‘Terrifying’ cuts feared as Argyll struggles with health ‘crisis’
AS ARGYLL and Bute’s health managers secretly discuss ‘savage’ cuts of more than 400 jobs and propose closing all their care homes, day care and learning disability centres to plug a £13million black hole in this year’s budget, an SNP minister has accused them of failing and being unfit for purpose.
The trade union Unison broke cover last Friday urging the Scottish Government to halt ‘400 redundancies’ and a ‘massive range’ of cuts and privatisation proposals by Argyll and Bute’s Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP).
Its overseeing Integrated Joint Board (IJB) is facing ‘very difficult decisions’ next Wednesday (March 28), when it must decide which cuts to adopt in a bid to save £13m from its £263m budget for 2018-19.
Unison urged ministers to oppose the HSCP’s ‘slash and burn approach to services’, adding: ‘The IJB is to be asked to privatise all remaining in-house home care services. Cutting care homes, learning disability day centres and closing wards to relocate workers from the collapsing Aros building [in Lochgilpead] in to a PFI ward, to mention just some of the cuts, is not the actions of a credible public service and is crisis management.’
Papers released this week seemed to confirm these cuts and more, including closing older people’s day care centres such as Lynnside in Oban and Struan Lodge in Dunoon with the loss of 60 jobs, reviewing home care services, and withdrawing lunch clubs and meals on wheels, except in remote areas where charges would likely rise.
However, Unison revealed some cuts would be decided ‘in private so the public are prevented from scrutinising deliberations about their services’. The Oban Times understands the HSCP will propose closing all its older people’s care homes in Argyll and Bute, including Eader Glynn in Oban, Tigh a Rhuda on Tiree and Gortanvogie on Islay, with more than 275 staff at risk of redundancy. If the homes close, residents will have to be found beds in other privately-run homes.
Argyll and Bute’s SNP MSP Michael Russell also disclosed: ‘Whilst they will put a few things on the table next week at their open meeting, they have now admitted to keeping secret a document which they intend to discuss later in private and which details a terrifying further range of options for more cost cutting.
‘These are believed to include the complete privatisation of all elderly care, the closure of all day centres, a reduction in the number of midwives and other essential staff, and yet more pressure on the most vulnerable such as further reduction of the help available for sleepovers.’
Mr Russell sought to blame the HSCP, ‘despite their spin to the contrary’, for failing ‘to implement effective budgetary control year after year’, and called for an immediate change in management and governance.
‘Local people and hardworking health and care staff are utterly fed up with this situation and with the constant pressures on services,’ he said. ‘Too much centralised bureaucracy, ineffective, confusing consultations and misguided, and often futile, attempts to force through unacceptable closures have resulted in an ever worsening financial position.
‘The previous programmes of cuts haven’t worked. Yet the senior management’s only answer is to do again what they have done before in the desperate hope it might produce a different result.
‘It won’t. Even if these cuts happened we would be back again next year in the same position.
‘It is the people who are running the show who are the problem because they have the wrong solutions. That needs to change, and change now. It is essential some stability is provided, either from within the organisation or from outside intervention so management and governance changes are made which will produce an organisation fit for purpose.’
IJB vice chair councillor Kieron Green said: ‘The IJB has a duty to consider a balanced budget that meets the objectives of our strategic plan, and if additional resources could be made available by the Scottish Government to help us achieve this then these would be most welcome.’