Tag Archives: social care
Virgin could take on Devon children care contract
Virgin Care has been named as preferred bidder to run a £130m contract for children’s services in Devon.
The company, which runs children’s services in Surrey, could take over in March 2013 for three years.
It beat off competition from Devon Partnership Trust with Barnado’s, Young Devon and Interserve and Serco with Cornwall Partnership Trust.
Services are currently delivered by about 1,100 staff employed by NHS Devon and Devon County Council.
‘Clinical excellence paramount’
The NHS said appointing a single organisation to run all the services across the county would offer the best and most integrated care.
Crackdown on care visit clock-watchers
Pensioners will be able to ask for services that suit them
By Daniel Martin, Whitehall Correspondent
UPDATED: 01:21, 10 July 2012
Ministers will pledge tough measures to end ‘clock-watching care’ visits of just 15 minutes by home helps which breach pensioners’ human rights.
Regulations, to be unveiled tomorrow, will aim to stop councils commissioning elderly care ‘by the minute’ from private care providers.
Instead, councils will be told to commission care on the basis of pensioners’ individual needs – giving them enough time to complete essential tasks such as washing, dressing and heating up food.
Councils are facing a very tough decision
Councils are facing very tough decisions
Posted by:
11 May, 2012
Local government insiders have described the government’s welfare reforms as a “time bomb” for local government, and in recent weeks you may have heard a whispered countdown.
There was news that London councils were preparing to move people on their housing lists to houses many miles away because the cap on housing benefit will be insufficient to meet the rent demands of private sector landlords.
The Department for Work & Pensions also published details of what it wants from councils wishing to pilot face-to-face support work for benefit claimants moving to the new Universal Credit, including a challenging timetable and ducking the question of how or whether local government would be involved or funded in the long term.
