Adult care staff ‘leaving in droves’

Date article online: 29/04/2008

The Council’s portfolio for health and social care, Councillor Dale Mulgrew, has admitted that staff are “leaving in droves” as a result of the adult care changes introduced by the Lib Dems.

Coming just days after Councillor Mulgrew issued a statement claiming that “there is little evidence to suggest we are not covering the situation satisfactorily,” he has now admitted that the service is “under pressure”. He says he expected some staff to leave, but “the extent and swiftness” of staff “leaving in droves” has taken him “by surprise”.

Rochdale’s Labour Parliamentary Candidate, Simon Danczuk, said that these comments were the clearest admission yet that the council were at fault and that adult care services were in a very perilous position.

“For some time now Councillor Mulgrew has been talking about an exciting agenda of change but if he can’t sell this to the staff, let alone to the service users or the people of the Borough, then he simply cannot deliver an adequate service,” he said.

After visiting Rochdale on Friday to speak to adult care service users, Ivan Lewis, the Minister for Care Services, has confirmed that he will be speaking to the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) to personally monitor what sort of improvement, if any, Rochdale Council is making. He noted that since Rochdale Council’s Adult Care Services had been downgraded from two stars to just one last year following a damning report, it was vital that visible signs of improvement were demonstrated immediately.

“There has been a real leadership and management failure in Rochdale and the problem with an organisation in meltdown is that is affects the most vulnerable people,” he said. “There is nothing more important that a local authority is asked to do than look after its most vulnerable people and we have to ask questions about where this is being prioritised. I am sure there are decent people doing their best in a system that is failing and we should remember that because I don’t want to tarnish people. But it is unprofessional, immoral and without justification for people to be treated in such an undignified way.

“These standards are unacceptable. Rochdale has just received a very generous settlement from the Government and an extra £4.5million to develop social care systems. This is not a problem caused by insufficient funding. Rochdale has the money; the problem is that the money is not being spent wisely. The fault lies with poor quality leadership and it is important the council gets its act together.

“Society should be measured by how it treats its elderly population,” he explained, “and my view is that if the level of care we provide isn’t what I would want for my mother then it isn’t acceptable.”

In response Councillor Mulgrew told Rochdale Online: "Currently we are going through a transition in the way the Council provides home support in order to introduce an innovative service called the STARS (short term assessment and re-ablement service), which many of our staff were in agreement with and which had the full backing from the union.

"It is true that a significant number of staff who did not get a position in this new service have decided to choose other employment opportunities. But I stress that during this changeover period that although there is the need to cover any gaps that may arise, this is being managed carefully and so the Council is handling the emergence of such problems sufficiently.

"Most importantly I am confident that we will continue to work through this challenging period to succeed in working towards the major transformation of a social support apparatus that moves away from reliance and dependency to being preventative and creating independence."