Tag Archives: outsourcing

'Divesting' services, Council spending, New Strategic direction, Your councillor

Have you signed the Save Suffolk Services petition yet?

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For the last six weeks I and my fellow Lib Dems can have been  found standing outside libraries and shivering in water-sodden streets trying to bring news of the New Strategic Direction in all its horror to as many people in Suffolk as possible.

After all, the conservative administration has done very little in that direction, as you can see if you click the following link:   Consultation – what consultation?

As a Suffolk resident wrote to me:

We certainly have not been consulted in any shape or form by SCC re the New Strategic Direction. Surely, they should have started by a direct letter to everyone rather than sandwich boards in the shopping precinct!

Our own consultation was not without incident: tragically I got nipped on the leg by an ill-tempered dog in Yoxford, only last week, while delivering leaflets with a broken foot in heavy rain. I hope he felt guilty. But the post MUST get through…

Have you got our leaflet yet? Have you signed our petition?

We are trying to get as many signatures to the petition as possible to deliver to the Administration at the next full council day, 2 December. If you have received one, try and collect as many signatures from Suffolk residents as possible – relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues. It doesn’t matter about  age or background. These changes will affect us all.

If we haven’t managed to reach you, you can sign it online http://savesuffolkservices.blogspot.com/

or if you want to download it to collect further paper signatures: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/56654857/Save-Suffolk-Services-petition

Just remember to return it by the 26th November.

Remember to make sure your voice is heard!

'Divesting' services, Council spending, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Uncategorized

Suffolk’s NSD – a few sneaky sums

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We all know the story  – Suffolk has to make 30% cuts and all because of those naughty bad bankers and the UK’s mountain of inherited debt.

Right?

Wrong!

The Lib Dems have discovered that Suffolk county council only needs to make cuts of 11% IN TOTAL over the next four years to balance out the reduction in central government grants. This means cuts of less than 3% a year.

Which means that the administration used their huge Tory majority to  plan cuts that were THREE TIMES  as savage as they needed to be!!!!

How have they managed to spin this? Simple. They expect us to be not very good at our sums and not to check the facts and their figures. Pretty much like someone trying to sell you dodgy double-glazing or an unnecessary insurance policy.

They have estimated that the amount of money they would get from the government will be reduced by 33.3% over 4 years (because of the Comprehensive Spending Review).  That is, they assumed that Suffolk would have to manage on two thirds of the current central government grant.

In point of fact the reduction in central government funding will be just over 26% over four years (not 33.3%) which is much less of a hit. But this is just the thin end of their mathematical shenanigans.

BECAUSE the government grant makes up much less than half of Suffolk County Council’s total income. And the rest of this  income is not going to reduce at all. In some cases it will rise.

When we did the sums, the reduction  in Suffolk’s total income over the next four years  was NOT a big noisy 30%, it was less than 11%. That’s a very big difference when you  are talking about closing and selling off care homes, cutting school crossing patrols and closing the park and ride!

'Divesting' services, Care homes, Council spending, Helping the community, Social care, Suffolk County Council

Lehmann House: (NOT) having your say…

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On Friday I went to the public meeting at the threatened  Lehmann House in Wickham Market. Here the portfolio holder for Adult and Community Services, Cllr Noble,  plus officers  gave a presentation  explaining why the council were making big changes  – including almost certain closure – to this valued local resource.

Need I mention that these changes form yet another wobbly plank in the Heath Robinson contraption that is Suffolk County Council’s  NSD (New Strategic Direction)?

Just to remind you , Lehmann House offers 38 places (28 for older people with special needs because of dementia, two of which are respite places to give carers a rest, plus 10 places for permanent care to frail older people).  It has a lovely kindly atmosphere, home cooking that the residents can’t praise highly enough and is deeply deeply valued by the residents and their relatives and carers. There are generally several people from Woodbridge in Lehmann House at any given time..

The public who filled the room  – mainly carers, residents and relatives – listened in disbelief as the administration urged them to ” have their say on the future of Suffolk County Council’s residential care homes.”

Hardly much of a say, as one person pointed out, when there are only three options and none of them is keeping things as they are.

“People can’t complete your online consultation unless they pick one of your three options. What if I  don’t want one of those options? I can only continue to the next page if  I agree with you,” said one.

In fact so many people made  so much fuss about this particular point that they extorted a promise from those in charge to change the online questions and allow people to disagree with the options SCC is offering.   Lehmann House – 1: SCC – 0.

Oh – let me remind you of the options on offer:

  1. Close the homes and commission alternative services from the independent sector
  2. Sell all of the homes as going concerns
  3. Close a number of homes  and transfer the remaining ones to the independent sector.
    In addition to Lehmann house, the other  homes tipped for closure are Ixworth Court in Ixworth,The Dell in Beccles, Wade House in Stowmarket, Davers Court in Bury St. Edmunds, and Paddock House in Eye

But why does Suffolk County Council provide no option to keep things as they are? The head of the council adult care department says “I haven’t the money to keep care homes running.”  End of story.  No figures are given – here or elsewhere – to back up this bold assertion. No acknowledgement that in fact it isn’t his money, but Suffolk residents’ money. No suggestion whatsoever that Suffolk residents  should be accorded the respect of being in on the decision-making rather than consulted after the event!

The administration added that Lehmann house will have to close anyway sooner or later because ‘not all the rooms have en suite facilities and the next generation of consumers will want them‘ . How this ties in with their other assertion that there will be so many old people in Suffolk  twenty years time that we won’t be able to look after them all I am not sure. (If they thought about it, maybe people might prefer a care home place without en suite rather than no care home place at all. And maybe people would prefer to live in the centre of a small town within easy reach of shops and sociability with easy access for relatives by foot, and bus as well as car.These questions are not included on the consultation questionnaire)

As one parent said “I am 91 years old. My daughter is 70. If she doesn’t have a place here, how can I look after her?”

Heartrending.

Besides which, as the entire room said loudly , what does twenty years on have to do with the price of fish? what  interest do these particular patients, carers and other family have in talk of alternatives to care,  putting more money into supporting people in their own homes, community initiatives?

“All the people here have no alternatives. They have been in their own homes. That time is now over. What does it matter to themwhat other people do in 20 years time? We want to know what’s happening to this home now…

Is there any chance we can keep it open?”

And thats where life gets interesting.

Whilst no-one would confirm that Lehmann House would close, the answers given suggested that the staff and residents of Lehmann House hadn’t a chance of taking over the premises at a peppercorn rent (as someone suggested) because  its not only that care homes are too expensive to run. They are also too valuable. SCC wants to close the six homes so they can sell them, leaving  the money (presumably) to be put into funding the transfer of the other homes to the independent sector. This would appear to give them two bites at the same cherry of  savings  – indeed, for all I know, might turn rather a neat profit on the closing of places such as Lehmann. A quick buck – but at what cost?

In which case the closure of this treasured home may depend less on intrinsic factors and more on its value to a speculator. After all, as I said, Lehmann House IS  in the centre of a small town within easy reach of shops and sociability by foot, and bus as well as by car..

So  the jury is technically out. Technically.

I’ll put my money on Option 3 being the one that mysteriously is the peoples’ choice at the end of this figleaf of a consultation.