CRUEL COUNCIL EMBARKS ON CUTS FOR CARERS AND ELDERLY PEOPLE

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.

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.