Pull the alarm cord
So there I was toying with the unpopular notion that the most vulnerable members of society shouldn’t be exploited, when I came upon the social services’ modernisation page on the Devon County Council website.
‘The Devon Social Services Modernisation Programme is about transforming our services into ones which are based around individual choice in the community rather than institutional care,’ it says.
‘Delivering the Programme will require reinvestment from old-style services into new ones, and the transformation will affect the full range of social care activity, which is increasingly carried out in partnership with the NHS and other agencies.’
Alarm bells started to ring, and with the ever-increasing aged population, the approach to care provision nationally as well as locally needs to be dealt with.
But it’s not only the care of the aged that’s a problem. South Devon, I have heard, is a centre for children’s homes. Troubled youngsters are shipped here from throughout the country, cared for by those still in training and the government is charged a king’s ransom while those who run the homes pocket the dosh and everyone in the system suffers.
The kids have already been sold down the river by councils off-loading the responsibility onto the private sector.
Let’s make sure we correct that mistake rather than compound it.
Posted by C’ptn
If you liked this story, you could buy us a coffeeMarch 5th, 2006
