Hi all,

my Liberal Democrat Spokesman, Cllr Alan Bailey, has recently written to the Cabinet expressing his concern at the proposals of the Conservatives to once again try and sell the Care Homes.

I have decided to post a copy of what my fellow County Councillor Alan Bailey sent to Cabinet yesterday. The ongoing problems that the Conservatives are experiecneing in trying to sell these care homes is starting to look silly.

SUPPORTED ACCOMMODATION FOR OLDER PEOPLE IN LEICESTERSHIRE 

I note that at their meeting on Tuesday15th December, the Cabinet are to consider a report from the Director of Adult Social Care and Health entitled “Supported Accommodation for Older People in Leicestershire”. I would be grateful if copies of this letter could be shown to the Cabinet Members so that my comments, below, can be considered before they take their decision on this item.

My comments are as follows:-

I have real concerns about the recommendation to transfer nine of the Council’s remaining in-house Elderly Persons Homes (EPHs) and associated day care services, with the option of closing one or more of the homes should  there be “not sufficient market interest” or  if “a transfer cannot be concluded following a full tender process”.

My concerns include the following:-

1)     It is a high risk strategy to offer TEN care homes for transfer/sale when it has recently proved impossible to transfer ‘only’ SIX homes. The paper to cabinet admits that “in the current economic climate there remains a risk of market uncertainty and potential for a transfer not to be completed” and that “the fact that other authorities in the East Midlands are also putting their homes on the market within a similar time scale increases the risk.”

2)     Since March, 2007, this will be the third attempt to sell or transfer some, or most, of the remaining in-house care homes. The previous two failed, the most recent in June, 2009 “because of the impact of the prevailing and unprecedented economic climate.” The economic climate is no better now that it was six months ago.

3)     Playing High Risk Strategies with the homes of elderly people is wrong, especially when the stated aim of the process is to make savings.

4)     I am concerned that having gone through almost three years of uncertainty our elderly care homes residents are once again having the future of their homes put in doubt.

5)     Just this week a LGiU policy briefing quoted the Care Quality Commission Quality of Care reports 2008-09 as stating that “Council owned …(residential and domiciliary care) ….. services perform best, and private sector services least well.” It also says:- “It is interesting to note that council owned services perform best – out-sourcing is not necessarily always the best solution.”

6)     Council run homes are popular with residents, their families and staff. The Councils’ own consultation results prove this.

7)     Although about 90% of the County Council’s residents in residential care are already in independent care homes we believe that the remaining council run homes, few though they are, offer an element of choice.

8 )     These drastic proposals regarding the homes for elderly people are being made simply for the reasons of finance. Greater weight should be given to the wishes of the residents.

I believe that we should be exploring further the opportunities for in-house savings. In the Director’s paper in June, 2009, it was reported that “during the course of the discussions with the consortium a number of more efficient working practices have been identified which, when fully implemented across the 10 in-house homes will make a contribution to achieving this” (required savings).  Have these been fully implemented?

Yours sincerely

Alan Bailey CC

Liberal Democrat Spokesman, Adult Social Care & Health

I am pleased to announce that the Liberal Democrat County manifesto for the June 2009 has been released. Thanks for everyone who has contacted us with ideas and contributions.

Below is our ‘Pledges for Leicestershire’ and the full manifesto is availble from the links on the left side of the page.

Simon

Our Pledges for Leicestershire 

• We will devolve many decisions (as appropriate) to Local Forums and allow the local Councillors to engage with their communities to make the decisions that will affect them

• We will continue to campaign against centrally imposed housing targets – with a clear emphasis on protecting

  Greenfield land & regenerating Brownfield sites

• We will start a committed recruitment drive to bring in Youth & Community workers to provide support and guidance to young people.

• We will halt the above inflation increase in charges for Home Care introduced by the Conservative administration over the last few years. (The Home Care hourly charge rose from £6 to £8.40 (40%) from 2005/06 to 2008/09).

• We will work with local businesses to preserve jobs and maintain workforce skills.

• We will re-establish the ‘Community Plus’ budget to support Community Associations in a fair and transparent way

• We will set ambitious recycling targets for household waste of at least 65%. And pursue alternative technologies for waste disposal rather than rely on mass scale incineration.

• We will get tough on anti-social behaviour across Leicestershire.  We will expand the work of the IMPACT teams to combat anti-social behaviour

• We will always focus on getting good quality services – not wasting tax payer’s money on gimmicks and pet projects.

• The privatisation of the employment service and social fund:   The Liberal Democrats are not opposed to contracting out employment services per se, but examples from abroad suggest that private companies tend to cream the easier-to-help clients off the top and ‘park’ the most challenging cases, so that the people most in need of support do not receive it.  We are also concerned that the process does not involve a level playing field: Jobcentre Plus itself is not allowed to bid, and smaller voluntary and third-sector organisations, who often understand the clients’ needs very well, are crowded out by big multinational private organisations.  These organisations tend to pay lower wages to their staff and experience higher rates of staff turnover, which in turn has a detrimental effect on those that they are supposed to be supporting into work.  On the subject of the Social Fund, it is far from certain that any company would wish to take it on in the current economic environment. 

• Work for your benefit schemes:  ‘Work for your benefit’ involves people working for up to £4 less than the minimum wage^[1], which is completely unacceptable.  This measure will not effectively target ‘scroungers’ but will hurt those who already face the most significant barriers to work, such as those with disabilities or mental health issues.  The Government’s own research into similar ‘workfare’ schemes in the USA, Canada and
  Australia found little evidence that it increased the likelihood of finding work, and that it is least effective within weak labour markets with high unemployment; a situation that we are increasingly facing in the
  UK. 

• The abolition of income support:  We support the introduction of a single working-age benefit but this is not the way to do it.  Such a benefit needs it needs designing, modelling and piloting.  The Government claims that its reforms will simplify the system but simply moving people from one benefit to another, or changing the name of a benefit, just adds to the complexity and confusion, and we have concerns that people will lose out under these changes. 

• Cutting the benefits of single parents, carers and those with long-term illness:  The Bill would abolish all new claims for adult dependency additions on Maternity and Carer’s Allowance.  It would also phase out the additions for those already receiving Carer’s Allowance.  We are concerned that some of the most vulnerable people will see their incomes fall, and we have tried to remove these provisions from the Bill.  

• Requiring all parents of young children to seek work:  We do not support measures to compel lone parents with children under school age to undertake ‘work-related activity’. The Government clearly regards raising young children as a second class activity and these measures would place decisions about child care and child rearing into the hands of Jobcentre Advisers rather than the parents.  We tabled an amendment to the Bill that would have ensured that parents with children under the age of 7 would not have to carry out any work-related activity.   We would also want an assurance that appropriate and affordable childcare was made available across the country before the Government makes work-related activity a condition for lone parents to receive benefit.
  

[1] Estimate used by Citizens Advice and CPAG is that people may be forced to work for as little as £1.73 per hour, compared with the minimum wage of £5.73 per hour

The ICE (In Case of Emergency) initiative highlights an easy way to identify crucial contact numbers in emergency situations – which can actually save lives.We all carry our mobiles with names and numbers stored in its memory. If we were involved in an accident or taken seriously ill, how would emergency services staff know which of the numbers to call?Mobile phone users are urged to store the number of a person or persons who should be contacted in emergency under the name ‘ICE’. In an emergency situation, those personnel attending a patient who may not be conscious would quickly be able to contact the right person by simply dialling the number stored as ‘ICE’.All emergency services support the ICE initiative.

This notice was highlighted by Leicestershire County Council

The liberal democrat group has become aware of the closure of a private sector care home  in Loughborough. Shelthorpe house was sold by the County council in 2004 and is due to close because the operator, Rushcliffe care, claims it cannot afford the refurbishment costs. With the County Council currently selling 6 other care homes the liberal democrats believe that current residents and their families will be concerned. Cllr Bailey Liberal Democrat Spokesman for Adult Social Care & Health has called for some clarification as to why this has happened.  

Cllr Bailey stated “ I am concerned by this news; it is unfortunate that this is the sort of risk associated with the private sector running care homes. In fact I raised this concern myself at meetings of the Scrutiny committee for Adult Social Care and Health as part of our reason for opposing the sale, however I do believe that the specific reasons for the closure of Shelthrope need to be identified before elected representatives start to make assumptions with little if any evidence. I will say in response to the claims made by Rushcliffe Care regarding their reason to close is that they must have known the state of the property when they bid for it in the first place and would hopefully have set aside plans to invest the necessary capital – yet the current financial crisis may have made that unworkable. Alongside this I hope the council will investigate to see if any capital value can be reclaimed if Rushcliffe Care sell the land.  

Primarily we should ensure that current round of sales of care homes will contain sufficient safeguards to protect our elderly residents and ensure suitable investment to keep the properties open. In addition I welcome Mr Sprason’s guarantee that this will not happen again but I hope to get some clarification from him as to how he can make such a guarantee as well as the reasons for the closure of Shelthorpe and what the council will do next.