Mulgrew unhappy at social care politics

Date published: 27/04/2008

The Council's Portfolio for Health and Social Care, Councillor Dale Mulgrew says he is disappointed that he only learned through reading Rochdale Online of the episodes of poor care revealed to Minister for Care Services Ivan Lewis during his recent visit to Rochdale. Although Councillor Mulgrew says all the bad instances that were raised by relatives of users of the Council's homecare services are "utterly unacceptable", he says that two of the cases he knew nothing about. The case of failure to provide a carer with cookery skills he was informed of by a council member of staff at the beginning of last week. He says he was told that the response to rectify this problem had been judged satisfactory and that the complainant, Councillor Linda Robinson, on behalf of the relative, had said she was happy with the response she had received.

Councillor Mulgrew said: "I am astonished at not only the lack of information provided by the Labour Party on these individual cases and question that if they truly want care standards to improve across the Borough should they not be informing the person responsible? Why say to the Council everything is fine and then backtrack and complain? Or could this be a carefully choreographed bit of political theatre?

"I find it reprehensible that there are such cases which are falling out of the net of provision. I have been to many meetings over the last twelve months with carers, service users and their representatives and I know what a lifeline home support provides to people, and the assistance that relatives give who stretch their limits to care for their loved ones."

Councillor Mulgrew continued: "We are going through a transformation in the way we provide homecare and there have been some challenges. The Council has made a decision to follow new innovative thinking that in fact the Government Minister attested to in his speech yesterday. This is to enable the individual to live more independently for longer. We have appointed a new head of transformation to oversee this process and I have been assured that while there have been some problems, and one occurrence in Rochdale, there is little evidence to suggest that we are not covering the situation satisfactorily. Although I am under no illusion that everything is perfect, I urge people who have unsatisfactory experiences to come forth and report them to me, so that any intolerable situations such have been reported to the Minister can be remedied quickly. Complainants can be assured of complete confidentiality, which removes any fear of retaliatory complications and can contact me on dale.mulgrew@rochdale.gov.uk

"Finally, we are working to make real progress in improving the adult care service and I am minded to mention that this Lib Dem Council has ploughed nearly £1.5 million into the service to achieve this over the next year. We are also providing extra day care activities and increased advocacy services. However, clearly though we need to be much more rigorous in our planning and one of the key areas we will be strengthening is introducing better contract management and monitoring for the way we provide ongoing support in the future."