Primary And Community Care Report - UNISON Reaction, UK

Main Category: Primary Care / General Practice
Article Date: 06 Jul 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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UNISON, the UK's largest public sector union, raised concerns over the consequences of introducing individual budgets outlined in today's "Primary and Community Care" report.

The union welcomed the drive towards transferring care and resources to community settings and to promote quality alongside the wide-ranging consultation, but issued a health warning over the use of individual budgets.

Karen Jennings, UNISON Head of Health said:

"We believe that patients should have a greater say in their treatment and greater access to information about their care plans, but using individual budgets is not the way forward.

"There is a real danger that these budgets will pave the way towards means-testing and undermine the very principle of care being free at the point of need. These may only be pilots but we have already seen the government pressing ahead with the roll out of personal budgets in social care, without waiting for the results or reports back of the individual budgets pilots. There is a real danger that these latest pilots will also be just a cursory step before rollout."

UNISON also expressed concern over the impact that social enterprise schemes will have on staff.

Karen Jennings said:

"On Social Enterprise schemes it is clear that the government wants to give them extra impetus and have incentivised them by guaranteeing pensions in line with UNISON's staff passport proposals. However, the Independent Sector will not have the Pensions guarantee which means that the pension right of staff transferring may be damaged. Social Enterprise are likely to be fragile organisations and subject to predatory takeover by the private sector - and staff would then lose their pensions guarantee.

"UNISON is also concerned that there will be long-term wrangling around the awarding of contracts to social enterprises. The Cooperation and Competition Board is being set up to hear from private companies that feel they have not been treated fairly in the tendering process and this is the first step to opening the door to the private sector."

http://www.unison.org.uk