Dumbarton Notebook by Bill Heaney
What is it about old folk that West Dunbartonshire Council just don’t like?
Why do they seem intent on making the lives of elderly people a misery? Why re they treated so badly?
It’s a few years now since they plucked old folk out of comfortable neighbourhood homes in the community and stuck them out at the back of beyond at Crosslet.
And then let them down during the Covid Pandemic by imposing a cruel, ludicrous visitor regime, which saw people who went to see their relatives, some of whom were dying at the time, having to sit out in the garden and talk to them through the windows.
Now, it is happening again. The Health and Social Care Partnership (they sack doctors don’t they?) have turned the lives of 160 carers employed by the council upside down.
In order to save a few pounds in this era of squandermania in local government and graft and corruption repeatedly being uncovered in public services, they have introduced what they are calling “a redesign of carers rotas”.
This is yet another madcap scheme similar to the bin collection and grass cutting services on which they have now done a “Starmer” and been forced to U-turn.
A large number of carers will themselves lose money and suffer inconvenience by having their hours of work changed to times which suit neither them nor their clients.
There were already concerns amongst the workforce – many of them grannys and mothers with children at school – about having to wake elderly people up before dawn and the time allocated to looking after them.
For providing personal care such as bathing and showering people, whose medical conditions range from many forms of disability to terminal illnesses; giving them bed baths; making their breakfast and helping clients to take their medicines (some of them have poor eyesight and can’t read the instructions, while others have tremors) carers have been told about timetable changes which involve carers being allocated SEVEN MINUTES for visits to some clients.
It’s little wonder then that the WDC Care Service has a worrying recruitment problem.
Carers are leaving the service and they are making inquiries about retirement at a time of great need.
At the moment, they receive a wage of around £14 an hour.
They are faced with Cost of Living increases which have forced people to use food banks to feed their families.
This is at a time when chief officials at the council are recieving salaries ranging up to £150,000 for the chief executive and social workers who are supposed to be on £50,000 a year are on £70,000 because the council can’t attract people to work for them.
Councillors themselves have just taken a 20 per cent rise in their salaries.
The fact that they have a history of bullying and victimisation means many people are reluctant to join their staff.
I think people need to understand that benefit cuts are going to be cut and that services too, like NHS provision, or social care are going to be cut.
The country cannot afford it.
At the top end rotten governance and big business are plundering the life out of ordinary people. The corruption of senior Labour ministers like Mandelson with an international criminal ring is testimony to that. But of course.the Tory party has just as many rotten and corrupt politicos. Two bit hustler Lady Michelle Mone being an example of that..but she was only small beer.
And then at the other end you have a society of people who could work but dont want to work. They suck money out of the system as surely as the corporate plunders.
And then there are those who do notvwant an education. Our local area is an area with low educational and training attainment. It is sadlyva fact of life.
But taken together everything in society has to be paid for. Everyone, and i mean everyone needs to contribute.
But corruption, be it financial and economic corruption together with, shall we say, the corruption of people unwilling to work and contribute to society.has consequence.
And we are in the grip of that consequence and unless.we change course, its only going to get worse, much worse,.as the corporate criminal plunderers consolidate their position.
Mandelson and the equally odious Prince Andrew have certainly shown that.