Care chief takes W. Mids care woes to London

As the West Midlands Care Association Chief Executive I have a duty to take every opportunity to represent my members in places that can influence their care business.

Talks with the Department of Health over the financial restrictions that are currently strangling the industry proved no exception.

Representing both my members and those of the Care Alliance in which I holds a co-chair role with Erica Lockhart from Surrey Care Association, I spelt out how financial pegging threatened future provision in the private sector.

Meeting in Westminster with Paul Richardson, head of Quality and Safety, and Karen Dooley, Policy Lead for Adult and Social Care, under the Alliance banner I was keen to explain to the movers and shakers what is happening at grass-roots level across the country.

But I also took the opportunity to inform these senior staff what is happening in the West Midlands.

We spoke about the problems for our learning disability providers who have not had cost of living increases for over four years, despite huge rises in overheads.

The main outgoing for them is wages and the minimum wage has gone up at lease four times in as many years.

We also discussed the difficulties of running care businesses in areas where the local authorities don’t pay the full cost of care.

Also on the agenda were the implication of the new inspection regime and the number of failing homes and why they are in trouble.

I questioned whether the right areas of the care sector are being examined and sought policy pointers from government on how it thinks failing homes can recover.

Watch this space . . I’m sure more will follow.