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Scandal of council 'digipens'
THE excellent report in the YEP exposing Leeds Council's Social Services Department for wasting £483,000 of public money on a failed digipen scheme should be the start of a major investigation into the management incompetence of the council.
This should be treated as seriously as the MPs' expenses scandal.
Digipens, which were introduced to monitor the movement of care workers who assist the elderly and disabled at home, have been scrapped and replaced by electronic rostering. This is not for improving care but a time and motion technique to cut overtime and the number of carers employed.
The public should consider that:
1) The wasted 483,000 comes from the public purse whether or not it was funded from grants.
2) Leeds Social Services are delivering poorer services than ever before as revealed by an investigation by the Commission for Social Care Inspection.
3) Leeds continues to spend money on madcap schemes, overpaid managers and consultants who have no experience of caring.
4) Leeds needs more carers who know better than managers what the job entails.
5) It is not IT that's needed. Computers don't give care.
6) The money wasted could have funded increases in the number of people receiving care and reduced means tested charges.
Electronic rostering means that service users will get a service delivered not always by a regular carer who understands their care plan but any carer who happens to be available and whom the service user will have to instruct. Those who are unable to do this will receive a poorer service. A team-based system is needed where carers organise rostering themselves.
The Social Services Directorate makes arbitrary decisions and councillors choose to go along with them against the wishes of the electorate and in defiance of consultation.
If Leeds wishes to improve services it must start by cutting overpaid managers, employing more carers, and stopping the Executive from acting with one eye on meaningless awards from self-interested organisations.
Malcolm Naylor and Carol Brown, Grange View, Otley
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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