Conference affirms there should be no profiteering from social care

There should be no profiteering from social care. That message was at the heart of a series of debates at UNISON’s local government conference in Brighton this afternoon, as delegates continued to plot the service group’s path for the year to come. Moving a major motion on care workers for the service group executive, Sarah Barwick said that, while the pandemic has been very challenging for all local government workers, it has been particularly hard so for those “undervalued, underpaid care workers”. They had been “ignored by most people and politicians” until the preventable deaths that followed when vulnerable people were discharged from hospital into care homes without being tested for COVID, raised awareness of their role and dedication. She suggested that perhaps some long overdue changes would be happening given all that care workers had gone through: “But no. No”. And a major part of the problem is that only a handful of councils across the UK have taken steps to bring care workers back in-house after their jobs were outsourced to private providers. There was a risk of carers becoming an invisible workforce yet again, said Ms Barwick. There was a fundamental lack of understanding of the tasks that care workers do and it is “vitally important that we remedy this situation”. Ms Barwick said that UNISON will be leading a care worker lobby in Westminster this summer to let that workforce tell MPs about the work they do and the conditions they face. Othe...
Source: UNISON Health care news - Category: UK Health Authors: Tags: Article 2022 local government conference 2022 Local Government Service Group Conference social care Source Type: news