The idea that slashing millions from the budget for care for the elderly and vulnerable across the north-east won’t have a devastating impact is fanciful.
When it emerged Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership planned massive cuts in order to save £20million, there was much chatter and spin about how the focus of the service would remain on those it supports.
But that was all political blather.
No matter how dedicated the staff who work for the partnership – funded by Aberdeenshire Council and NHS Grampian – may be, they aren’t miracle workers.
If they already felt the pressure of working in care homes across the region, then they can expect things to become considerably more stressful.
Hours before the partnership’s savings plan was made public last Wednesday, emergency carers were told they faced losing their jobs.
A brutal proposal will see 70% of the Aberdeenshire Responders for Care at Home (Arch) service axed.
Cuts to Arch came after plug pulled on National Care Service
Arch currently employs 135 emergency carers who react to emergencies. There are a further 443 home carers, 79 coordinators and six managers, bringing the total Arch staff to 663. Last year, the service cost £17million.
The plan by health chiefs to cut that by £11.9 million – through reducing in-house services by 70% and delegating some of the work to private providers – is as grim as it looks.
News of the devastating cut to the Arch budget came three weeks after the Scottish Government finally pulled the plug on its plan for a National Care Service.
While there was support across the political spectrum at Holyrood for an NCS, the government’s plans were bag-of-a-fag-packet stuff and, when it became clear that unions representing health and care workers would not support the proposal as it stood, ministers had no option but to call time on the idea.
More than 20 years ago, the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition at Holyrood introduced the policy of free personal care for the elderly.
At that time, Labour First Minister Henry McLeish faced strong opposition from party colleagues but preferred the arguments in favour from his Lib Dem deputy, Jim Wallace.
McLeish’s colleagues were not against the policy because they did not believe the elderly should be treated with compassion and dignity but because they believed there was a better way of achieving this.
Labour cabinet members argued that instead of introducing a new universal benefit, such money as was available should be targeted proportionately on the basis of economic circumstances.
In private, Labour MSPs would complain that the Lib Dems had railroaded McLeish into backing a policy that would, in time, hurt the poorest. In public, they toed the line.
The fears members of Henry McLeish’s cabinet expressed in 2001 were not without foundation.
Aberdeenshire health cuts are a result of poor political thinking
Recent events in Aberdeenshire and across Scotland are a consequence of poor political thinking on the problem of how to fairly and efficiently address the needs of a growing elderly population,
Labour was wrong to back universal free personal care almost quarter of a century ago.
Means testing would have meant a better quality of service for all, rich and poor.
The SNP’s enthusiasm for the introduction of universal benefits far outstrips Labour’s.
The extension under the First Ministership of Alex Salmond of the provision of free prescriptions to include the wealthiest was a move driven not by the desire to create a fairer Scotland (giving free haemorrhoid cream to Lexus-driving accountants does not a more equal nation-make) but because it was a vote-winner.
It’s a policy that appeals to the self-interest of those who support it and allows them to consider themselves especially progressive for so doing.
In time, the consequences of cuts to the Arch budget will become clear but, right now, I fear the worst.
Trade union leaders warn that slashing health care services in a bid to make a total of £20m in savings may result in a care home crisis.
I’m disinclined to dismiss the words of trade unionists on this matter on the grounds that of course, such a massive budget cut will have a devastating impact. How could it possibly not?
There’s little to suggest health secretary Neil Gray has much of a grip on this issue but, if he cares to take an interest, perhaps he could look at how the swingeing cuts about to devastate care services across Aberdeenshire can be avoided.
This is an emergency.
Euan McColm is a regular columnist for various Scottish newspapers
Conversation