Minister urges board to shelve health cuts

SCOTLAND’S health minister has told officials to drop their secret plans to cut 400 jobs and close care homes, day care and disability centres across Argyll, until they engage ‘fully and transparently’ with local people.

Argyll and Bute’s Health and Social Care Partnership is proposing closing all its council-run older people’s care homes, including Eadar Glinn in Oban, Tigh a Rhuda on Tiree, Gortanvogie on Islay, Ardfenaig in Ardrishaig, day care centres including Lynnside in Oban and Campbeltown’s Woodlands Centre and learning disability centres including Lochgilphead Resource Centre to save £13million to balance this year’s budget.

Its overseeing Integrated Joint Board (IJB) faced ‘very difficult decisions’ on Wednesday whether to adopt the cuts. An online petition asking the IJB to withdraw the proposals until a ‘robust agreed alternative’ is in place gathered 1,250 signatures by Tuesday. ‘The most vulnerable in our community deserve the greatest support,’ wrote one protestor.

Trade union UNISON was ‘inundated’ by members expressing ‘dismay and fears, both for their own jobs and the services they provide’, regional manager Simon Macfarlane said: ‘The people of Argyll and Bute know only too well the dangers of outsourcing services. In the last 18 months we have seen independent providers go bust, walk away or be shut down due to appalling standards. It is incredulous the IJB is being asked to privatise all home care services.’

Health Secretary Shona Robison intervened, writing to Argyll and Bute Council leader Aileen Morton. Earlier the minister met HSCP senior officers and IJB chairman Robin Creelman to raise her concerns about their ‘capacity to engage fully and transparently with people living in the area about service redesign’. Ms Robison said she wasn’t told about the ‘savings proposals’ and her offers of ‘practical support’ were rebuffed.

She urged the IJB to reconsider what further work it must complete to agree its plan for next year, ‘instead of finalising financial decisions that are not yet informed by thorough consideration’.

Argyll and Bute MSP Michael Russell said it was incredible the HSCP left the minister in the dark: ‘We now discover they never even mentioned the impending financial crisis, still less the drastic list of cuts they had drawn up. There appears to be no explanation except an intention to hide the true situation as long as possible, even from a Government minister who was offering to help.

‘The IJB were, of course, intending to go on hiding the true situation this week with their plan for a private meeting to consider private papers. Courageous leaks to the press put paid to that.

‘It does not have to set a final budget this week - it can simply roll over its budget whilst, as a matter of urgency, it addresses the failings in its management and governance that have led it to this disastrous situation.’

Eleven SNP councillors, opposing the ‘damaging and ill conceived cuts’ also called on the IJB ‘to consult with staff and communities and put a stop to the proposals, which will decimate local jobs and frontline healthcare services’.

The HSCP said it welcomed the Ms Robison’s ‘valued feedback and offer of help and support’: ‘The IJB has to make difficult choices and, as pointed out by the Cabinet Secretary, we need to do more to explain the case for change to our communities and look forward to working with the government and all our stakeholders to do this.’