Alan welcomes Council suspension of Care UK
21st April 2009
Alan Whitehead MP welcomed the news that the City Council has suspended work with care provider Care UK.
In a letter to Dr Whitehead, the City Council today confirms that they have suspended new domiciliary care placements with Care UK, pending further work to improve the quality of their service.
Dr Whitehead has been lobbying the Council about the poor quality of care reportedly provided by Care UK.
Care UK was awarded contracts by the Council which made it the single domiciliary care provider for much the west of the city (which covers most of the Southampton Test constituency) late last year in a Council bid to cut costs. The changes were agreed by Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Health (Cllr Ivan White) and by Southampton City Council’s ruling Cabinet.
Since Care UK was awarded the contracts for the west of the city, many constituents have contacted Alan Whitehead MP about how they were forced to give up their current carer and how they were now receiving an inferior service from Care UK. Dr Whitehead followed these cases up with the City Council, and raised questions about the quality of the new care providers and to what extent this was a consequence of the Council’s more general drive to cut costs.
Dr Whitehead said:
“I welcome the Council’s decision to finally suspend Care UK. It was very clear from what constituents were telling me that when Care UK were originally awarded the contracts to provide care in the west of the city, they would have great difficulty in providing it efficiently.
“I think this does raise quite important questions about the whole way this care review has been conducted, and whether quality care was really given the priority in the review that it should have been.”
“I have written again to the Council to clarify what this suspension means for the wider review of care services, and to what extent it will be possible for the Council to review their contracts to ensure people receiving care in their own homes are not left with a service that is demonstrably worse than they had before.”
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