Care workers and the vital role they play must be valued not seen as a cost to be driven down to increase profits, says UNISON Cymru/Wales.
UNISON, which is the largest union representing care workers health staff and paramedics in Wales, knows the struggles these dedicated workers face on a daily basis.
The union has being saying for some time that social care throughout the UK is in crisis and that the three main causes are underinvestment, under valuing and poor treatment of care workers and the privatisation of care.
At the same time hospital and ambulance staff struggle with the impact of lack of capacity in care which leads to delayed transfer of patients otherwise medically fit for discharge from hospitals.
UNISON Cymru/Wales care lead Mark Turner (pictured above) said: “Ambulances are stacked up outside A and E at hospitals around Wales, sometimes throughout the whole of a 12 hour shift, just with one patient, waiting for a bed for treatment- this means there are less ambulances and paramedics to answer emergency calls and they’re unable to provide the emergency care they’re trained to do.
“The latest report into this accurately describes the crisis from the view of the hospital and makes 25 recommendations, which largely call for investment in reablement services to unblock the blockages and free up resources which are desperately needed elsewhere.
“We welcome the call for re-establishing day services as part of a suite of preventative measures to avoid hospitalisation or need for transition to a care home.
“Significantly the report calls for a stepping up in pace of the work of the Social Care Fair Work Forum, in improving pay, sick pay and other conditions and giving care workers a voice through trades union recognition.
“The Welsh Government has, unlike the Westminster Government, acknowledged that this is a priority to increase the number of care workers needed in Wales. But the report is right to say we need specified earmarked funding and a timescale for when these improvements will be achieved.
“If Welsh Government responds positively to these recommendations, union members across health and social care will welcome these actions.
“But ultimately, what is needed is a reversal of the profit making private sector provision which makes up the majority of care, so that local authorities can deliver a national care service, in a modern and imaginative way, with the public reassured of the quality of care, continuity of care and relationships with a carer, and that public money should go directly into public care.
“Companies should not make profit out of people’s vulnerability.”
