UNISON speaking up for social care

UNISON is the major voice for social care and home care in the UK and this was underlined at this year’s national seminar in London on Thursday 20 October. Members from across the country backed an organising agenda to defend services, service users and workers amidst unprecedented cuts and privatisation.

The seminar condemned a personalisation agenda geared to cutting services rather than meeting individual needs. It exposed the mutualisation pilot as nothing more than privatisation, with money wasted on setting up the bureaucracy of the market rather than going to direct service provision.

While welcoming the Munro Report on child protection, delegates reported little positive change on the ground so far and questioned the government’s lacklustre approach to implementing it and its failure to provide the resources to make it happen.

Members brought horror stories from around the country about how cuts are affecting service users; the person needing daily care who was left with no service for a week because the private company that had taken over didn’t have the staff in place; the preventative services, identified as crucial by Munro, being cut on the front line, were among the examples.

Jim Board spoke of the management, policy and resource failures in children’s services in Doncaster where seven children died in a two year period. He underlined the importance of organisation at branch level, encouraging members to become involved and getting more and more stewards who work in, and know about social work.

Paul Gosling presented a report commissioned by UNISON highlighting galloping privatisation in elderly residential services with massive profiteering by private equity companies, while homes close down or change hands with all the uncertainty that brings – along with poorer and poorer services.

And through this national crisis, the government is posted missing in doing anything seriously about it.

Despite all the challenges, there was positive mood for action from participants. The seminar recognised that UNISON is not just fighting on pay, pensions and conditions but is also a powerful voice challenging the cuts, speaking up for the workforce, campaigning for good practice, pushing for better staff development, and most of all speaking up for the interests of service users.