National Delegate Conference 15-18 June 2010

Standing up for social care

John Stevenson

In the key debate of this morning's session, Conference welcomed the rise of social care up the political agenda.

It set out a wide ranging strategy to campaign for increased investment in social care to ensure quality services and a well trained and rewarded workforce.

The NEC will take a strategic lead in the defence of social care and will provide resources to branches to build alliances to campaign against funding cuts and to take up the challenges of organising personal assistants.

Diane Kelly, North West Region moved the composite motion and called for a level playing field for all service providers and an end to low pay and low quality contracting, which, she said, will mean worse pay, worse conditions and worse services for the most vulnerable people.

Edinburgh's John Stevenson commended the broad campaign but called on the union to try and organise workers like personal assistants and to try and engage with employers' networks to make sure they deliver on employment rights. He referred to the work between UNISON and the Scottish Personal Assistants Employers Network, pioneered by Stephen Smellie and others in Scotland.

"A real attempt to engage with employers, a real attempt to give them and workers a reference for their rights - and a process we managed to get partly financed by the Scottish Government."

John warned that personalisation and direct payments are sold as liberating services for users to get the responsive services they need when they want them.

"However, the reality is an inability to strategically plan services, the spectre of services being provided on the cheap and of care being forced back on families, usually women; of an unregulated workforce, without training structures, poor employment rights, if any, and isolated and unorganised."

"Social care on the cheap. And if social care on the cheap shows little or no respect for workers who provide the care, it shows even less for those who depend on those services," said John.

He encouraged delegates to visit the City of Edinburgh UNISON website next week, where there will be a collection of horror stories about the poor quality of private home care services provided to vulnerable people in the city.

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