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Post by Admin on Jul 12, 2020 23:29:50 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 20, 2020 23:16:16 GMT
BREAKING: TORIES VOTE DOWN AMENDMENT TO PROTECT NHS FROM FOREIGN CONTROL IN BREXIT TRADE DEALS BY TOM D. ROGERS -20TH JULY 2020 evolvepolitics.com/breaking-tories-vote-down-amendment-to-protect-nhs-from-foreign-control-in-brexit-trade-deals/The Conservative Party have tonight used their 78-seat majority to vote down an amendment designed to protect the NHS and publicly-funded health and care services from being subject to any form of control from outside the UK in a future post-Brexit Trade Deal. The amendment, which was put forward by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas and supported by Labour leader Keir Starmer and a number of other senior Labour MPs, was voted down by a margin of 340 to 241 thanks to the Tories’ overwhelming parliamentary majority.
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Post by Admin on Jul 25, 2020 7:24:54 GMT
Straight talk from the British Medical Association “We are seeing this outsourcing being carried out with minimal oversight, governance or transparency. There is no ability to scrutinise these deals and taxpayer money is haemorrhaging from the Treasury while a health and care system in desperate need of investment and resource is ignored. Urgent action is required to protect the NHS and ensure taxpayer money is spent in a responsible manner. In the long term the health service must be protected and returned to being a genuinely publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable system.” COVID-19 conceals deepening privatisation of the NHS by David Wrigley The Government’s COVID-19 response has accelerated private outsourcing – and the race toward a disastrously fragmented health system www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/covid-19-conceals-deepening-privatisation-of-the-nhsSince the passing of the Health and Social Care Act in 2012 the NHS in England has been forced down a route of increased marketisation and privatisation – and the Government has accelerated its aggressive outsourcing to private firms during the COVID-19 pandemic. That is the clear conclusion of a report released today by the BMA, which shows that in the space of just a few months ministers have given significant contracts to companies to procure and store personal protective equipment, manage national drive-in testing centres and super-labs and build the COVID-19 data store. In perhaps the most galling deals of all, Capita and Serco were given the tasks of recruiting and overseeing the return of NHS health workers and running the contact tracing programme, respectively. These firms are no strangers to many of us in the health service, and certainly not for a record of unblemished success. Capita was responsible for wrongly archiving 160,000 GP records in 2018, and Serco admitted in 2012 that it presented false data to the NHS 252 times on the performance of its out-of-hours GP service in Cornwall – just two examples of how these firms have performed when given responsibility for NHS services. This pandemic has already highlighted the disastrous effect of austerity politics on our patients and the health and care system – with once comprehensive public health services cut to the bone, social care stretched beyond reason and more or less the entire NHS, for so many years run at full capacity with no flex, having to shut down to ensure intensive care services are not overwhelmed. And rather than finding a moment of clarity in this crisis to reinvest in a publicly provided health service and build for a better future, the Government has doubled down on its failures, choosing to throw huge amounts of money at scores of private firms – money lost to public services and frittered away forever – rather than rebuilding the health and care system and empowering those with the greatest expertise. These contracts have often been handed over with no oversight or due diligence. This health system continues to be fragmented and hamstrung by this government’s decisions. The effect of these decisions – and those mistakes made since 2010 – on this country’s ability to respond to the pandemic has been monumental. We are still left with a contact tracing system which is unfit for purpose, testing policy and output has been consistently shambolic and the Government swerves regularly from one direction to the next, leaving the public confused and worried. The mixed messages we have seen have serious consequences. The worrying truth is we may be feeling the results of these failures for many months and years to come. The BMA has been lobbying against this dogged policy in England of outsourcing for many years but the level and nature of the contracts being handed to these corporations is increasingly concerning. We are seeing this outsourcing being carried out with minimal oversight, governance or transparency. There is no ability to scrutinise these deals and taxpayer money is haemorrhaging from the Treasury while a health and care system in desperate need of investment and resource is ignored. Urgent action is required to protect the NHS and ensure taxpayer money is spent in a responsible manner. In the long term the health service must be protected and returned to being a genuinely publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable system. That must include a substantial year-on-year real-terms increase in funding for the NHS, local public health departments and a genuinely reformed and properly financially supported social care system. In the shorter and medium term it is crucial that a more robust governance system – under NHS control – is given oversight of management and coordination of procurement, transparency of private contractual arrangements is provided and commercial confidence no longer used as a constant excuse to avoid accountability. We should be empowering and expanding our NHS to undertake additional health-related work and not continually running to the private sector which has shown time and time again that it is not able to undertake and fulfil contracts to a satisfactory level. David Wrigley is deputy chair of BMA council www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/covid-19/bma-asks/covid-19-the-role-of-private-outsourcing
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Post by Admin on Jul 25, 2020 18:59:13 GMT
The NHS is now on the chopping block. And it shows why reforming capitalism is an exercise in futility. www.thecanary.co/opinion/2020/07/25/the-nhs-is-now-on-the-chopping-block-and-it-shows-why-reforming-capitalism-is-an-exercise-in-futility/The Canary recently reported that Tory MPs defeated an amendment which would have committed the government to protect the NHS from privatisation in a new trade deal with the US. This raises the obvious question of whether we’re about to see the end of the NHS’s founding principle of ‘free at the point of service’. But there’s also a more elementary question worth exploring – whether it’s even possible to maintain social reforms like universal healthcare when economic decision-making remains in private hands. With corporate power over political systems becoming more entrenched and the media serving as its mouthpiece, the answer to this question increasingly seems to be a resounding ‘no’. Never trust a Tory… On 20 July, Tory MPs voted down an amendment to the Trade Bill introduced by Labour’s shadow trade secretary Bill Esterson. The measure would have prohibited parliament from voting in favor of a trade deal with the US that “undermines or restricts” the NHS’s principle of universal care. It also contained provisions that would ensure the UK’s ability to set its own medicine prices. This would be an alternative to the US-style system in which the government doesn’t negotiate directly with the drug companies.
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2020 9:43:25 GMT
HOW BRITAIN COULD HAVE DEFEATED COVID. YOU CAN NOW WATCH "THE DIRTY WAR ON THE NHS" HERE, FREE 12 August 2020 johnpilger.com/articles/how-britain-could-have-defeated-covid-the-dirty-war-on-the-nhs-now-available-to-watch-here-free-of-chargeThe Dirty War on the NHS was first broadcast in Britain on the ITV Network on 17 December, 2019. It was shown following the general election that saw Boris Johnson become prime minister - even though the future of the NHS was a major issue in the campaign. The remarkable prescience of the film became clear when the COVID pandemic struck, and the NHS, crippled by bed shortages, the starvation of resources and accelerating privatisation, could not cope. This was the film's warning - a warning also delivered in 2016 when a full 'drill' for a pandemic showed the NHS would barely survive such an emergency. The politicians and managers did nothing; the report of the results of the drill was suppressed. The ideological assault on the world's first public health service continued at the height of the COVID crisis with inept private firms given lucrative contracts for PPE and mass testing. The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, an arch privatiser, announced in August 2020 that in future most GP consultations would be be online. Hancock's association with the tech company, Babylon Health, is dealt with in The Dirty War.
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2020 16:06:36 GMT
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Post by Admin on Aug 20, 2020 12:39:15 GMT
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/20/pubh-a20.htmlJohnson government scraps Public Health England, accelerating break-up of National Health Service By Robert Stevens 20 August 2020 The Conservative government has announced the scrapping of Public Health England (PHE) and its replacement with a new body, the National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP). NIHP will bring together several organisations, PHE, NHS Test and Trace, and the Joint Biosecurity Centre, as the “first step towards becoming a single organisation.” PHE, established by the Cameron led-Tory government in 2013, is the national public health body and executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care. Its scrapping seven years later is part of efforts by the Tories to scapegoat PHE for the government’s catastrophic response to the coronavirus pandemic that has cost tens of thousands of lives. But its replacement by NIHP has a broader aim as well, accelerating the privatisation of the National Health Service (NHS). Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced the new body “will work seamlessly to harness the capabilities of academia and groundbreaking and innovative private companies with whom we must work so closely to get the best result.” For months, Boris Johnson’s government has been trailing the “failures” of PHE, but these were the direct outcome of government policy. This included its decision to bury a 2016 report exposing the unpreparedness of the NHS for a flu pandemic, the gutting of emergency stockpiles of personal protective equipment (PPE), the downgrading of COVID-19 from a High Consequence Infectious Disease, and the denial of full PPE to frontline health workers. Throughout the early months of the pandemic, PHE insisted repeatedly that COVID-19 posed a “low risk” to the public. This was in line with the government’s “herd immunity” strategy, which it was forced to temporarily abandon only due to massive public pressure, leading to the March 23 announcement of a national lockdown. The PHE’s method of calculating COVID-19 deaths, later found to have possibly inflated the figure by just over 5,000 when compared with the method used by other European countries, was seized on by Johnson to press the case for disbandment. Downing Street’s own systematic efforts at minimising the death toll, which involved excluding deaths in care homes during the peak of the pandemic, were swept aside. The Daily Telegraph has led the attacks on PHE as part of an orchestrated campaign by the right-wing media and think-tanks. Among those demanding PHE’s scrapping were former Telegraph editor Charles Moore and Matthew Lesh, head of research at the Adam Smith Institute. Lesh’s Telegraph headlines included: “Public Health England can’t meet the challenge it faces from coronavirus” (April 17); “Public health bureaucrats must face a reckoning for their catastrophic coronavirus failures” (May 10); “Public Health England’s exaggerated death statistics are a scandal that has fed fear” (July 17); “PHE has been a public health catastrophe” (August 16).
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Post by Admin on Sept 3, 2020 11:15:56 GMT
Health leaders warn Boris Johnson over axing of Public Health England More than 70 organisations have written to the prime minister with concerns about the future of health improvement www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/02/health-leaders-warn-boris-johnson-over-axing-of-public-health-englandThe abolition of Public Health England will damage the fight against obesity, smoking and alcohol misuse, the UK’s doctors and public health experts have told the prime minister. More than 70 health organisations have written to Boris Johnson outlining their fears about last month’s controversial axing of PHE, which prompted claims it was an attempt by ministers to deflect attention from their own failings over the coronavirus crisis. Signatories include the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which represents the UK’s 240,000 doctors, the UK Faculty of Public Health and the Richmond Group of health and care charities. In it they say they are “deeply concerned that the government’s plans for the reorganisation of health protection in the UK currently pay insufficient attention to the vital health improvement and other wider functions of Public Health England”. PHE will be axed at the end of March and much but not all of its work is being subsumed into a new body, the National Institute for Health Protection, alongside two other bodies which have played a key role in the fight against Covid-19, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and NHS Track and Trace. However, while the institute’s remit will extend to infectious diseases and possible future pandemics, the government has admitted it does not yet know who will take forward PHE’s health improvement functions, such as tackling bad diet and stopping smoking. The statement points out that illnesses linked to unhealthy lifestyles – which include diabetes, cancer and heart disease – kill more people than anything else in the UK, including Covid. “Chronic non-communicable diseases are still, and will remain, responsible for the overwhelming burden of preventable death and disease in this country”, say the signatories, which also include the British Medical Association, Association of Directors of Public Health and Action on Smoking and Health. Voicing unease about such areas being sidelined amid the ongoing battle against Covid, they add: “It is a false choice to neglect vital health improvement measures, such as those that target smoking, obesity, alcohol and mental health, in order to fight Covid-19.” Their letter is published in today’s BMJ. They also point out that the pandemic has had the worst impact on people who are already suffering from stark inequalities in health – another key area of PHE’s work. In the Commons on Tuesday Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, warned that abolishing PHE, which is an executive agency of Hancock’s Department of Health and Social Care, “will sap morale, sap focus and should wait until the end of the pandemic”. Prof Maggie Rae, president of the Faculty of Public Health, said: “Reorganisation of Public Health England brings with it a real risk that some of the critical functions of PHE will be ignored.” Alex Norris, Labour’s shadow public health minister, said: “The structural reorganisation of PHE is a desperate attempt to shift the blame after years of cutting public health budgets, when the real shift we need in the fight against this virus is towards an effective local test and trace system that delivers mass testing and case finding. “We still have no answer on what will happen to other vital areas of public health like addiction, obesity and sexual health.”
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Post by Admin on Sept 19, 2020 11:50:19 GMT
"The Care Quality Commission has regularly found and acted on poor practice in relation to the use of Do Not Attempt Resuscitation (DNAR) Notices. For example, on a specialist dementia ward, inspectors found that, while there was a good procedure around the issue of consent, when it came to use of DNAR notices evidence was lacking that this procedure was being followed consistently. There was little evidence that patients had been consulted about their wishes and in some cases decisions about use of DNAR notices had been taken on the basis of the age and frailty of the patient. This raises serious issues under Article 2 of the ECHR (the right to life) and also Article 14 (the right not to be discriminated against in the enjoyment of human rights). The CQC inspectors took compliance action as a result of the practice on this ward and changes were initiated to ensure future appropriate use of DNAR notices. During the pandemic, the original NICE guidelines discriminated against elderly people, and many of those with 'underlying conditions', (based on a scale of 'frailty'), since access to intensive care support and the Nightingale hospital was restricted to the "young and fit". This is a gross violation of human rights, where consent to 'treatment ceilings' was not agreed between patient and doctors. Now the government wants to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and scrap the UK's Human Rights Act. This would be catastrophic in light of the government's financial cuts to the NHS and increasingly clear eugenic approach to health care. The NHS was designed to protect citizens' health. The idea that citizens should "protect the NHS" is not only absurd, it is a downright dangerous step towards discriminating who may have medical care and who should be left to die." NHS is being ‘protected’ from those who need protecting most by rationing treatment based on eugenic ‘guidelines’ Written by Kitty S Jonespoliticsandinsights.org/2020/04/02/nhs-is-being-protected-from-those-who-need-protecting-most-by-rationing-treatment-based-on-eugenic-guidelines/
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2020 12:38:07 GMT
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Post by Admin on Oct 7, 2020 14:18:02 GMT
Daniel Korski: The Intelligence-Linked Mastermind Behind the UK’s Orwellian Healthtech Advisory BoardAs a futuristic, hi-tech dystopia increasingly takes shape around us, the concept of the Panopticon is more relevant than ever as it functions as the underpinning of the ever-growing mass surveillance grid. unlimitedhangout.com/2020/10/investigative-reports/korski/"For those who are not so familiar with 18th century social philosophy, a Panopticon was originally the design of a prison building by an English philosopher named Jeremy Bentham. The Panopticon prison’s architecture would allow one guard in a central guard tower to observe every inmate without those prisoners knowing that they were being observed, and so those incarcerated were left to assume that they were actually being observed all of the time. This prison would, in theory, allow that singular guard to maintain order over every inmate. Much later, in the 20th century, the famous French philosopher, Michel Foucault, would use the concept of Bentham’s original Panopticon as a way to describe and explore “disciplinary power”. According to Foucault’s work, disciplinary power had been successful due to its utilisation of three technologies; hierarchical observation; normalising judgment; and examinations. Hierarchical observation refers to the fact that the observer in a Panopticon can be of any hierarchical position within the observing body, meaning that a prison guard, supervisor, or a governor could be the person viewing the inmates. Foucault would also insist that the normalisation of judgement is imperative for disciplinary power to exist. The final principle, the examination, is used to combine the first two principles of the observations and the resulting judgements to help decide on whether further actions should be taken or punitive measures be applied. Among the most notable of Foucault’s analyses of the utility of the Panopticon is the following quote from his book Discipline and Punish: “The major effect of the panopticon is to induce in the inmate a state of consciousness and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” In other words, the uncertainty of whether or not an individual is being constantly watched induces obedience in that individual, allowing only a few to control the many. In addition to Foucault, the concept of the Panopticon has been vigorously studied over the past few centuries and it has special relevance in understanding modern forms of mass surveillance. The aim of many of the modern day state surveillance apparatus function under a similar doctrine to the original ideology behind the invention of the Panopticon. The British GCHQ, the US’s NSA, the Israeli’s Unit 8200, among many others, are the all seeing eyes of national intelligence agencies who have longed for a way to watch their populations remotely, i.e. online, without their citizens knowing whether or not they’re actually being observed. One man has strived to be at the center of the growing global Panopticon, from his base in the Panopticon’s birthplace — Britain. His name is Daniel Korski."
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Post by Admin on Oct 8, 2020 19:44:36 GMT
"We need to see a radical and conscious shift in every part of the country towards tackling health inequalities.” That means no more back-door privatisation, no more outsourcing, and proper investment in our NHS. NHS facing ‘triple whammy’ of issues amid pandemic, report warnsmorningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/nhs-facing-triple-whammy-issues-amid-pandemic-report-warnsUNIONS and campaigners have urged the government to invest in the NHS as a new report warns of a “triple whammy” of staff exhaustion, treatment backlogs and a second wave of Covid-19. The NHS Confederation says that the disruption caused by the pandemic must lead to a transformation of the health service and urged more government funding to restore services, cover rising demand and tackle health inequalities. Its NHS Reset report warns that the service is dealing with local outbreaks and a second surge of cases alongside a “huge backlog” of people needing care, with staff exhausted and capacity reduced due to infection-control measures. The health-service body says that the “road to recovery will be long” for the NHS, which it adds was already under significant pressure as it entered the pandemic. Its survey found that that 74 per cent of 252 NHS leaders are concerned about being able to hit targets for resuming routine operations by the end of October. And only 8 per cent of NHS leaders surveyed said that current funding allows them to deliver safe and effective services. The report’s authors warn that while the NHS has made huge progress to restore services towards pre-pandemic levels, the impact of Covid-19 is likely to have an effect on NHS capacity for “several years.” The report also argues that there must be action to tackle health inequalities, which it warns have been exacerbated by the pandemic. NHS Confederation chairman Lord Victor Adebowale said: “This is the moment for government to grasp the nettle, be bold and invest in a health and care system — not just for this winter but for the long term. “Above all, we need to see a radical and conscious shift in every part of the country towards tackling health inequalities.” Sara Gorton, head of health at public-sector union Unison, said that the “stakes are too high” and the “pressures too great” to delay an “early and significant” pay rise of at least £2,000 for all NHS staff. She added that a pay rise this year would “help keep skilled workers in their jobs and attract many much-needed new recruits.” GMB union’s national officer Rachel Harrison warned that health-care staff are at risk of a “looming mental health crisis” due to stress and unresolved issues surrounding personal protective equipment and Covid-19 testing. She said that health workers need to be “minsters’ top priority.” Dr Louise Irvine, GP and member of Keep Our NHS Public, told the Morning Star that the government “must recognise this critical situation and give the NHS the resources it needs, including giving NHS staff a decent pay rise now to aid recruitment and retention.” Labour called for the national cancer screening programme to fully restart, as new data shows a record low in the number of people receiving treatment during the pandemic. Its figures show that just 319 people started cancer treatment in July after attending a screening programme – a decrease of 64 per cent compared with the same timeframe last year. Shadow health and social care secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “It’s now urgent that ministers bring forward a plan to tackle the backlog in non Covid-19 care.”
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Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2020 15:58:28 GMT
John McDonnell: England’s social care system is brokenleftfootforward.org/2020/10/john-mcdonnell-englands-social-care-system-is-broken/People face isolation, indignity, maltreatment and neglect. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the grotesque inequalities in our society, making it abundantly clear that radical change is urgently needed. Nowhere is change more urgently necessary than in social care. Ten years of austerity imposed by successive Conservative governments alongside the privatisation of social care left the system totally unprepared to cope with the COVID pandemic. The result has been in many elderly people dying lonely and painful deaths and many care staff left unprotected, with such dedication putting their lives at risk to care for our relatives. Promise after promise has been made by Tory Prime Ministers that the system will be reformed and proper levels of care provided, including this week Johnson’s warm words but no policy and no funding. Literally we have heard it all before time and time again and on each occasion instead of change there has been yet another round of cuts and privatisations. Let’s shout it out as loudly as we can. England’s social care system is broken. People face isolation, indignity, maltreatment and neglect as well as barriers to inclusion and independent living. Care and support do not reflect users’ needs or wishes. Many small providers have folded; care homes are increasingly managed by corporates and hedge funds that generate massive offshore profits. There are 26% fewer people supported in 2020 than in 2010, and local authority spending on social care has fallen by 49% in real terms despite rising population and demand. Disabled and elderly people who need social care and support face high charges, leaving thousands in poverty. Staff wages, training and conditions are at rock bottom with around a quarter paid at the national living wage of £7.83/hour or less, and 24% on zero-hour contracts. Eight million unpaid, overworked family carers, including children and elderly relatives, provide vital support. As new cases of COVID rapidly rise and begin to overtake the capacity of our NHS hospitals rocket, councils are once again asking homes to take infected patients. There are over 410,000 people currently living in care homes with almost half of newly admitted residents coming from hospitals. Let us not forget that the UK holds the European record for numbers of deaths from COVID-19, 20,000 of which occurred in care homes. Staff frequently reported feeling completely unsupported and two thirds of homes were unable to isolate patients carrying the virus. In addition, hard pressed community care workers with inadequate PPE and on zero hours contracts were likely to have inadvertently spread infection as well as suffering an excess of deaths themselves. With another spike in the virus now materialising, it’s time to act decisively and create the caring services we need. In his speech this week, Johnson, true to form, has disingenuously plagiarised a speech and Guardian article I had written in the early stages of the pandemic where I reminded people that in the depths of the Second World War progressives came together to determine that never again would they allow our people experience the harm of the 1930s depression years but also they started to dream, discuss and plan the new society they aimed to build as we came out of the war. As usual Johnson demonstrated his passing relationship to the truth. It was socialists and progressives who dreamt and designed that new Jerusalem that they wanted to build post war and it was the Attlee Labour government in the teeth of Conservative bitter and dogged opposition that built that welfare state , constructing the NHS by taking health services into public ownership despite a national debt following the second world war more than twice the size of the UK’s current debt. It falls to us now to complete the work of the Attlee government elected 75 years ago and establish the National Care and Support Service, in public ownership and under democratic control alongside the NHS. Too many lives have been lost and too much human suffering has been inflicted on our fellow citizens by the current failing privatised system. It really is time to create a national care and support service that puts care above profits and effectively meets the needs of our community.” John McDonnell is a Labour MP and former Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
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Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2020 16:31:03 GMT
We need to kill all the poor, sick & disabled & totally destroy the NHS / Benefits & social care systems, & make the UK a Third World off shore Tax Haven for Billionaires - anything less is unacceptable. [Sarcasm] Austerity has killed a quarter of a million people, so why do politicians and the media see so unconcerned? As I write this, around 60,000 people are thought to have died from COVID 19. The response has been unprecedented. We’ve shut down our entire economy and the Government has exploded the national debt to protect thousands of people’s income. Tory Cuts Killed A Quarter of a Million labourbuzz.com/tory-cuts-killed-a-quarter-of-a-million/WESTMINISTER (Labour Buzz) – Austerity has killed a quarter of a million people, so why do politicians and the media (& public) seem so unconcerned?
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Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2020 19:47:43 GMT
No-One Should Profit from Social Care – It’s Time to Build a National Care ServiceBy Brian Fisher Over 90% of Britain's social care is privatised – with huge returns for corporate profiteers. It's time to treat care of the elderly, sick and disabled as the public service it is, and build a real National Care Service. tribunemag.co.uk/2020/10/no-one-should-profit-from-social-care-its-time-to-build-a-national-care-serviceWe are at a critical time for social care. This pandemic has shone a harsh light on a system which now seems to let down pretty much everyone in contact with it – workers, users, planners. There are many heartening stories of workers going out of their way to help residents of care homes or people in their own homes. But sadly, there are more stories of care curtailed by austerity and by privatisation. The Tories’ empty promises to “fix social care” ring hollow. This is what they have been overseeing. 60% cuts to Local Authorities have devastated social care, despite councils doing their best to maintain services. This has resulted in other services suffering even worse cuts. The workforce, in some places, has been cut by 50%. Governments prevented local authorities using public capital to build or upgrade their care homes, leading to the mass sell-off of state-owned care facilities from the 1990s through to the late 2000s. It is currently the case that 83% of care home beds are owned by for-profit companies. Over 90% of social care provision is privatised across both personal and residential care. Large care home chains extract cash and are then bought and sold using debt leveraged buyouts. There is an astonishingly high 12% rate of return on capital. Privatisation leads to perverse outcomes. Occupancy in residential care is kept high to maintain profitability. Larger homes are more profitable and tend to have worse care. In the community, zero-hour contracts and 15-minute appointments are still common which impact on workers and users. Personal budgets liberate some disabled people but can also be a crushing burden on others. There are 1.3 million workers in social care now, with 2 million needed by 2035 – a larger workforce than the NHS. 82% are women and about 10% are from the EU. The fallout from Brexit is likely to hit the sector hard. There is an 8% vacancy rate and a turnover of 31%. Training is very limited and there is virtually no career path. The conditions of work are poor with little protection, and yet workers repeatedly sacrifice themselves for their clients. 1.4 million older people do not receive care services to which they should be entitled, as eligibility criteria are tightened. Nursing care beds have been reduced with 26% fewer older people receiving support since 2010. There are inequalities in funding and delivery of services and a lot of evidence that current services do not meet users’ nor carers’ needs. There are also countless examples of inadequate care due to short appointments with private companies seeking to maximise resource at the expense of personal wellbeing. I have spoken to a disabled person who was left naked in their bath because a professional carer had to rush off to their next 15-minute appointment. The system is usually top-down with very little user involvement. The UN recently declared that the UK government has committed “grave” and “systematic” violations of disabled people’s human rights under its welfare reforms. And yet social care actually generates wealth, it generates a £38.5 billion contribution to the economy in England, through wages and taxes being spent locally and not in tax havens. The calculation for London alone is £5.2 billion. The Socialist Health Association in partnership with Keep Our NHS Public are launching a joint campaign to transform social care and are calling for the introduction of a National Care Support and Independent Living Service. The government would have responsibility for, and duty to provide, a service providing care, independent and supported living whilst adopting into English law articles from the UN Convention on rights of disabled people that establish choice and control, dignity and respect, at the heart of person-centred planning. This Saturday will see an online launch of this vision with speakers which will include Labour MP John McDonnell, as well as representatives from unions, local government and pensioners groups. There is a surprising consensus on what is needed. Much of it is summarised in our demands for a new settlement, built with disabled people and carers. Social care should be fully funded through government investment and progressive taxation, free at the point of need and fully available to everyone living in this country. Social care should be publicly provided and publicly accountable. A long-term strategy would place an emphasis on de-institutionalisation and community-based independent and supported living. There should be no place for profiteering, and the market in social care would be brought to an end. Such a service should be mandated nationally, but delivered locally. The government would be responsible for developing within the principles of co-production, a nationally mandated set of services that will be democratically run, designed, and delivered locally in partnership with local authorities and the NHS. They must identify and address the needs of informal carers, family and friends providing personal support and the new employee strategy must be fit for purpose. Support should also be given to the formation of a taskforce on independent and supported living with a meaningful influence, led by those who require independent living support, from all demographic backgrounds and regions. This would also make recommendations to address wider changes in public policy. We need to think of social care as an investment for the future. If we manage it well, it can prevent problems, increase wellbeing and support independence for all who want it.
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