Parties clash on care staff numbers

A radical shake-up in Highland social work will mean more – or fewer – frontline care staff, depending which political party you listen to.

Inconclusive reforms were agreed yesterday by councillors who backed the package as part of budget-saving measures that officials confidently predicted would widen the region’s care-at-home service.

Social work committee members meeting in Inverness also agreed to director Harriet Dempster’s plea for a £1million bailout from elsewhere within council budgets – or its emergency reserves – to help reduce a projected multimillion-pound overspend in her department.

Further savings of £2.1million are still required, however, to balance the department’s 2009/10 books.

Liberal Democrat members of the council’s administration claimed the reforms would guarantee more frontline care staff.

But that claim was instantly disputed by the opposition SNP group.

Sutherland Lib Dem councillor Robbie Rowantree, committee vice chairman, said: “People want to stay in their own homes and remain independent for as long as possible. The care-home service is a vital resource for individuals and their families.

“The improved system will reduce management costs and enable more staff to be deployed to frontline care at home services.”

Nairn’s SNP councillor Liz MacDonald said that was “untrue”, because it contradicted the most up-to-date official figures she had obtained from officers.

As of June 2009, the council employed 418 full-time, frontline care staff, compared with the projected 355 staff under reforms agreed yesterday.

The group’s social work spokesman, Dave Fallows , said an agreed £1million increase in the care-at-home budget for 2010 – a pledge of the previous SNP-Independent administration in 2007 – would now fund additional “privatised” care-at-home services, through a block purchase contract.

The increase amounted to almost 30% over the current independent sector provision. “This is a further lurch towards privatisation at a time when our in-house staff have shown just how far they will go in horrendous weather conditions to ensure that their clients are looked after,” he said.