Thursday 23 December 2010

An Open Letter

The Editor
Eastern Daily Press


Dear Editor

The article “Charities concerned at how cuts could affect the elderly” which appeared in the Eastern Daily Press on Wednesday 17 November is timely and hopefully will remind your readers of actions they can take to oppose such drastic cuts. The proposal by Norfolk County Council is billed as the “Big Conversation”, but UNISON believes the genie is out of the bottle and despite Leader of the Council Derrick Murphy’s assertion that “no one wants cuts – I don’t want cuts” in a meeting with trade unions on 8 November, it is apparent that the scale and potential impact will be much greater than in the past and for a longer period, prolonging the agony for staff who are already facing pay cuts and proposed cuts to any redundancy packages. It is almost unbelievable that senior staff, MPs and Councillors can take part in a campaign (Make it Marham, to rightfully save jobs and services at RAF Marham) against the Conservative Government cuts whilst ignoring the pleas of staff, service users and the unions of the impact the cuts will have on the people of Norfolk, both as service users and economically throughout the county.

Despite the fact that Paul Burstow, Care Services Minister, has said that Councils have no excuse to cut adult care and that £2m had been provided to maintain care services at current levels, the £2m is not ring fenced and half has been given to the NHS. There are no indications that the NHS Commissioners will be required to spend this money on preventative services or that the funding will keep up with demographic changes.

Take just one service mentioned in the report– the Sensory Support Service provides a statutory service. There are no other staff groups with the skills and experience of Sensory Support, so it is unknown who could step in to provide this service – for example, they issue BD8 Certificates for those registered blind and partially sighted. The staff are devastated that they will be unable to provide such a service that is universally thought to be useful and preventative, £1m spent here means £1.5 m saved down the line, as with most of the proposals for Adult Care.

The impact on staff should not be ignored either. UNISON have been very concerned about staff in all departments, who have already seen their pay frozen, in effect for the past 2 years, with more to come. Also the proposed changes to the Staffing Adjustment Policy where any Redundancy payments are to be reduced will affect staff and the wider economy too.

We urge everyone who feels these cuts are a step too far to respond the County Council by January 8 2011, join the trade unions and others at Chapelfield in Norwich City Centre on Saturday 4 December and fight for these services. Once gone, it will be impossible to replace them.

Yours sincerely

Alison Birmingham
UNISON Senior Steward
Adult Social Care