In the week that home shopping, pensions and prescription collection services for house bound people are to stop as part of a £468,000 budget cut by Fife Council, opposition leader Alex Rowley has accused council bosses of ‘abandoning housebound, elderly and disabled people’ and says that all the assurances given that people who need a service would continue to get one amounted to no more than ‘empty shallow promises’.
The Fife Labour leader also claims that the ‘dedicated staff’ who run the service and who will be made compulsory redundant on the 9th of September have been let down badly by senior politicians and management. It has emerged that staff had put forward proposals that would have reduced costs by approximately 50%. These were ignored by management and attempts by staff who wished to set up an arms length social company to run the service were rejected.
Mr Rowley said; “The way this matter has been dealt with amounts to no more than a tick box approach to providing people’s social care and takes no account of the needs of elderly and vulnerable people. I had assurances from Social Work’s Head of Service as well as SNP and Liberal politicians who made the decision to cut the service that any person in need of the service would continue to get it. It is now clear that this was never going to happen and the best you can hope for is to be given a list of private sector providers with various degrees of charges and help from Social Work to phone them”.
Highlighting the case of Lumphinnans man Corrie McCormack who is totally dependant on these services to enable him to live independently, Mr Rowley said; “I met Corrie at the weekend, he had undergone an assessment, had not heard anymore and was very worried that the service is to stop next week. I explained that the promises had been empty rhetoric and he should try to work out what he could afford to buy in. It is a sad state of affairs that our council is reduced to treating people in this way”.
Mr Rowley said he was also concerned about the poor information contained in the booklet of private companies that has been distributed by Social Work to elderly and vulnerable people. “This booklet gives a list of companies and prices that vary from £6 to £19.98 per session/hour. It would seem Social Work asked the Fife Elderly Forum to put the list together but having called round many of the companies it is clear they don’t all offer the service; and I have received complaints from some private providers that others on the list have not been properly screened before going into elderly and vulnerable peoples houses and handling their money. Amazingly no one at either the Council or the Elderly Forum is willing to take responsibility for the accuracy of the information or the liability if something goes seriously wrong and yet this is the only option and it is Social Work staff distributing this information”.
The Labour leader has now written to Health and Social Work Chairman Tim Brett asking for a meeting as a matter of urgency to discuss the issues. He said; “There has been a failure of political leadership to advocate for the people who need the services and a failure to take serious the genuine attempts by staff to keep the service going. There is an accountability issue here and I want the chance face to face to discuss these points with the person being paid to deliver the leadership that is so lacking”.
Mr Rowley concluded; “We need to know if Social Work will take responsibility for the information it is passing out, we need to know that no elderly person is going hungry or at risk as a result of having to get people to deal with their finances and we must take a more strategic approach to supporting alternative delivery models where the council pulls out of delivering services. This is yet another example of Fife Council failing the people of Fife and it is not acceptable. We need a change of leadership that will re-focus the council on to providing frontline services”.
