Commission For Social Care Inspection Report - Unison Response, UK

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 28 Jan 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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UNISON, the UK's largest public sector union, is calling on councils to deliver care, not cash and to step up investment in the social care workforce, following a report published by the Commission for Social Care and Inspection(*).

UNISON National officer for Social Care, Helga Pile, said:

"A lack of adequate government funding has forced councils to deliver personalisation 'on the cheap'. Most schemes have focussed on giving people cash to buy their own care. This is just a new variation of one-size fits all care, with strong evidence suggesting that elderly people find it hard to manage their own budget.

"What people need is care, not cash. They need quality local services that they can rely on. To make sure we can deliver truly personalised care we are going to need 1 million care workers by 2025. This means we need to invest in a well trained, and properly paid workforce."

Notes

*The report is called 'The state of social care in England 2007-08' and is available from http://www.csci.org.uk

UNISON represents 300,000 members working in social care.

UNISON

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