Social care
Social care is in crisis. The service is increasingly being outsourced to the private sector to cut costs. In over two-thirds of councils in England people with low and moderate needs are no longer eligible for services which could prevent them accelerating into higher levels of need. The funding crisis and marketisation of the service has led to fragmentation of services, impacting on the quality of care.
In England and Wales around 85% of home care services are run by the private sector. There is an immense pressure to meet tight constraints imposed by market forces and Best Value, with a relentless focus on delivering more 'units' of homecare for lower cost. The home care service relies heavily on small private providers, many of whom are inexperienced in service delivery. Marketisation in home care has led to loss of accountability, high turnover of staff on minimum wages and deteriorating quality. UNISON is campaigning for well-funded in-house provision of home care services by local authorities to meet individual needs.
For more information:
Home Care
CONTACT DETAILS
• The UNISON contact for the Positively Public campaign is Margie Jaffe.
Positively Public
1 Mabledon Place
London WC1H 9AJ
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Recent documents
The role of private finance in public investment
The report shows that PFI is not value for money, despite the coalition government backing this form of investment. It warns that the cost of PFI has risen astronomically following the financial crisis and the gap between the rate at which the government and the private sector can borrow has widened dramatically.
The role of private finance in public investment
UNISON Response to Lord's Inquiry on PFI
UNISON's submission to the House of Lord's Inquiry into PFI highlights our concerns around the methodology of PFI, risk transfer, high costs, value for money and workforce issues.
UNISON Response to the Select Committee on Economic Affairs - House of Lords
Reclaiming the Initiative - putting the public back into PFI
The report catalogues how ever-growing billions of public money has become locked into financing massively expensive PFI schemes. The Government has committed taxpayers, for a generation to come, to a bill of more than £217bn worth of repayments between now and 2033/34 on just £64bn of PFI projects. PFI’s reliance on the private sector was supposed to give public building programmes more rigour and strength but, as the union’s latest report - “Putting the Public Back into PFI” – shows, in reality it has exposed them to greater hazards and weaknesses. Public projects have been tainted by private failure
Acrobat PDF version
Transforming Community Services
This factsheet outlines the process for implementing the Transforming Community Services programme for primary care trusts.
Transforming community services factsheet
