LETTER: Care staff merit greater respect (From Lancashire Telegraph)

LETTER: Care staff merit greater respect

12:43pm Wednesday 4th April 2012 in Opinion

Creative Support employ about 100 staff in Blackburn with Darwen, who care for adults with a severe learning disability.

The staff are threatening strike action, alleging that they face 40% pay cuts, and will be sacked if they fail to agree reduced contracts.

If true, this is an appalling state of affairs and if organisations like Creative Support find this to be the only way to ‘deliver efficiencies’ in order to protect and retain its services to these vulnerable people, I suggest they should step aside and allow better equipped organisations to take on the responsibility for its provision.

Successful care providers recognise the fact that their care staff are their most important resource, as it is they who will dictate the quality of service/care provided.

To treat them so dismissively will result in staff resentment, lower morale, feelings of unworthiness and disrespect, and a decrease in staff commitment and loyalty.

The outcome is predictable: a very much poorer service to these vulnerable adults, who really deserve much better.

Noel Eke, Darwen.