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WELSH LABOUR CONFERENCE 2023 Listen to the voices of care workers across Wales

JESS TURNER of Unison Cymru Wales explains the importance of the union’s motion to Welsh Labour conference, recognising that the private sector is the barrier to improved social care services in Wales

THIS weekend, Unison is carrying the voices and hopes of our thousands of care worker members into Welsh Labour conference as we again seek to shape what a national care service should look like.

In moving our motion before delegates and in our fringe event, we’ll be arguing that only a publicly delivered and publicly accountable national care service can put the dignity and respect for the care workforce and those receiving care at its heart.

This mainly female workforce has been undervalued for far too long. They are taken advantage of because they love their job and see care as a vocation. 

We need to lift them out of the threat of in-work poverty forever. No more unpaid travel time. No more unpaid sleep-in shifts. No more allocating staff far too many service users so care visits must be squeezed into just 15 minutes. 

When the workforce is treated so poorly, it’s no surprise staff turnover is high and vacancies, huge.

Last year’s Welsh Labour conference enthusiastically supported our Unison Labour Link motion to create a national care service, something the Welsh government is now committed to. 

Ministers acknowledged the system is broken and needs radical change and the deputy minister for social care has been working on a range of measures with the unions.

As trade unionists, we know that the direct public delivery of public services offers a better guarantee of quality and an assurance that every penny spent on services goes on delivering those services. 

Direct provision of services by local authorities also provides democratic accountability.

The Unison Labour Link motion before 2023 conference builds on the findings of the Unison/Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE), report, A National Care Service for Wales, launched in November last year. 

It concluded that the involvement of the private sector is the barrier to improved social care services in Wales and people receiving care, as well as care workers, are being failed by the current system of commissioning, outsourcing and the need to turn a profit, and years of underfunding.

APSE described how the requirement to create a profit or, for the third sector, to compete with for-profit providers, means corners are cut.

It said the £1.2 billion care market in Wales is dominated by private companies and no-one knows how much money is disappearing from the sector in profit or is wasted in the commissioning process. 

While there are many small private care providers, a handful of multinationals occupy a powerful position. Ultimately owned by private equity firms, they target around 12 per cent profit return for investors, extracting money from the sector leaving care providers struggling to make ends meet. 

Costs are minimised by squeezing care worker wages and undermining the quality of care provision.

Injecting more public money into care without removing the commissioning model and profit motive wouldn’t significantly improve the employment conditions of care workers or quality of care for users. 

As the economics of social care are entangled with the economics of real estate, it would only work to drive up the value of care firms, making them more attractive as acquisition targets.

Our motion calls upon Welsh Labour, in government, to increase funding for direct local authority provision of care, including setting up central budgets so that local authorities can bring care contracts back in-house and purchase care facilities.

We want Welsh government to further support pilot local authorities providing care directly, in creating a critical mass of publicly employed care workers which would help improve wages and employment conditions across the sector.

This is linked to our next demand in the motion, which asks for Welsh government to support establishing collective bargaining across the care sector through the social partnership body, the Social Care Forum.

Finally, our motion asks for a realistic timetable for the 2024 conference outlining the full transition to a national care service in Wales. All of this is achievable.

There is a national emergency in the NHS and if you talk to any healthcare worker they’ll say: sort out the care service and you will remove a good deal of the immense strain on the NHS. 

So, our motion is especially pressing and Welsh government estimates Wales will need another 20,000 care workers by 2030.

If you believe, like us, that a publicly delivered and publicly accountable national care service would transform the livelihoods for the many thousands of care workers across Wales and their families, as well as improving services for those receiving care support, you must support our Unison Labour Link motion.

Jess Turner is Unison Cymru Wales head of bargaining and campaigns and a Welsh Labour executive council member.

A link to Unison’s motion can be found here.

Unison Cymru Wales’s fringe event, A National Care Service for Wales — Let’s Make this Happen, is in the Padarn Room in Venue Cymru, Llandudno, 12.30pm-2pm on Saturday March 11 and includes contributions from APSE and a care worker. Here’s a link to the flyer.

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