Today's Editorial Comment in the Bristol Evening Post

Public Issues over private Home Care

The issues over bringing in more private firms to provide Home Care services has undergone a further twist. After the protests, debates and finally, a Cabinet decision, comes the disclosure that the city council is overpaying home care companies to the tune of £800,000 a year.

And the news that it is looking at bringing in an electronic monitoring system to ensure that this does not happen in the future will undermine the confidence people are being asked to have in a wholly private home care service.

Basically, this means that currently the city council is paying almost £1 million a year too much for the private services it recieves. How on earth can such overpayments have been allowed to happen?

Is this proof of what can go wrong when a city council gives up running its own service? The city council has argued that buying home care service will not only be cheaper but that the standard of service will be the same. That is a difficult arguement to sustain given this latest revelation.

And it will give the opponents of this switch to privately provided home care services more concern and arguements to use in their continued campaign. But equally significant it raises cause for concern about the relationship between the city council and those who deliver these services.

See: http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=144913&command=displayContent&sourceNode=231190&home=yes&more_nodeId1=144922&contentPK=17017085