The BBC is carrying this article about the effects of cuts in our care homes:
GMB says Rotherham care home cuts may see more accidents
Proposed cuts at two council-run care homes in Rotherham will lead to an increase in accidents, the GMB union has claimed.
Lord Hardy Court and Davies Court provide specialist residential care for elderly people with dementia.
The two 60-bed care homes could lose up to 70 workers as part of council plans to save £20m from its budget this year.
Rotherham Borough Council said it “strenuously denied that any reduction in staff would cost lives”. Read on…
Rotherham Politics 
I know who i would believe.
The workforce and gmb.
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old bill, be grateful if you would register before commenting further, in line with new comments policy. Change to comments policy
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If anyone thinks we can continue without cuts, they’re living in cloud cuckoo land – however, there are plenty of places cuts could be made without affecting the care services. Think of all the little empires run by other council departments, stuffed full of unnecessary workers and clipboard warriors. Could the Council possibly be targeting those areas that will have the most dramatic impact?
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The monitoring body for care homes and other residential and day care units is Healthwatch Rotherham. When put to tender at first there was a very poor response due to the target price and the liabilities passed over by the Council and the NHS(TUPE stuff).
Having removed the liabilities a list of tenderer could be drawn up. The target price was almost 30% less than the costs to Council & NHS prior to outsourcing… Make your own mind up about quality.
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Funny how the government had the money to attack Syria, but at the other end of the scale they have shut down Remploy that helped physically challenged people.
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@ Tim
“they have shut down Remploy that helped physically challenged people”.
It is a bit more complicated than that. Many people were of the opinion that Remploy factories had become an anachronism. Read Liz Sayce’s report here:
Click to access sayce-report.pdf
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Can you give me a short account of what the alternatives will be for people, after Remploy closes? Can you also tell me how I find out how much each of my borough councillors claim in expenses every year?
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Targeting Care Homes for cuts is politically inspired, no more than we should expect from a left wing council who up to 2012, spent £644,000 ferrying town hall top brass around in chauffeur-driven cars and during the last financial year wasted £7 million of taxpayers money on South Yorkshire’s Digital Broadband fiasco.
Cutting the number of highly paid council executives and managers makes more sense but guess what? It will not happen, it is far easier to blame ‘The Cuts’ instead of taking proper action to control costs for the long term. What commercial organisation could exist where 25% of a revenue stream-in this instance Council Tax-is plundered for council employees pensions?
Stone and Kimber have prepared themselves financially for their (early) retirements, neither of them care a jot about elderly people who find themselves in Care Homes.
Shame on you.
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Well said.
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Colin, I agree with what you are saying, but —
1. Council tax is only one of the revenue streams (nationally about 28% of total revenue). It still makes pension contributions a major expense.
2. Rotherham’s share of the costs of the DigitalRegion fiasco:
Was it only £7m in 2012/13? Maybe, but here are lots more costs to come:
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/main-topics/politics/80m-lost-as-disastrous-broadband-scheme-axed-1-5957744
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@regular reader.
Thanks for the link.
I got my figures from here:
“The £83.3m of remaining costs will be split in line with the councils’ percentage shareholding. For Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham this will be around £7m, while Sheffield will be liable for closer to £14m. BIS will pick up the bill for the remainder.”
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240203695/Multimillion-pound-broadband-project-axed-in-Yorkshire.
The people of Barnsley and Doncaster are also having to foot the bills for this disastrous folly.
Don’t you just love spendthrift local councillors? Who are incompetent. Who would’nt know what a balance sheet looks like if it was taped to their foreheads.
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@Colin,
Yorkshire Post has long been covering the story far better than the trade press.
I understand that there is some real uncertainty as to whether the EU will be demanding it’s money back.
And because we had DigitalRegion we didn’t qualify for BDUK funds,
( https://www.gov.uk/broadband-delivery-uk ).
And rather than bringing a fast service to rural areas, they largely covered areas where Virgin Cable was already providing fast broadband.
It was never marketed; even tho’ it arrived in my road (and Virgin and BT Fttc don’t) , there was no announcement of its arrival. (and I had signed up with them to be informed on when it became available).
I only found out it had arrived via: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker
Utter incompetence throughout.
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