Since Barnet Borough Council transferred learning disability and physical and sensory impairment services for adults to the for-profit company Your Choice Barnet (YCB) in February 2012, service users and their families have been concerned that the standard of care would decline.
Decisions being taken by the senior managers, responsible for the running of Your Choice Barnet, have made it increasingly difficult for Your Choice Barnet care workers to deliver services as they would wish. YCB frontline staff have been hit by repeated restructuring, redundancies, reducing staffing levels and serious reductions in their working terms and conditions.
Service users rely on their care workers for their well-being and safety. They need continuity of care provided by staff who they know. For the safety of service users and staff it is vital that staffing levels are adequate.
The safest way to ensure that service users are well cared for is to employ permanent staff. However, at Your Choice Barnet the numbers of agency staff and zero-hours contracts continue to increase.
Your Choice Barnet is creating conditions in which it is impossible for care workers to deliver the quality service they used to provide to the most vulnerable members of our community. Everyone — senior managers, Barnet councillors, service users and their families — agrees that these care workers show amazing care and commitment despite all the difficulties they face.
Recently the management of Your Choice Barnet imposed a 9.5 per cent pay cut on all frontline staff. This pay cut is the final insult to Your Choice Barnet care workers. It seems that Your Choice Barnet is incapable of managing its finances in such a way that it can offer adequate conditions of employment to its staff, and this will impact on the safety and well-being of their clients.
Under these circumstances, the Campaign Against Destruction of Disabled Support Services and Barnet Alliance for Public Services give their complete support to the Your Choice Barnet care workers, who have decided they have no choice but to strike.
Janet Leifer
Campaign Against Destruction of Disabled Support Services
Tirza Waisel
Barnet Alliance for Public Services
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here