GMB Slams Fife Council
Thursday 17th February
2011
GMB SLAMS
FIFE COUNCIL OVER PROPOSAL TO SELL
OFF TEN COUNCIL
CAREHOMES
GMB call on all care home
residents, their families, community activists and trades unionists
to make their presence felt at the emergency Council meeting at 2pm
Tuesday 22nd February
GMB is calling on trade unionist and
other activists to protest against the decision of a sub committee
of Fife Council to scale back care for the elderly in Fife as part
of the spending cuts. Under these proposals domestic home care will
be ended and ten care homes will be sold off. Under these plans
around 300 residents would be relocated and staff would be made
redundant. In total 500 care staff will be affected by the
proposals.
GMB is calling on all care home
residents, their families, community activists and trades unionists
to make their presence felt at the emergency Council meeting
at:
2PMON
TUESDAY 22ND
FEBRUARY AT
FIFE HOUSE
NORTH ST
GLENROTHES
FIFEKY7
5LT
John Moist GMB Organiser told the
Branch, "It is obvious that the Council
FifeCouncil SNP/Lib Dem coalition has a
strategy to divest themselves of all non-statutory social work
duties. GMB considers that
FifeCouncil has a duty to be a care
provider in the community not least because using middlemen
increases the cost to tax payers and lowers the quality of service
to users.
The first thing the Council
wants to do is to terminate domestic home care for the vulnerable
elderly in Fife. The next step is
the closure of the ten residential care homes. This amounts to a
series of salami slicing at the social work provision of services,
until the entire care package including respite care, day care and
probably personal homecare ends up in the hands of the private
sector.
The Council cannot say who
will run the homes but that it will not be the Council. The Council
cannot say who the private sector contractor will be or on what
terms and conditions the staff will be employed, only that it will
not be FifeCouncil. The
Council cannot even say that the current staff will transfer to the
private sector along with their clients.
There are a number of
questions that need to answered. When will the Council homes close?
The Council doesn't know. What
FifeCouncil claims it doesn't know is
extensive? Why then is it pursuing a programme of closure and
privatisation when the one outcome they do know is that all
experience and research shows that during the process of closure
mortality rates increase? This is not scaremongering it is a
verifiable fact.'
GMB urges all concerned
parties, resident clients, their families, community activists and
trades unionists to make their presence felt at the emergency
Council meeting at Fife House at 2pm Tuesday 22nd
February, and equally importantly contact the leaders of the
Council and their own Councillors and let them know what you
think."
Ends
Contact: John Moist,
GMB Organiser on 077521147808 or 01382 225491 or GMB Press Office:
Steve Pryle on 07921 289880 or Rose Conroy on 07974 25183