Author Archives: Maureen

‘Good neighbours’ are not the answer to our care problems

September 13, 2013   Carers, Older care, Social care, ukcuts

‘Good neighbours’ are not the answer to our care problems

Professional care is expensive. Professional care is expensive.

Thursday, September 12, 2013
12:00 PM

So Suffolk County Council’s cabinet has decided to have a review of the way home care is delivered in the county . . . and is talking about community services, improving services etc etc.

I would love to think that the county council could find the Holy Grail that will allow more and more people to be cared for in a better way in the community while spending less money.

Sadly, in the real world these aspirations are wholly unrealistic. The changing demographics of the 21st Century mean many of the “community solutions” are not viable.

There seems to be an idea that being a “good neighbour” in communities across Suffolk will ease the burden of home care. That is just not the case. There is the world of difference in Mrs Smith’s neighbour knocking on the door and seeing if she wants anything from the village shop and the kind of professional care that is increasingly being needed.

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Paid Carers to be electronically monitored in bid to save cash.

September 12, 2013   Carers, ukcuts, Uncategorized

Carers to be electronically monitored in bid to save cash

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Carers will be monitored electronically to make sure they provide the care they are supposed to.

Gloucestershire County Council bosses say the Electronic Call Monitoring (ECM)scheme is not about keeping tabs on people but it will lead to major savings and keep people “safe”.

  1. Kathy Williams

The ECM system will initially only apply to care professionals who help people with learning disabilities.

Carers will check in to the system when they arrive at a client’s house and check out when they leave while alerts will be flagged when a carer doesn’t arrive within a particular timeframe.

At the moment the county council commissions carers to provide a certain amount of care but it has no concrete way of knowing if the number of hours commissioned, and paid for, is actually being delivered.

Accurately tracking the movements of carers will change that, allowing the council to only pay them for the service they actually provide.

The scheme was piloted by a handful of providers in Gloucestershire last year, showing the council it can expect savings in the region of seven per cent.

The learning disability community based care budget is worth £21 million a year.

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‘Shocking’ bedroom tax should be axed, says UN investigator

September 11, 2013   Carers, ukcuts, Uncategorized

‘Shocking’ bedroom tax should be axed, says UN investigator

Housing expert Raquel Rolnik says policy could constitute a violation of the human right to adequate housing

Raquel Rolnik

Raquel Rolnik, UN special rapporteur on housing, right, with Anne Lear, a housing officer in Govanhill, Glasgow. Photograph: Martin Hunter for the Guardian

The United Nations’ special investigator on housing has told the British government it should scrap the bedroom tax, after hearing “shocking” accounts of how the policy was affecting vulnerable citizens during a visit to the UK.

Britain’s record on housing was also worsening from a human rights perspective, Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur on housing, said in a Guardian interview after presenting her preliminary findings to the government.

Rolnik, a former urban planning minister in Brazil, said Britain’s previously good record on housing was being eroded by a failure to provide sufficient quantities of affordable social housing, and more recently by the impact of welfare reform.

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