{"id":8939,"date":"2016-06-08T17:06:58","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T16:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=8939"},"modified":"2016-06-08T17:06:58","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T16:06:58","slug":"privatised-care-equals-greed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=8939","title":{"rendered":"‘Privatised care equals greed’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As part of Carers Week, UNITElive is publishing a series of stories featuring Unite members who care for their relatives or work in the care sector. In today’s final instalment, Emma explains why government cuts and privatisation are hurting the care profession.
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Emma Wallworth proved she had the credentials for care work before she started in the industry.<\/p>\n

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Although Emma\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s previous job as a veterinary nurse was quite different to caring for the elderly, the roles share a need for kindheartedness, patience and understanding.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bYou can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be a carer unless you care. You can be trained to be a carer and you can teach someone the procedures and policies, but you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t teach someone to care. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve either got it or you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 explained Emma, who sits on Unite\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s national activist and disabilities committees.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI grew up with my dad being disabled, he was in a wheelchair or on two sticks, and my mum\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s profoundly deaf. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been around people with disabilities the majority of my life, so I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where I get it from.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Care work has never been well rewarded and the majority of the population could not cope with such a demanding and difficult occupation.<\/p>\n

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Yet if you can gauge the success of a society by the way it treats it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most vulnerable, then the vast majority of Britain’s army of around 1.7m care workers are shining examples of what makes the UK great.<\/p>\n

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In recent years, however, the vocation has increasingly suffered from cuts<\/a> to local government funding and a race to the bottom for service provision by large care sector companies only interested in turning a profit.<\/p>\n

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Emma, 29, who has been member of Unite (and heritage unions) since she was 16-years-old, has experienced the effects of government neglect of care services during the 11 years she has worked in the industry.<\/p>\n

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“It’s too much”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

For eight years Emma worked at one high-dependency care home, housing people with dementia, Parkinson’s and severe mobility problems, but moved to another care job three months ago because understaffing at her old job had caused her back injuries, due to years of lifting patients in and out of bed.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhen I started there were plenty of staff. But now the private companies don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care about the staff or the residents, they only care about the money. My previous job was very high pressure – the staff were underpaid and overworked. It was just too much,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Emma.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThere were 38 residents and only four carers, one of whom only distributed medication. If a client passed away, there would someone else in their room the same day.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt was like a conveyor belt. The Care Quality Commission rule is that residents should not be institutionalised, but they are because there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not enough people to do the job. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the carers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fault.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Emma\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Stockport care colleagues, like thousands of others across the country, are also struggling financially on zero-hour contracts, with many having to live in shared houses despite working full-time.<\/p>\n

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Although the living wage has provided a small boost to incomes, care employees are still underpaid, especially those working in home based care services.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bMy friend has just had to give up her job, because she was wearing out her car for nothing,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Emma explained.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bShe doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get a penny in travel time and she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get enough time, say, in the morning, to get her clients up, washed and dressed and to give them their breakfast and tablets. Half an hour per client just isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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For Emma, private companies involved in the care industry \u00e2\u20ac\u015bunfortunately equals greed.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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<\/em><\/strong>Integrated care<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One way to get around the competitive tendering for privatised social care \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the under-resourced and mismanaged services that follow \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is to create \u00e2\u20ac\u015bNational Care Service<\/a> (NCS)\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 that is integrated with the NHS, an idea championed by Labour MP Andy Burnham.<\/p>\n

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Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarret-Thorpe says in principle an NCS could work, but pointed out the crisis within Britain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s care industry lay at the door of the Tories\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 austerity agenda.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIn the end the main issue is adequate funding,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe know the amount of older people within the population is increasing<\/a> and we are going to need more social care in the future.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf an NCS were created it would need to provide the best possible care and acceptable pay and working conditions for our members.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhat we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to see is more of the race-to-the-bottom services that this government has encouraged.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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As part of Carers Week, UNITElive is publishing a series of stories featuring Unite members who care for their relatives or work in the care sector. In today’s final instalment, Emma explains why government cuts and privatisation are hurting the care profession.   Emma Wallworth proved she had the credentials for care work before she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[531],"wps_subtitle":"Unite's Emma takes aim at care companies' profit obsession","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8942,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8939\/revisions\/8942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}