Care home staff face job cuts
Jun 12 2008 by Adrian Pearson, The Journal
FEARS that elderly people could be the losers in a care system shake-up were growing last night.
Northumberland County Council already has the strictest criteria in the North East when is comes to providing care services, with many elderly households being denied help until they are judged to be a critical case.
And now councillors are considering changes to the way they run the service, with £1.5m set aside to cover a series of redundancies. The cuts will affect both management staff and frontline care services, but final redundancy numbers have not yet been decided.
Northumberland Council said yesterday it believes it can still meet its commitment to providing suitable care to the elderly, and added that most of the carer redundancies were expected to come from staff unable to work to new patterns.
Earlier this week The Journal revealed how the cash-strapped council was forced to limit the care it offers to the elderly, with only the most frail and vulnerable of pensioners being allowed home care.
The savings measures have left many elderly people who struggle to feed and wash themselves forced to look elsewhere for help.
Coun Peter Jackson, leader of the Conservative Independent Group, said: “When these moves are considered further, we will be urging the council to avoid redundancies which impact on frontline services. I think all of us at the council know that there are some savings that can be made, especially in changes to the way we manage things here. But that should never come at a cost to standards in such a valuable service.
“I was at an executive meeting on Monday and I was assured during the budget presentation that these redundancies will be kept to the minimum and we will be watching to ensure that promise is kept.”
A Northumberland County Council spokeswoman said the changes were prompted following a review by the Commission for Social Care Inspection.
She added: “A new management team has reviewed the standards and a restructure within home care is currently taking place. This will result in a number of supervisory and management posts not being required.
“The service needs to become more flexible and new working arrangements for home carers will need to be put in place to achieve this.”
