Mary McCrea

Liz MacKay

18/06/12 No-one is against integreated services but joining at the top with no new resources will only make things worse, Local Government Conference was warned.

Mary McCrea of Edinburgh city council highlighted the cost of the reorganisation required to create integrated services, when "surveys reveal most people are satisfied with the service they receive."

The issue was resources not lack of integration. Pulling all social care under the NHS umbrella will not bring any more money, will not address the poverty wages for social care workers and, unless there is more money, it will make no difrference to bed-blocking.

While backing calls for better and more responsive social care, Mary urged delegates not be seduced by integration plans that were only there to save money rather than improve services.

Delegates were also concerned about the social model of disability being swallowed up by the medical model.

Another concern was bringing privatisation back into the NHS in Scotland through outsourced services.

Liz MacKay from Highlands branch highlighted the huge problems in the integration experiment in the Highlands.

Liz warned about a two-tier workforce: "Scotland allows no compulsory redundancies in the NHS. So there's a two-tier workforce, where staff originally employed in the NHS could not be made redundant but those brought in from local government could be.

"We've got a long, long fight to go."