Council’s modernisation agenda and employee bargain
Gradually, month by month, the traditional pattern of council-run institutional social services care in Birmingham is changing – and with that change comes major implications for the local authority workforce.
Old people’s homes are being closed down and demolished, with responsibility for future care being passed to a large extent to private and independent sector carers. A similar pattern is being repeated as far as day centres for adults with learning disabilities are concerned and for meals on wheels services for elderly people.
There are two reasons for this. The first, and most important, is a government-led modernisation process based on evidence that one-size-fits-all council care has outlived its usefulness for the country’s fast-growing elderly population, many of whom demand more choice and a far wider variety of personal care than any council is either able or willing to provide.
The second reason, inevitably, boils down to money. The cost of looking after older people in Birmingham, particularly those with learning difficulties, is growing exponentially at a rate that no local authority could afford to meet without decimating other services to meet the bill. The answer, Birmingham has decided, is to dismantle historic services such as old people’s homes and use the money that is being saved for better targeted front-line social care.
This is by no means a Birmingham phenomenon. The social care workforce nationally is growing by eight per cent a year but at the same time the number of staff working in the public sector is decreasing. The second decade of the 21st century will see the independent sector overtake councils as the main provider of social services.
The impact of all this on Birmingham City Council employees is obvious. Some 180 staff face redundancy this summer but the figure is likely to rise substantially over the next few years as the modernisation agenda picks up pace.
Council leaders must show that their much-hyped employee bargain – offering continual employment if staff are prepared to re-train and change jobs and departments within the council – is actually worth the paper it is written on. An organisation the size of the city council, with some 40,000 non-teaching jobs, must surely be large enough to accommodate any of the 180 staff facing redundancy who genuinely want to remain with the council.
