Council Care Boss Pledges Major Effort On Home Helps

New Councillor Allison Duncan has blamed a breakdown of management and communication in the SIC for the recent shock cuts to home help services. In the Town Hall this week he said old people had been in tears in front of him over losing their visits.

He told councillors: “It was like they’d been punched!” The Shetland South member has been a whirlwind of action since news of the cutbacks emerged two weeks ago. Letters sent to some people in the south and central Mainland and Lerwick informed them their home helps would be removed or their hours reduced from Sunday due to lack of staff over the summer holidays.

Mr Duncan set out to visit every person getting a home help between Quarff and Sumburgh Head, and all but two of the workers, emerging with a list of the extra hours that they were willing to work. Then there was a fear that the postal strike would prevent home helps receiving their rotas for this week so Mr Duncan drove around and delivered them personally.

At Wednesday’s meeting of the full council, he spoke about his field trip and attacked the decision to impose cuts. He said Shetland’s senior citizens should never be treated in the same way again.

Councillor Cecil Eunson repeated Mr Duncan’s view that there had been a communication breakdown and he demanded it be sorted out. Councillor Rick Nickerson said the previous report given to members on the home help issue had been a false one.

Convener Sandy Cluness managed to take the wind out of a few angry members’ sails before the start of the debate by warning he would not tolerate verbal attacks on senior staff. He said the meeting was not the right place to make complaints and it would be unfair to focus on personalities.

While Mr Duncan and one or two other members were blaming staff it seems some of the staff have been supressing their anger towards members who had been told previously that the home help service could not stretch to meet the demand and had to be prioritised.

But in the face of uproar caused by the cuts letters, social care bosses have pledged to try to deliver as many of the services as is practically possible.

The new head of social care and education, Hazel Sutherland, stated: “The service may change week on week and there will be gaps. But we will do all that we can to match available staff with clients’ needs.”

Staff are to be told where the gaps in cover are, to see if they can fill them, even if it means they have to travel further than is normally accepted. The work is to be offered out to all SIC staff too.

Other measures to be tried during the problem period include:

• a reassessment of needs by the home help organiser during the summer for all who received one of the controversial letters
• not offering a service to new clients assessed as low priority who live in the three problem areas
• a radical shake-up of the way staff are recruited

In the longer term it is hoped the voluntary sector can help out with some tasks and the home help service is eventually to be passed over to the care centres to run, as has already happened with the personal care services that people receive in their homes.

In her report, Ms Sutherland said the row had raised fundamental questions about the need to prioritise services with limited staff and money.

She set out the reasons why events had reached this stage and reminded members they had been warned several times about the impending crisis. Prior to the row a full “redesign” of the service had already been put in the pipeline by the services committee to tackle the escalating needs of the future.

Officials had also wanted to bring in modest charges for home helps this year to try to dampen the ever-increasing demand. But councillors refused.

Councillors had also been told as far back as February that some clients were getting a reduced service so that staff and money could be targeted at higher priority cases.

Ms Sutherland stated that the cuts letter had been sent out after numerous phone calls from clients complaining that they had not received their usual service. The letter had been an attempt to be “open and honest” about the council not being able to deliver at the moment.

SIC services chairman Leslie “Gussie” Angus said there had been a deluge of complaints and he had already apologised publicly for what had been “a public relations disaster for the council”.

He said again: “We’re sorry for the distress this has caused the folk.” He admitted there were management problems and gave an assurance that they were being addressed. Ms Sutherland has been in place hardly a month, he said, and he had every confidence that she would sort it out.

The gap between the demand for the service and the hours that could be provided measured 25 per cent, he said. All the extra hours now pledged by staff would still not bridge the gap and a recruitment drive had to be launched as quickly as possible.

However, he acknowledged that Shetland spends twice as much on the service as the next highest-spending council in Scotland. Mr Cluness warned members that the size of the problem today was nothing to what it would become due to the rising elderly population.

It emerged that senior social care staff had believed they were required by councillors to cut spending on community care services, in line with the cuts imposed across the rest of the council. However, members and chief executive Morgan Goodlad said there was no requirement to save money, although the shortage of staff means the full budget cannot be spent anyway.

A strategic review of the care at home service, requested by Mr Nickerson, will be tabled to the next services committee on 30th August. Ms Sutherland will give councillors an update at the same time to say how the recruitment and stretching of staff has gone over the summer.

Councillor Betty Fullerton moved to defend the social care managers, saying they had “taken quite a beating” over the issue. About 10 members of the public turned up to sit in on the debate.