tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post8132712118233344383..comments2023-05-01T08:32:50.869+01:00Comments on Keep Bristol Council's Home Care Service!: Privatisation and a full time homecare job in Bristol for £100 a weekUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-91924725816173067492011-09-09T16:57:39.167+01:002011-09-09T16:57:39.167+01:00"The managers say it is the terms of service,..."The managers say it is the terms of service, the high levels of sick leave, the fact that some staff walk between calls [that explain high cost of in house service]."<br /><br />Jon, the point is that if you read and interpreted the accounts yourself, which is simple to do, you'd realise your managers explanation is, to say the least, partial.<br /><br />Terms of service, sick leave and walking between calls do not push unit costs up by £16 an hour.<br /><br />The claim is absurd. It appears to be trying to blame staff for management decisions and blunders.The Bristol Bloggerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05776065164023718096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-73646893751548188982011-09-08T16:50:18.885+01:002011-09-08T16:50:18.885+01:00Today, I telephoned the Bedminster job centre and ...Today, I telephoned the Bedminster job centre and was transferred to the department who deal with employers advetising positions with them. I explained that I was a Care Assistant and could not believe my eyes when I read the job description as if the level of exploitation for both service users and care staff in the private sector wasn't bad enough - a full time job being advertised for £2.50 an hour under the 'guise' of an apprentiship really topped it all.<br /><br />He asked me for the job reference number and immediately reported how suspicious it looked, not seeming like a genuine apprentiship at all, especially stating that the applicant must be 18+ and a driver. He put me on hold whilst he was speaking to his manager, he then told me that the advertisment would be removed as it was so suspicious.......<br /><br />Checked a few minutes ago and it's gone.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-76485564228768296052011-09-08T10:06:21.230+01:002011-09-08T10:06:21.230+01:00The same thing happens in the private company I wo...The same thing happens in the private company I work for. They just seem so desperate to win over all the care packages that have arisen from Council Homecare being abolished. One collegue told me that she was sent out to work before her CRB check came back, they haven't checked my references after 7 months. I don't even have a contract of employment yet.<br /><br />Funnily enough, I just got of the phone to the CQC regarding the job advertisments posted here. They didn't seem very interested, stating that it seemed genuine enough if it was being advertised as an 'apprentiship'Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-72171215685460639862011-09-08T09:11:58.000+01:002011-09-08T09:11:58.000+01:00(I'm the poster from 16.33) Councillor Jon Rog...(I'm the poster from 16.33) Councillor Jon Rogers - when you tender out the contract will you be asking about employment practices? Homecare services are notorious for poor - and often illegal - working conditions. In my view, this is how they drive prices down.<br /><br />The effect of poor working conditions is also felt by service users. The company I worked for had relatively high staff turnover (the sector as a whole has high staff turnover). The employer didn't want to take on too many staff because of the overheads involved, so sometimes we were getting by with less than the minimum needed to fill the rota. On some occasions we even sent out new staff who weren't trained or CRB checked. On one particularly alarming occasion, one new member of staff was out lone working when her CRB check came back to the office. It was as long as your arm, and most of the offences on it related to stuff that had occurred whilst working... <br /><br />Oh, and CQC rated us as a "good" provider, whatever that means these days.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-43335717367073813242011-09-08T09:01:27.286+01:002011-09-08T09:01:27.286+01:00@ Dr John Rogers. I have sent you an email this mo...@ Dr John Rogers. I have sent you an email this morning, giving an example from experience of where parallell provision is not happening. Looking forward to your response.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-69481001260571855192011-09-08T05:56:57.838+01:002011-09-08T05:56:57.838+01:00Rogers has treated me - what is he playing at?Rogers has treated me - what is he playing at?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-63272158254239300032011-09-07T22:44:19.424+01:002011-09-07T22:44:19.424+01:00It is not the figures that baffle me. I do not und...It is not the figures that baffle me. I do not understand why the costs of in house service have not been brought down. Instead they have increased every year since 2005.<br /><br />The unions blame the managers for not managing properly.<br /><br />The managers say it is the terms of service, the high levels of sick leave, the fact that some staff walk between calls.<br /><br />I accepted last year that I was no more likely to resolve this conundrum than my predecessors, so I worked with Cabinet colleagues, officers and David Johnstone to develop the new merged arrangements that we agreed at Cabinet in October 2010. Those plans also went through cross-party scrutiny as well as being shared with the unions and of course the general public.Jon Rogersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-73830261570708637512011-09-07T22:27:17.627+01:002011-09-07T22:27:17.627+01:00This evening I paid a visit to a client who has ju...This evening I paid a visit to a client who has just lost his Council Home Care Assistant after many years. This was the first visit from our company. There was no 'handover' at all, no care plan in place in order for me to know his needs. The office could tell me nothing about him, I am the first to visit him - we took on his care package only today,(no manager has undertaken an assessment yet).He naturally is bewildered and very depressed about the whole situation. I reported to my Manager that I really was concerned about the absence of a care plan and risk assessment to be told "Your an experienced carer, I'm sure you're figure it out".<br /><br />The shape of things to come.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-8982075977043742122011-09-07T21:26:17.662+01:002011-09-07T21:26:17.662+01:00(6) "the unions were led to believe that the ...(6) "<i>the unions were led to believe that the proposals in 2010 would retain a CTC, long term traditional homecare service in Bristol</i>"<br /><br />JR] There does seem to have been a misunderstanding, and I am aware that it has caused upset. This was raised with me in May, and we brought the issue back to Cabinet for clarification. The specific phrase in the October 2010 report available at...<br /><br />https://www.bristol.gov.uk/committee/2010/ua/ua000/1028_5.pdf<br /><br />was...<br /><br />That the Continuing to Care Service be merged with the STAR service by March 2011.<br /><br /><i>4.1 The functions of the new, combined service will be two fold<br /><br />(a) promoting rehabilitation and Intermediate Care within the community in order to reduce rates of residential care and hospital admission, and to facilitate timely discharge from hospital.<br />(b) to develop a specialist service to support people with dementia living within the community.</i><br /><br />I have checked again, and there is no mention of a CTC service as part of the function.Jon Rogersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-20588944475238977442011-09-07T21:25:46.002+01:002011-09-07T21:25:46.002+01:00(5) "Bristol's Homecare Services would co...(5) "<i>Bristol's Homecare Services would continue to provide emergency back up cover when private sector agencies go bust.</i><br /><br />JR] The emergency services will clearly need to continue to be provided. This is not changed by the decision in 2010, hence I don't think any mention needed to be made. I will check this understanding (and indeed all I am saying) with officers in case I am misunderstanding anything. This is currently done by in-house staff and independent or agency staff. I expected that our inhouse STAR service would provide such cover and our contracts with independent sector providers do include provision for emergency care. It is vital that people are covered at all times.Jon Rogersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-78440619206926328412011-09-07T21:25:11.938+01:002011-09-07T21:25:11.938+01:00(4) "The report signals an intention to merge...(4) "<i>The report signals an intention to merge the intensive homecare service (known as STAR) with the CTC service and to offer CTC staff specialist dementia training.</i>"<br /><br />JR] This is my understanding of what has been done. The STAR and CTC merging was to use the combined staff to deliver a new dementia service and enhance the STAR service. This was explicit in the October report.Jon Rogersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-61969771284545689632011-09-07T21:24:40.812+01:002011-09-07T21:24:40.812+01:00(3) "He even mentioned that older people were...(3) "<i>He even mentioned that older people were getting 'parallel provision' as both Council carers and agency workers acted together during a handover period. This is not happening.</i>" <br /><br />JR] I specifically double checked that this is happening. If you have examples where this is falling down then please email me at jon.rogers@bristol.gov.uk as I have been assured that the transition is being well handled.Jon Rogersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-43867187799057824352011-09-07T21:24:01.219+01:002011-09-07T21:24:01.219+01:00(2)"It was unfortunate that Cllr Hopkins conf...(2)"<i>It was unfortunate that Cllr Hopkins confused personalised budgets with in-house homecare provision.</i>"<br /><br />JR] I think this is a misunderstanding of the confusing terminology. Cllr Hopkins is right that personalised budgets will apply to homecare provision. Every H&SC service user will have a budget. Only a minority will hold the budget themselves (currently about 10% of people who have been assessed, elderly and others) - that is known as "Direct payments". <br /><br />JR] See http://www.bristol.gov.uk/node/3591#jump-link-6 for more details.Jon Rogersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-69675275729508431942011-09-07T21:23:23.276+01:002011-09-07T21:23:23.276+01:00Many thanks for your detailed and informative anal...Many thanks for your detailed and informative analysis.<br /><br />I have copied it to officers for their comments, but meanwhile here are some observations of my own.<br /><br />I will make comments as separate comments if I may?<br /><br /><i>(1) "..if Brunelcare are so ace (and I have no reason to think they are not), why does Cllr Rogers think 'the only way' to improve Bristol Homecare would be to 'tear up' employment contracts? Why not transfer Council Homecare workers to employment with Brunelcare with a contract to run the lot?</i>"<br /><br />JR] An interesting possibility. First can I apologise. I think that I overstated the need to tear up the contract, but I think it would need major changes to become competitive. That is a potential fruitful area to discuss with the Unions and staff in due course. It would be good to discuss how Brunelcare can offer excellent service and competitive prices. I used them as an example to show that good quality is absolutely possible in the independent sector. My guess is that they do not support sick leave arrangements that give a minimum of 6m full pay and 12m half pay, coupled with 14 days per person annual sickness on average? I also suspect that they do not pay double time to staff on Sunday even if they are sick. Then paying a second member of staff double time to cover, and finally giving a day off in lieu (which also needs to be covered by yet more staff).<br /><br />JR] Additionally, in Bristol we don't cut costs to the bone. We have a minimum rate of £15 plus enhancements, and then service is judged not by low cost, but by quality. I have heard other LAs cut rates well below that amount. We do not need to save money by jeopardising service quality.Jon Rogersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-69521608716740846602011-09-07T20:55:51.423+01:002011-09-07T20:55:51.423+01:00How can Janke be "baffled" by and Rogers...How can Janke be "baffled" by and Rogers "not know"about a simple set of expenditure accounts?<br /><br />All they need to do is obtain the management accounts for the home care service in spreadsheet form and look at the column marked 'expenditure'. This will detail precisely what they are spending their/our money on.<br /><br />Have they not seen them? Can they not read? Can't the Chief Exec on £180k pa or the Head of Resources on £140k pa explain? Or are they all completely baffled by a column of numbers under the heading 'expenditure' in a spreadsheet?The Bristol Bloggerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05776065164023718096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-56421986766799670032011-09-07T17:31:11.865+01:002011-09-07T17:31:11.865+01:00I called ACAS yesterday and was told that under th...I called ACAS yesterday and was told that under the Working Regulations Act 1998 my company should be paying travelling time. When you are travelling between clients you are on 'company business' and should get paid as such.<br /><br />Of course the company gets out of this by using the clause in the contract "your place of work is the service users home" - therefore you are constantly travelling to your place of work and so they don't have to pay out! They refer to the service user as an "assignment" and state "You do have the right to refuse any assignment"... <br /><br />Yesterday, I worked 7am -10pm, three of those hourse were made up of travelling time for which I will not get paid. Between the hours of 7am - 10am alone, I provided care to 8 "assignments", each one is supposed to receive 30 minutes of quality care, that also includes travelling time between calls of course!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-81347485099920608572011-09-07T16:33:21.297+01:002011-09-07T16:33:21.297+01:00I used to work for a local homecare provider in th...I used to work for a local homecare provider in the office. I can tell you several reasons why the private sector may be able to offer a cheaper service. In the first place, the terms and conditions of contracts are barely legal. The majority of our staff were on an "available hours" contract. This means that they told us what hours they were available in any given week, and we would offer them slots in those hours. They were only paid for the actual slots they worked, but the contract stipulated that in order to get the work they had to be "ready and waiting" throughout the entire "available hours" period. This basically meant they would get a few half hour slots at peak times (breakfast, lunch, tea, bedtime) but in between they'd be sitting around for hours, or driving between visits, unpaid, but unable to do anything else in case a call came in with a visit they had to do. So the average pay would work out at far, far, less than the minimum wage over the entire shift.<br /><br />Another employment practice was to tell homecare workers that they couldn't leave the company to work for a better paying provider because there was a 'no poaching' clause in the contract which said they couldn't work for another provider in a 20 mile radius. Clearly unenforceable, but believed by sufficiently many to achieve the desired effect.<br /><br />Other charming feature of private sector homecare was not factoring travel time into the rota. This meant you could charge the local authority for a half hour slot, 50% or more of which was spent in rush hour traffic. So the service user gets to make lovely choices, like would you like to wash today or eat breakfast? Nice.<br /><br />The manager used to deliberately doubled book some slots so the same carer would go, for instance, to see two clients (usually neighbours or living in the same household) within the same half hour. They could then charge the council twice, but only pay the carer once.<br /><br />Honestly, I could go on and on. The agency wasn't all bad. The carers really really cared about the clients, sometimes it felt like they cared a lot more than the social workers. But to be honest, I was never convinced that the managers in their sportscars (yes really) gave a flying toss about the clients or the staff.<br /><br />I'm not going to give my name, or that of the provider, because I'd put good money on them bidding for the Bristol contract.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431460985889556041.post-24038427193048249572011-09-07T16:06:30.801+01:002011-09-07T16:06:30.801+01:00I am not at all surprised by those job advertismen...I am not at all surprised by those job advertisments. I work in the private sector and they can get away with whatever they want. There is NO REGULATION whatsoever in the private sector, as the events in Winterbourne Hospital proves.<br /><br />It really makes me sick to my stomach that both the vulnerable people and the staff who work for these agencies are exploited in such a vile way. I love my job and the people I care for but I seriously think I have to quit as my morale and self esteem are at an all time low, I am exhausted and frustrated beyond belief. <br /><br />It's about money pure and simple, nothing else. The guy who owns our company has just finished building his million pound mansion while the vulnerable elderly of this country are left sitting in their own waste!<br /><br />Doesn't it make you proud to be British?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com