for the best seats to be stolen from us and sold to the highest bidder.


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