In September 2015, a letter of protest about proposed ‘cuts to frontline services’ arrived on the desk of Ian Hudspeth, a county Councillor.
It read in part: 'I was disappointed at the long list of suggestions floated in the briefing note to make significant cuts…. from elderly day centres, to libraries, to museums.
This is in addition to the unwelcome and counter-productive proposals to close children’s centres across the country … work … could be done to generate savings in a more creative manner.’
The reply from the Councillor was clear: the council had no other options, having already fired middle managers (losing around 2,800 jobs), changed contracts, frozen pay or given under-inflation pay rises. Services had been merged and physical assets sold off, even though this was ‘neither legal, nor sustainable in the long term’.
Although the council was dealing with more older people needing more social support, more children in care and hospitals that were unable to discharge 159 people home because of funding gaps in social care, there was nowhere left to go.
While the protester claimed that the council’s spending had ‘increased in recent years’, the fact was, replied Hudspeth: ‘Our Revenue Support Grant has fallen by almost 50% in the first half of this decade from £122 million in 2011/12 to £62 million in 2015/16, and we expect it to approach zero by 2020.
Other funding streams have not kept pace with this, particularly in real terms.’ In addition: ‘… additional functions have been transferred to local authorities since 2009/10. Most notably Public Health as well as new burdens related to the Care Act 2014 and the Health and Social Care Act 2012. …
The Better Care Fund is not new money for the system, there has been £8 million in additional funding for Adult Social Care, but this has been at the expense of funding for NHS Services.’ The council was having to do more, much more, with less, including delivering public health services. Something had to give.
That something was frontline care.
The sender of the above letter was David Cameron, the prime minister who had overseen the financial cuts to local councils he was complaining about.Surreally, it seems he simply did not understand that they could not be absorbed without reducing the services available. Local authorities – which commission and pay for social services – have taken hits of 30% of budget in real terms in England and around 24% in Scotland between 2008 and 2015.
_____________________________________________________________
Excerpt above kindly reproduced from Margaret McCartney's book titled The State of Medicine: Keeping the Promise of the NHS
RELATED LINKS
What cuts to your local council should David Cameron be aware of?
No comments:
Post a Comment