Care for Politics

Princess Anne might be worried about the impact of cuts on service users and carers but it seems a significant proportion of voters do not share her concerns.

Those campaigning against cuts have, I'm afraid, not seen the overwhelming electoral condemnation of George Osborne's grand plan that they were looking for. While the meltdown for the Liberal Democrats might be the standout feature of the local elections in England, those most delighted will be the Conservatives.

Labour might have gained 600 or so councillors (at the time of writing) but the seats in question were last fought in 2007 when the party's popularity was at rock bottom.

The Tories did well in the seats in 2007 and it looks like they did even better last night, picking up 50 or so, according to the latest BBC figure. One might say Tory voters have given a thumbs up to the cuts.

The Liberal Democrats' loss of over 500 seats will be seen as a damning electoral verdict on the party's year in power - and its acquiescence in the cuts programme. The party may regret much about the past year but today's dreadful results will not lead its key figures to end the coalition. Far from it - the party would get another pasting in the general election that would probably ensue from the collapse of the government, meaning that it is vital that it remains in the coalition.

Climate change secretary Chris Huhne has been getting uppity, rowing with David Cameron over the Cabinet table about the Tories' role in the AV referendum campaign. It is conceivable that Huhne or the Lib Dem president Tim Farron challenges Nick Clegg for his party leadership but in the event of either winning, they would still face the challenge of avoiding a general election in which the party would get annihilated.

This does not end the threat to the coalition though.

The right of the Conservative Party have been horrified that they failed to secure an election majority and were forced to make what they saw as humiliating concessions to Clegg last year. Many will want an early election, capitalising on the implosion of the Clegg phenomenon and the inexperience of Labour leader Ed Miliband . I rather suspect the same thoughts have occurred to Cameron and Osborne.

It would not serve the Conservative leadership well to be seen to dishonour the terms of the coalition agreement that they pledged would last the full five years. I cannot see them pulling the plug. A far cleverer approach would be to make life difficult for their coalition partners, plough on with the cuts programme regardless of their troubles and hope the Lib Dems commit electoral suicide.

Of course there's a risk that a resurgent Labour party might get its act together in time for a snap general election. And campaigners could hope to use a general election as a referendum on the cuts programme.

But today's result, under a first-past-the-post system might just tempt the Tories into believing that they can win a general election. There is little for Clegg to smile about.

Pic: Liberal Democrats on Flickr

Alex Folkes/Fishnik Photography

George Osborne offered some help to the lower paid members of the social care profession in his Budget today.

He increased the personal tax allowance by £630 to £8,105, meaning the taxman takes less of their earnings.

And domiciliary workers who rely on cars to travel between service users will see two main benefits from what the Guardian has dubbed the "Budget for Jeremy Clarkson". Their approved mileage allowance payment will rise to by 5p to 45p per mile, for the first 10,000 miles, and fuel duty will be cut.

These measures will help some. But they are a needle of help in a haystack of woe, the haystack being the public spending cuts heralded by last year's comprehensive spending review.

Many social care professionals won't have jobs before too long as previously announced public spending cuts slash councils' budgets.

Their pay will fall, in real terms for those earning less than £21,000 who will receive a measly extra £250 annually, and in every sense for everyone else, with council employees receiving a pay freeze. Retail Prices Index inflation hit 5.5% in February, it was announced yesterday, the highest rate for 20 years, meaning public servants' living standards will plummet.

For many, their standard of living in older age will fall too. Osborne confirmed he is likely to implement the recommendations of the Hutton review of public sector pensions, meaning workers will have to work longer and many of them will in future receive less.

And the Budget did nothing, of course, to alleviate the gloom for service users who remain troubled by council cuts.

We live in bleak times.

Unless you're Jeremy Clarkson.

PIC: tonylanciabeta on Flickr

The National Care Association has launched an astonishing attack on a member of the government's flagship care funding commission, insisting that comments she made in a newspaper article make her unsuitable to continue in the role.

NCA chair Nadra Ahmed said that the views expressed by Dame Jo Williams, the Care Quality Commission's chair, in an Independent interview in January suggested "opposition to the future of care homes".

She asked care minister Paul Burstow to launch an inquiry into the Commission on Funding and Support member following the article.

In the Independent interview, Williams said: "The providers will be asking themselves: 'what can I do to cut corners?'"

She also said more needed to be done to train nursing home staff and warned that there were few savings available from providers paying workers less because "many staff are already on the minimum wage".

On the issue of buildings, she said: "They [the nursing home providers] are being squeezed and won't have the money coming in, so where do they find the resources to make that investment?"

Ahmed said of Williams: "Her recent comments to the press have led us to question how the Commission on the Funding of Care and Support will be able to make independent recommendations when there appears to be opposition to the future of care homes by someone who has a significant role in the setting of the vision for the funding of long term care."

Ahmed's statement complained of further inaccuracies in the interview, although by 5.30pm this afternoon, these appeared no longer to be in the text on the Independent's website.

The NCA's statement continued: "These and other inaccuracies suggest that Dame Williams is not in touch with a fundamental element in the delivery of quality care inspected by the Care Quality Commission. NCA asks why the CQC is issuing such flawed information about a sector they have the regulatory responsibility for?"

Community Care contacted the Department of Health, which oversees the care funding commission headed by Andrew Dilnot, but it has yet to receive a response.

Ahmed last week criticised the CQC after Community Care revealed the regulator's delays in processing registration applications were resulting in care homes lying empty.  The organisations have previously been at loggerheads over the registration of social care providers.

Community Care will bring you more on this story on Monday.

The Daily Mail ingeniously starts headlines with the word 'now'. It conveys a feeling that 'they' - the bureaucrats, the celebrities, foreigners etc - are somehow ganging up in a campaign to inflict misery upon 'us' - the decent, law-abiding people in Middle England.

A quick search of the esteemed title's website brings us:

Now even PATIOS will need planning permission; Now Nadia Sawalha tries the 'Gosh, did I REALLY look that big in a bikini' diet; Now Tesco cashes in on the soaring price of gold by taking on the pawnbrokers and Now Putin blames Britain for the outbreak of WW2 at 70th anniversary memorial.

In my role as Community Care's magazine editor, I'm thinking of stipulating that all spending cuts stories' headlines start with the word 'now'. It will imply that 'they' - Eric Pickles, George Osborne etc - are ganging up in a campaign to inflict misery on 'us' - the decent, law abiding service users and members of the care workforce.

Now today we reveal how 'they' have slashed expenditure to a degree which means one in five social care providers expect to be forced out of business.

Two-thirds of the 238 providers Community Care surveyed had their fees cut this year and 81% expect a cut next year, with over half saying they will be forced to reduce the level of support they offer service users as a result.

You can read my editorial comment explaining why the fires of public sector cuts are burning the private sector here.

I state: "By pouring petrol over the entire public sector in one go, the government has caused the very bodies that were supposed to benefit from the Big Society to be engulfed by flames. What we are seeing is little short of arson."

PIC:  C Zimmerman on Flickr

Bins matter above all else.

That was the message from communities secretary Eric Pickles yesterday in one of his biggest speeches in a local government arena to date.

Pickles called on councils to prioritise bin collections, saying the issue "fills middle England with rage".

One might think that with social care and children's services forming, by far, the biggest chunks of councils' expenditure, the areas would have made up fairly sizeable chunks of Pickles' speech. 

This wasn't the case alas.

"If we don't sort [rubbish collections] out, we will set the cause of localism back by a generation, by creating an army of residents who view their council with resentment rather than respect," Pickles told the New Local Government Network.

"There is genuine anger that in the past decade their council tax bills have doubled, but their bin collections have halved."

Pickles then proceeded to give a series of examples of how Middle England families had been persecuted by the iron fist of councils.

Town hall bin police rifle through families bins without consent; Good Samaritans who pick up fly-tips are admonished for dropping it off at the local dump and pensioners face larger fines than shoplifters for not closing their bin lids.

There has been genuine anger about these issues amongst readers of the Daily Mail.

However, I suspect that even when it comes to Daily Mail readers, few have actually experienced these supposed council misdemeanours in reality themselves.

This scale of grievances about bins, whether justified or imagined, will be utterly dwarfed by grievances about the looming cuts in social care.

A council reprimanding someone for putting rubbish out on the wrong day (presumably because it fairly reasonably doesn't want to see bin bags blighting a neighbourhood's appearance for any longer than is required) pales into insignificance to some of the news it will have to tell service users in social care.

Older or disabled people are being robbed of their dignity and independence by their denial of benefits. The cutting of the mobility component of disability living allowance literally prevents people from going outside or having a social life.

But Pickles believes bins matter above all else.

I met up with contacts from my previous life as a journalist in the local government sector last night. Pickles' view of councils' priorities left people furious.

Eric Pickles is a man who plays the pantomime villain well - but that's where the seasonal cheer begins and ends from the communities secretary.

The Guardian reports today how 100,000 public sector workers will be told they'll lose their job over Christmas or in the immediate aftermath of the festive season.

Councils must legally give 90 days' notice that they're making staff redundant, making 1 January the deadline for them to axe people in time for the start of the next financial year on 31 March.

According to the paper, 82 of the UK's 433 councils have now issued HR1 forms which set out the upper estimates of number of people to be made redundant and inform employees that their job is at risk. The remaining councils are expected to follow suit in the next three weeks.

The comprehensive spending review took place in October but ministers' failure to announce how each council would be affected by cuts until this Monday has created needless uncertainty and confusion.

All councils will have been doing their sums to work out possible scenarios, working out how many workers they would have to dismiss depending on how much money they would lose.

But, while officers can draw up detailed plans it is politicians who will have the final say. Two months of wrangles and tension lie ahead, as well as winter gloom.

One cannot help feel that care services minister Paul Burstow might have provided better mood music for the gloom that was to follow.

He repeatedly criticised councils for cutting eligibility for services, implying that they were being short-sighted for deciding to do so before budgets were unveiled.

Everyone in the sector knows that it is short-sighted in one respect to cut eligibility - as well as making vulnerable people's lives less bearable, it merely adds to the costs faced by the state in the longer run, as people's needs increase more dramatically. However, when social care and children's services make up the bulk of local government expenditure, it is impossible not to cut such services.

It is surely better to take such decisions sooner, meaning that more thought can be given to reassessments and greater preparations can be made for the impact on the vulnerable, than in a last minute panic.

With councils angry that the government is emphasising that councils' spending power has been cut by 4.7%, when their overall local government grant has been cut by 11.6%, as blogged by my colleague Mithran Samuel, one fears for Pickles' Christmas card receival rate this year.

PIC: Department for Communities & Local Government on Flickr

The first gory evidence of Eric Pickles' chainsaw massacre of English councils has now become apparent.

The communities secretary yesterday published his funding settlement for local authorities, revealing that some face cuts of up to 8.9%. When inflation is taken into account, the cuts will be even greater.

Without a special transition grant, some authorities would have faced even harsher cuts.

I've worked out the regional breakdown of councils that will be hit with the maximum 8.9% cut and surprise, surprise, it is those in the north of England that are hit hardest.

When you exclude district councils which are not responsible for social care, there are seven councils in the north-west that face the 8.9% cut, three in London, three in Yorkshire and Humber and three in the north-east.

Liverpool council announced job losses yesterday, while Leeds Council's leader has warned frontline services will be hit.

In London, the three councils who face the maximum cut are Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Newham - possibly the three poorest.

Leafy Richmond upon Thames, which was last week revealed as having as nearly as many Oxford University entrants as the whole of Scotland, has the capital's smallest cut - 0.6%.

Shire counties, generally operating in the most prosperous areas, are spared the worst of the cuts. The hardest hit county is faces a 3.6% cut. It is no surprise to learn that the council in question is Lancashire, in the north.

It is now down to councils to decide which services are hit. Although most would count social care and children's services as priority areas, they will inevitably face a hammering.

Things will be getting pretty grim up north. Especially if you are poor.

PIC: aghrivaine on Flickr

It's not customary in these quarters to declare that George Osborne has got something spot on, but today I'm breaching protocol.

George Osborne predicted that an incoming Conservative-led government would have a six-month window after being elected before the backlash against spending cuts truly began.

Well, the riots yesterday began on the streets - six months to the day after David Cameron became prime minister. A triumph for Osborne's political acumen.

Today's papers are full of images of violence following the National Union of Students' march through Westminster.

There has yet to be a full-scale protest movement arising against the most savage cuts seen since the war.

A Coalition of Resistance has been formed but it is yet to be seen whether it will be the body that seizes the initiative to be seen as the vanguard of protest.

It also is uncertain to what extent Labour will oppose the cuts. Having been in government when Britain's/ the world's financial disaster occurred, it holds responsibility for the legacy left to the coalition and has itself been committed to a deep contraction in public spending.

There is a big opening here for a vigorous Opposition, a rising smaller party such as the Greens, or a coalition of disparate groups. Many commentators are predicting that we are entering a repeat of the 1980s where a right-wing government went full speed ahead and political interest rocketed as an agitated left found its voice (even if not political success).

We are seeing the first skirmishes in a new war. Political pollsters will be studying the public's first reactions as details of cuts emerge: will protesters be seen as a violent mob, indulgent defenders of an age of excess or the saviours of all that we as a nation hold dear?

Local politicians will be considering similar issues as they decide whether to balance their books by raising eligibility for care services or cutting early intervention work in children's services.

Will they be seen as dedicated public servants taking unenviable responsibility for tough choices while an irresponsible rabble kicks off trouble? Or will protesters' causes prove so popular locally that their campaigns strike a chord with the local population and council leaders have to look elsewhere for savings?

Those wanting to stand up for local public services clearly have a compelling message, but it's vital they have discipline and organisation too if they are to stand any chance of succeeding.

Pic: Ivy_GD on Flickr

Paul Burstow has suddenly become a man under pressure.

His first few months as a minister were the calm before the storm - the dark clouds of the spending review were on the horizon but not overhead.

Now the clouds of doom have opened and the care sector is getting soaked to the skin, and there's no sign of a break in the clouds for three years at least.

Quite a few of the delegates I spoke to at the National Children's and Adults Services Conference muttered that Burstow's oft repeated mantra that eligibility for services should not be tightened was unrealistic at best and offensively preposterous at worst.

So the minister came out fighting in his conference speech today, addressing the critics of his mathematics straight on.

He insisted the settlement was "unexpected" good news for the sector, staff pay would rise far less than in the past, keeping costs down, efficiency could improve by 3% per annum, and that charges and levies for services could be increased, helping to balance the books.

And he addressed those who have noted that the £1bn extra for social care from the NHS and the £1bn extra for councils were not ring-fenced.

"I've been coming to this conference and the Local Government Association conference for years and people have asked for freedom and flexibility. It's real freedoms for councils to set their own priorities and decide how money is spent."

Those freedoms could, of course, enable councils to prioritise street cleaning or regeneration over social care, and directors and councillors in his audience will be acutely aware of that.

Picture: Chascar on Flickr