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No way to run a care service
HERE I am again, banging on some more about the way adult social care wastes our council tax.
For several years, there has been no recruitment of new homecare staff and the reason given is always that there is no money.
I have pointed out ad nauseam that there is no justification for the ridiculous salaries at the top of the service, and no sense in purchasing technology if it doesn't do the required job.
Now, in spite of pleading poverty, the department has given everyone who has chosen the direct payments method of receiving homecare a beautiful black expanding file in which to keep the barmy number of bits of paper which get posted around Leeds at the end of every month.
I employ my step-daughter on a direct payments basis for two hours a week and I have been given a file with 22 pockets in it.
This is evidence enough of the bureaucratic nightmare that is direct payments. How much will all this cost when everyone is managing a self-directed support budget? How much will it cost to send finance officers round to explain the system to everyone and to sort out the confusion of those who can't cope?
It would appear that the aim of the Adult Social Care Directorate is to reduce the number of people using the in-house service until they can say there is no justification for its existence and we, the service users, will be at the mercy of a profit-conscious private sector.
I would rather have my council tax spent on more caring in-house assistants than on a bureaucratic nightmare which delivers an inferior service.
The council has a duty of care. It cannot pass this duty over to those who seek to make a profit from caring and feel that its duty has been met.
Why are our councillors being taken in by all the talk of independence and choice? Can they not see the difference between independence and being abandoned? Between choice and bewilderment?
Carol Brown, Henconner Crescent, Leeds
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Thursday 23 February 2012
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