Long-serving care staff at Wandsworth Council could see their jobs cut as the local authority moves to outsource their work to the private sector.
Wandsworth Council has agreed plans to close its in-house reablement service, which gives people short-term support to help them live at home.
The council is set to move to delivering all reablement through commissioned providers, which are already responsible for roughly 80 per cent of these services in Wandsworth. It said this would improve reliability and consistency, while delivering estimated annual savings of £1.2million a year.
The move would have a huge impact on affected staff at the in-house Keep Independent Through Enablement (KITE) service, who would all lose their jobs. Wandsworth’s cabinet heard how hard the team worked to care for residents at a meeting on Monday night (October 12).
Agnes, who works for KITE, urged the authority to look for ways to keep staff by moving them into other teams.
Agnes said: “KITE has been a loyal team to the council and when Covid-19 came along, we were the only team within in-house social services that was frontline caring for people in their own homes, face to face, at a great risk to our own health.
“One of our colleagues lost their husband because she took [the] Covid home.”
She added: “The council tax is going up by almost 100 per cent to generate the income, but it appears the council has picked on this team to lose our jobs in time where the cost of living is extremely high.”
A GMB union official said the council had not justified cutting the hard-working team, who were relied upon by residents. He warned the authority would see strike action if it went ahead with the proposals, as he said other council teams faced future cuts.
The representative said: “We will fight the cuts and we invite the leader of the council to meet with us to discuss if there are alternatives for it.
“If we can’t have those discussions, then we will be looking at industrial action across the council to resist this programme of cuts because all of our members matter, they deliver a service to the residents of Wandsworth, and they deserve better than a pink slip at the end of the day.”
Conservative council leader Robert Morritt promised to hold a meeting with the GMB and KITE staff.
Conservative councillor Daniel Ghossain, cabinet member for health, said the authority had not come to the decision lightly as the team had “some of our most hardworking, most valued members of staff, who have done a fantastic job in really, really testing circumstances”.
He said the plans were drawn up when Labour ran the authority, and aimed to provide residents with the best, most cost-effective care.
A report by council officers said the commissioned providers are of similar quality to KITE while being much cheaper, as their hourly cost is around £25 compared to £148. They are all rated ‘good’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Councillor Ghossain said: “This is a decision that’s been come to over a number of years in order to determine what’s the best way to deliver cost-effective care to residents and the best quality service to residents.”
He added: “We’re very aware of the human cost and we’re offering a very comprehensive support package to people like Agnes and her colleagues.”
The GMB official said the union would hold a ballot on strike action if the authority did not change direction.
He said: “You’ve picked a group of workers that I would say are some of the most loyal and yet some of the most vulnerable and exposed workers to losing their jobs in the current job market, and I don’t find much comfort in the words that you’ve given and I’m sure the colleagues who have come out today also don’t.”
The cabinet agreed to close KITE and move to a fully commissioned model for reablement services at the meeting.
The council will now consult with affected staff and trade unions. It aims to move to the new model by April.
