McConnel Dashes Hopes Of More Elderely Care Cash

First Minister Jack McConnell dashed hopes of extra funding for councils to care for the elderly last night. His comments – in front of an invited female audience at the Press and Journal-hosted Ask Jack session in Inverness – will alarm councils reeling from cuts in social work budgets.

Mr McConnell said: “We identified with the local authorities how much free care personal care costs. They get every penny agreed and they need to organise that service efficiently at a local level.”

Earlier in the day, Mr McConnell officially opened the controversial new Scottish Natural Heritage headquarters in Inverness, and insisted he would be prepared to consider further public-sector job relocations to the Highlands – or anywhere else – if he believed it would benefit Scotland.

Only 55 of SNH’s 230 Edinburgh staff uprooted while 109 took redundancy.

According to the conservation agency, the switch to the £15million purpose-built Great Glen House, shared with the Deer Commission for Scotland, cost taxpayers £43,000 for each job transfer.

At the Ask Jack event, sisters Val Mathieson and Vivienne Wood, of Woodroyd, Fallachy, near Kyle, and 15 Hillswick Walk, South Sheddocksley, Aberdeen, jointly asked: “What provision is being made to ensure the elderly can stay in their own community when they are no longer able to stay at home?”

Mr McConnell responded: “We cannot run everything at a national level. Local authorities should know best what’s needed in their areas, and how to distribute their resources.”

Care for the elderly has become an extremely contentious issue in the Highland, where Highland Council has voted to privatise care for the elderly in six residential homes.

Yesterday the Press and Journal revealed Highland Council had saved £2.1million in its social work budget but still had to find another £900,000.

Last week care workers claimed some elderly people were being bathed as seldom as once a week because of budget cuts.

Mr McConnell conceded: “I think there are issues and I realise it is challenging. It is particularly difficult in rural areas where people are more spread out but it should not be beyond the wit of men and women, and the knowledge, skills and people have, to sort this out.”

Pensioner Helen Steele asked: “Is it true that some regions have not spent the Government money allocated specifically for the personal care of the elderly on them?”

Mr McConnell said: “It has been suggested that is the case. We are in discussion with Argyll and Bute Council where it has been suggested that’s been happening. Social work inspectors are meeting with them to make sure they have the correct level of care locally.”

He added: “It’s a balancing act and perhaps we should be more strict in some areas.

“I do think ultimately local authorities have to take responsibilities and have to accept that responsibility to make it work.

“You can’t run care homes from the centre. It wouldn’t work.”

Speaking earlier, after a tour of the spacious, open-plan SNH office perched on a hilltop overlooking Inverness, Mr McConnell defended the policy of public-sector decentralisation.

“What we need to have in Scotland is the whole of the country enjoying the benefits of devolution,” he said.

“This is one of the biggest decisions that we have made. But it is absolutely right that the key natural heritage body for Scotland is based here, in the heart of the Highlands, so that decision-making and power and influence are devolved not just from London to Edinburgh but from Edinburgh to the Highlands and elsewhere too.”

But the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which represents 30,000 Scottish workers, has called for a rethink, pending a thorough ministerial review of the practice.

PCS negotiations officer Albie O’Neill said: “Money is being wasted. We’re not being properly consulted. People are losing their jobs. We can’t continue to co-operate on that basis.

“We wish to sit down and discuss it so we have proper implementation of a good idea. The policy is right, it’s how it’s operating that’s wrong.

“We always knew that very few staff would relocate and we would lose skills and experience and it would become a very costly exercise.

“That proved to be the case, so consulting is not just asking the question, it’s listening to the answers.”

SNH chief executive Ian Jardine also defended its new HQ. “It’s not expensive for a building of this type. It’s a public asset,” he added.