Comments on: Why we need a new national care service

By: Angela Gifford

Angela Gifford — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 10:16:00 +0000

As a private care provider who came into the market place in 1980 offering domiciliary care to people with high dependency care needs, I do not agree with all your views on private providers. To date, my company has provided on a nationwide basis, over 70 million hours of care. We do not take care packages we cannot fulfil, we have a robust recruitment system and robust monitoring processes, our clients die at home which is why they contracted with us in the first place, and yet we are under utilised by both the NHS and Social Services, Why? because we use self employed carers, all of whom are compliant with the legal specifications but the statutory services cannot think outside of the box and think such providers are somehow sub standard.

Many care providers take on work they cannot fulfil, set rates which are not financially viable, recruit unsuitable staff, basically bodies and give the impression that the care sector is totally in chaos. It is not. It is in a very sad state, but there are hundreds of care providers who each day provide care services of wonderful quality, safe and effective and yet are dismissed based on the care providers who do in fact bring disgrace to the sector. Angela Gifford, www. ablecommunitycare.com www. angelaegifford.copm.

By: brat673

brat673 — Sun, 01 Oct 2017 20:00:00 +0000

Take a look at care home where owners borrowed large amounts of money for the care homes. Paid large dividends to themselves and had to hoist charges to patients are reduce standards.

By: brat673

brat673 — Sun, 01 Oct 2017 19:56:00 +0000

Perhaps the funding should be per person in care (as per school pupils). Given to the local authority, but ring fenced ??

By: @PositiveMoneyLeeds

@PositiveMoneyLeeds — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 09:45:00 +0000

This is my own view and has not been sanctioned in any way by Positive Money’s central body nor by the Leeds local group of Positive Money.

Jamie Goodland has accurately described the problems. However, it is all too obvious that both of the major parties and the wider “establishment”, however you define it, are hell bent on continuing the attempt to control everything from the centre. This article falls into the same trap and provides no realistic solutions. A call to the LAs and the NHS is just plain flaccid. It will not happen with any consistency however hard it is pushed from the centre.

However inconvenient it may be for the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, the Trades Unons, the Civil Service or any other centrally based and serviced institution, central control has failed for several decades. I see no way of fixing the model either now or in the future. We need genuinely devolved regional government, properly funded, with full control over its own institutions and with central interference actually banned, not simply frowned upon. When Cameron asked whether we should allow Scottish consitituencies’ MPs to vote on English matters, my own response was that you and other English based MPs shouldn’t either. If it is an English problem it is by definition regional and the decisions should be taken within the regions, not at Westminster.

Each region will have its own responses to our “ageing population” problem even though several will be very similar. That goes for many of the other problems society faces.

Labour’s City Regions concept is inadequate. It is piecemeal and fails to even consider the needs of the surrounding towns, villages, rural communities, let alone to take account of them. The current Tory attempt to persuade local authorities to collaborate over the provision of services on a regional basis is just another attempt to save money and will actually undermine the role of those same local authorities whether or not intended.

So let’s have it, Open Democracy. A clarion call for real democracy with real results for real people. For all of us, not just some of us.