Minister warns that adult care services could be taken away

Minister for Care Ivan Lewis helps Janet Riley into the lift installed in her Newhey home

The Care Services Minister, Ivan Lewis MP, has warned that the worst performing councils could have adult care services taken away from them if their performance does not improve.

In a strongly worded statement the Minister admitted that he had “big, big concerns” with the postcode lottery that many vulnerable people experience in the quality of care they receive and that Councils must show they are improving to retain adult care services.

"If at the end of three years,” he said, referring to the Putting People First agenda to personalise services from 2008-2011, “local government has not delivered on those building blocks, I think there will be some really big questions to be asked about its capacity to commission these services in the future."

Rochdale’s Labour Parliamentary Candidate, Simon Danczuk, welcomed the Minister’s comments and said they should be seen as a serious warning to Rochdale’s Portfolio Holder for Social Care, Councillor Dale Mulgrew. 

He said: “Two damning reports have landed on his desk in recent months condemning social care services in Rochdale. And yet Councillor Mulgrew’s continual refrain is that improvements are coming. Unless we start seeing evidence of this then Rochdale will suffer the indignity of having a vital public service removed from its control because it will be deemed to have failed the most vulnerable people in the Borough.

“How can it be that people using adult care services here have to put up with a one star service that's been described as 'poor' when just up the road in Bolton people can receive a three star service that's been described by the same independent auditors as 'excellent'?” he argued.

This view was echoed by Debbie Abrahams, a former chairwoman of Rochdale Primary Care Trust and director of the International Health Impact Assessment Consortium at the University of Liverpool.

“It is absolutely right to demand that only competent local authorities commission and provide care for our most vulnerable people,” she said.