Her speech. I address this full Council meeting because the financial year has been a complete disaster for the Older vulnerable people of Bristol. On behalf of the Homecare Assistants of the City I offer you this message:
We are disgusted at how we have been treated
We know the public has been misled
We know that service users are at risk
We will not give up fighting for our service users’ right to high quality care.
We will not be bullied out of our decent, public sector jobs, and cast aside into the private sector
We have repeatedly told Cabinet that there are problems with private sector carers. We have given them case after case of workers not knowing how to use a hoist, not knowing what a catheter bag is or a dossett box, almost unbelievably not knowing how to use a microwave.
I list below recent instances when private agency workers have failed turn up in the very sheltered housing unit where I work.
Agency staff arrived over three hours late
Service users didn't get morning medication prompt or breakfast until Council Homecare was alerted at 11am by an angry service user who was still awaiting care. By the time the agency staff had arrived the majority of the work had been covered by your in-house team.
Agency staff failed to arrive for a morning shift
Resulting in the Council Homecare having to scrabble around to fit in the extra work load and an extra member of staff being drafted in on their day off.
Agency staff failed to arrive for an afternoon / evening shift
After the agency member of staff failed to arrive for the start of the shift at 3pm our line manager called the agency to be told that the member of staff was on the way but may be late because of the bus. Our manager phoned them again at 4pm because the agency staff had still not arrived and was told that they didn't know where she was but would send another member of staff within the hour.
Despite promises throughout the evening no agency worker arrived which again caused inconvenience to the service users, extra workload to the member of staff who was on duty and compromised their safety and resulted in a member of staff coming in on her night off.
On all of the above occasions Bristol city home care stepped into the breach, working extra hours, covering extra workload.
On all of the above occasions the agency could not account for the whereabouts of its staff.
We have provided information about the massive turnover in agency staff. CSCI reports repeatedly criticise private agencies for arriving late for service user appointments or even not at all. When one of my own service users became a victim of private agency incompetence the worker did not bother to try and coax her out of bed in the morning and did not encourage her to take her tablets. As a consequence I found her at lunchtime, soaked in urine and struggling to sit upright with no pain relief. The Council has a recruitment freeze on in Home care, to cover a colleague’s maternity leave we have welcomed with open arms 12 different agency workers in just over 8 weeks. Yes, 12 different people to cover the work of one regular, friendly, reliable well-known face. Remember we work with people with dementia, recovering from strokes, the terminally ill. Is it right that they constantly open the door to complete strangers who are often not even in uniform?
So to bring you bang up to date, just this weekend a private agency Homecare has caused an injury to a service user and an injury to a Council Homecare on the same day because they failed to follow the correct manual handling procedure when using a hoist. These workers are not trained adequately, they are not paid adequately, they are not screened adequately, they are not supervised adequately – is it any wonder they are cheaper?
Homecare is a critically important service it should not be sold off at public auction to the cheapest bidder. The Council should be able to manage its own in house service properly; it is your best chance of providing a service to be proud of. In matters of the protection of vulnerable adults, when things go wrong the Council is blamed for its failure to monitor and oversee contracts properly and a multi-agency approach is blamed for failure to communicate properly. When things go wrong people die.
We already have 50% of the service in the private agencies – why can’t we keep 50% in house?
The Officers of the Council admit that the private agencies are overcharging them by at least £800,000 per year.
Part of my role as a Council Homecare is to provide a link between the Adult and Community Care directorate and the service user. If we are farmed out this link will be lost forever and our service users left vulnerable. Strong communication is vital to protect vulnerable adults. In house Homecare provides a lifeline to service users, if they are worried about anything they talk to us and they confide in us and they do that because we are part of the Council and they know that we act on things. The bottom line is that people don’t trust the private sector because they know they are in it for profit. It is just plain wrong for the Council to put cost cutting before the care of Bristol’s most vulnerable people.
You are at your last Council meeting of the year, no doubt thinking about the upcoming local elections. We are thinking about the upcoming local elections too and we will not go away. We will fight for our jobs and our service users. Any one of you who sits quietly and does not speak out against this wrong-headed privatisation is as guilty as the cabinet and the senior officers of Adult Community Care.
Please support Bristol City Council’s Homecare Assistants; please stand up for older and vulnerable people in our City.
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