WHAT do you do if you work in the public services, but there’s no longer enough money to serve the public? That’s becoming more and more of a challenge for many council employees, according to a survey by their union Unison.
It is stressful, when people come looking to you for help each day, but because of spending cuts you are unable to provide the service they expect.
In all likelihood their expectations are not unrealistic – or didn’t used to be.
Perhaps they are looking for handyman or gardening services the council used to provide but no longer does. Or hope for support to live independently with a disability – but what was on offer from social work has been slashed. Maybe raised thresholds for care mean they no longer qualify for help at all.
Or it could be that someone coming to your office, or counter, or desk, wants report concerns about a restaurant or a pest control problem – but environmental health is now off the menu.
What do you do? People do various things: Some consider leaving – 50 per cent of workers said they were thinking of leaving their job. Some soldier on, increasingly demoralised.
The impact on workers on the front line is often forgotten. For example, much has been said about how lousy 15 minute care visits are for the recipient. But as one carer quoted in the report says: “ It is quite stressful. Clients ... think you are just running in and out of their home, not caring that you may be the only person they see in a day.”
Others attempt to raise the alarm. According to Unisons’s survey more than two thirds of public sector workers say local people no longer receive help when they need it. and 51 per cent are not confident the most vulnerable residents in their communities were safe.
Shortages of frontline staff, inadequate social care, shortfalls in child protection, roads left unrepaired and a lack of housing options were among the concerns of those who say their council no longer delivers quality services. More than half say job cuts and a failure to replace departed staff mean their job is now unmanageable.
This comes a few weeks after another report claimed trading standards officers have been cut by almost a quarter in the past six years, putting the public at risk from rogue traders.
Unison’s Mark Ferguson says “local services are collapsing... council workers are being left to pick up the pieces and do the best they can amid the chaos”.
Some will say workers in the private or even charity sector are similarly demoralised by pay restraint, austerity and cutbacks.
But many of those dependent on care services either don’t or can’t shout about what they have lost.Unison claims councils are now leaving a million Scots with an unmet need for social care. I wonder if we might just look back on the collapse of services formerly viewed as vital and realise public sector workers were the canary in the coal mine.
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