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News and Comment November 2013

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20 November (Part 1) - Feeling safe should be a basic requirement of care users

By the time I got back from yesterday’s abortive shopping trip three readers had alerted me to a report that put Bexley in top position for making social care users feel safe. Should they ever feel anything else? Surely feeling safe has to be a minimum requirement? It’s obviously good to be best of the bunch but not being among those that make care users feel unsafe is not the greatest accolade in the world.

I think I must have said before but I have a friend who is totally disabled, it’s hard to imagine a worse situation, and Bexley council has provided every possible care short of 24 hour attendance. Eight and sometimes more care workers look in every single day. They are employed by contractors to Bexley council on zero hours contracts on minimum pay out of which they have to pay all their own expenses, travel costs etc.

My friend feels safe because ladies of all ages make visits from six in the morning until eleven at night doing their best under working conditions I consider to be appalling. Users of social care feel safe because the care workers rise above the problems resulting from Bexley council’s penny pinching. Bexley councillors have boasted of paying care contractors less than other boroughs. If they have come out on top in some survey or other it’s the care workers who deserve the credit, not Bexley council or cabinet member Chris Taylor.

 

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