Tag Archives: Social care

ONE WEDDING SUIT AND AN ENGLISH LANGUAGE FUNERAL: THE LABOUR MANIFESTO

Bristol-Labour-Group-Manifesto-2024-1

Introduced in full colour dull PowerPoint by their newly minted leader, Tom “Plasticine Man’ Renhard, togged up in his wedding suit at a swanky conference room at Ashton Gate stadium on Saturday, Bristol Labour Party are first out of the blocks with a local election manifesto. 

The manifesto cover features a cheery little cartoon cover of multicultural pedestrians, happy cyclists, beaming schoolchildren, helpful coppers, trams, buses, windmills and, er, dead trees plastered onto a local independent retail backdrop. Produced in shades of red, it’s a bit George Ferguson on acid with the manifesto’s title, ‘Building Bristol’s Future’ providing mild threat for the paranoid.

The manifesto itself spells a departure from the Rees years. Marvin’s manifestoes provided a shopping list of promises he would then proceed to fail to deliver. His 2016 effort contained 78 uncosted promises and 38 vague commitments. The 2021 model slimmed things down to just 91 uncosted promises. Largely undelivered.

Renhard seems to have learned from this almighty mess of broken promises and has created a fuzzy document of vague aspiration instead. Delivered in hackneyed cliche with few indicators of how he would deliver on any of it, maybe Renhard knows he won’t have to?

Our team has combed through the 28 pages of English language wreckage and identified five stone cold, nailed down actual promises from Labour. These are: ‘build 3,000 council homes in the next five years’; ‘roll out more school streets’; ‘have more visible and responsive police and embedded PCSOs’; ‘protect the 100% Council Tax Reduction Scheme’ and ‘tackle anti-social behaviour, including fly-tipping, littering and graffiti tags, by hiring more enforcement officers and increasing fines‘.

We also discovered three almost promises in the manifesto. These fall short of actual promises as there’s little detail provided and few resources committed so it will be hard to hold them to account. These are: ‘upgrading and restoring our ageing infrastructure, including Bristol’s historic bridges and harbour’; ‘invest in road maintenance and pothole repair’ and ‘reduce violence against women and girls’.

Pretty much everything else in the document is vague aspirational waffle. In social care, which, according to Labour’s own figures is 43% of council spend, the big offer is, “We are partnering with Bristol’s public services to help ensure you can access the care you need, when you need it.”

From the party that has just tried (and failed) to remove disabled adults from their homes and shove them into residential care to save money, this is a pathetically weak policy response.

On education and children’s services, 22% of council spend, it’s hard to find much concrete. Just some waffle about “Helping children get the best start in life with more school places and better provision for SEND children; improving access to education and skills in our colleges and universities.”

Another weak response from the party that fucked up SEND provision years ago and is currently fucking it up all over again having signed up to the Tories’ vicious ‘Safety Valve’ SEND cuts programme.

On the big issue of youth knife crime, the Labour offer moves beyond pathetic. Promising to “improve CCTV and partner on youth engagement projects” alongside a further uncosted promise without detail to “support and invest in youth services.” 

Is that it?

On transport, Labour commit to, “exploring ways to bring buses into public ownership”. Currently impossible under existing legislation. And they will “start now on the transport solutions of tomorrow” whatever that means. Their most interesting policy may be “seeking ways to take back control of our highway maintenance work through insourcing.”

On Green issues, the offer is more of Rees’s underpowered over-publicised City Leap. Originally a promise of a ‘billion pound’ private sector investment, this promise dropped to £500m recently. The Labour manifesto now introduces a new figure of “£771m planned investment in decarbonisation”.

The reality of City Leap last year was about £23m of public sector grants and city council cash spent on overpriced heat pumps in schools and some small retrofit pilots, which Labour’s US corporate partner trousered a profit from.

The final section of the manifesto is a section unoriginally called ‘Our City, Our Future’ where the big promise is “creating a safe, attractive, well-lit and welcoming city centre.”

Does that mean neighbourhoods outside the city centre can expect to be unsafe, unattractive, badly lit and unwelcoming?

I think we should be told.

IS THE SEND HURLY-BURLY DONE?

witches_33
BCC management working on new SEND strategy

The fatuous twat’s fatuous twat departed back to Bath as he arrived, wearing a really shit suit and talking bollocks. Finally, we bid adieu to Alan “Stubby” Stubbersfield, Bristol City Council’s bizarre interim Director of Education – THE BOSS WHO COULDN’T SEEM TO COUNT – appointed by council social care exec, Jacqui “Village” Jensen to sort out the shambles in her SEND department.

Stubby, best known for maintaining a reasonably cheerful disposition while trousering A SIX-FIGURE SUM for overseeing, possibly, the worst run local authority department in the country, had a habit of releasing formal reports regarding Bristol’s SEND department to councillors and the public, only to have to WITHDRAW significant facts and figures in these reports because they were wrong.

As his parting shot to Bristol, Stubby of the Bailey had a crack at some law. Releasing his final report to a scrutiny committee meeting, he announced that the decision by the High Court in 2018 that found Bristol City Council had acted unlawfully when it cut £5million from its SEND budget was INCORRECT and the council had therefore done nothing WRONG.

This counter-factual nonsense didn’t go down well with either parents or politicians and left Stubby mumbling inanely about “legal advice from Bristol lawyers”. After receiving a THOROUGH BOLLOCKING from virtually everyone present at the meeting, Stubby issued another one of his grovelling public apologies for getting it all wrong (again).

Stubby and his AMAZING ACCIDENTAL REPORTS have now been replaced by new boss Alison Hurley “Burly”. We don’t know much about Alison yet, but her name provides opportunities for naff references to Macbeth. And, let’s face it, three witches huddled around a cauldron in the basement of the Counts Louse incanting “Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog” HAS AS MUCH CHANCE OF SUCCESS as any strategy devised by Stubby and the council’s resident village idiot Jacqui Jensen.

We await Alison’s formal actions on SEND with interest. Can she exceed Stubby’s extraordinary failures?

Cold Comfort Farm

A massive SCANDAL is brewing over Bristol City Council’s commissioning process for their latest adult social care contract.

As usual, local organisations and charities have been FORCED OUT and a national company, based in the north – ‘Cold’ Comfort Call – have been awarded the lucrative contract by council boss LEON GODDARD. A right little wanker masquerading under the overblown title of “Strategic Commissioning Manager”.

Although a better title for Wanker Goddard might be “typical Bristol City Council bent boss” as a WHISTLEBLOWER has now stepped forward to blow the lid on Goddard’s DODGY procurement process and the “high levels of corruption involved”.

According to the whistleblower, an employee of ‘Cold’ Comfort Call, the company had PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of the commissioning process and a director of the firm even confidently asserted that they would WIN the tender before the  process even started!

The same director also told his staff that sensitive little soul, Wanker Goddard, wanted to “make a point” and not commission any LOCAL PROVIDERS in Bristol as he didn’t like them as they gave him “a hard time”.

An impressive and mature way to run a public sector procurement process for a vital service don’t you think?

Even worse, despite Wanker Goddard’s claim that Cold Comfort will deliver “the best possible service”, their record suggests something different.

In Sheffield and Nottingham, Cold Comfort were placed on safeguarding and barring lists after miserably FAILING Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections. While the care they’re providing in those cities is described as “BARBARIC” by Cold Comfort’s whistleblower.

In Sheffield alone, the CQC had concerns relating to the management of medicines, requirements relating to workers, safeguarding people who use services from abuse, the care and welfare of people who used services, staffing and complaints.

Which makes you wonder how Cold Comfort were even allowed to be part of Goddard’s procurement process in the first place when one of his opening questions to bidders was “Have you ever failed a CQC inspection?”

Then there’s the question as to why Wanker Goddard didn’t obtain REFERENCES from Sheffield and Nottingham before awarding a multi-million pound contract on our behalf to Cold Comfort.

Questions, no doubt, Bristol City Council will simply NEVER BOTHER to answer as they move into cover-up mode.

George’s dickhead shit-for-brains legal boss Sanjay “Under” Pressure has already told the whistleblower, “We will be auditing the process before contracts are entered into in order to satisfy ourselves that our usual procurement process has been fully adhered too.”

Well, if that “auditing process” is anything  like the one in their Markets Service that’ll be at least three years of waiting and cover-ups before they get going then.

‘DON’T CARE’ BOSS SCANDAL NOW THREATENS BUSH RESPITE HOME

The BRISTOLIAN has already broken news on how BUNGLING BOSSES in a desperate attempt to save money have cut services to the vulnerable.

As we reported in issue #4.11, council chiefs inappropriately lumped together elderly people suffering with dementia with adults with learning difficulties, some of whom have challenging behavior and can be violent. Then they actually SLASHED STAFFING LEVELS. The result? People are already being hurt, and the needs of service users are not being met. But that’s not the end of it.

The two muppets responsible for all this, senior Social Care bosses Sheena ‘Grim Reaper’ Huggins and Vareta ‘Mad Dog’ Bryan, have now turned their attention to the BUSH RESIDENTIAL UNIT.

A respite centre for children with learning difficulties who otherwise live at home, Bush provides an essential service by giving parents the short but much-needed break they often need when caring for kids with complex needs. Its highly-trained staff are well-respected and professional and can look after the children’s physical, social and emotional needs. Excellent facilities include a sensory room, computer facilities, a large garden, trampoline, swings and bicycles.

So what are ‘Grim Reaper’ Huggins and ‘Mad Dog’ Bryan going to do? Protect funding for Bush? Commend the hard-working staff ? Work with parents to ensure the security of the service? No – they plan to CUT THE SERVICE BY ONE-HALF.

If parents lose this service, some will have to put their children into residential care, which will cost the council a whole lot more than the £250K these DEMENTED MANAGERS think they are going to save.

Parents were only given a couple of hours notice of a meeting to discuss the plans, despite managers knowing full well that these caring parents find it difficult to drop everything to come to a meeting.

The council now refuses to talk properly to the parents – mainly because they know their plans are barking mad and dangerous.

Meanwhile, ‘Mad Dog’ is getting a tasty redundancy package of TENS OF THOUSANDS OF POUNDS. Suitable reward for devastating the lives of families in need?

And the poor sods who are working in these conditions are running for the exit, which will lead to more dangerous conditions for staff and service users.

Don’t let them get away with it. These managers should be held fully accountable for their decisions, the cost to our city and the destroyed lives. When will they stop? When they finally kill someone?

MORE CARE CHAOS

The BRISTOLIAN has already broken news on how bungling managers in a desperate attempt to save money have cut services to the vulnerable. 

They have lumped together elderly people suffering with dementia with adults with learning difficulties, some of whom have challenging behavior and can be violent.  Then the council cut
staff.  People are already being hurt and needs are not being met.  The policy is absolutely nuts.

So what are they doing now?  increasing staff levels? making things safe? Don’t be daft. They are offering the staff who are left redundancy!

And the poor sods who are working in these conditions are running for the exit, which will lead to more dangerous conditions for staff and service users.

DO NOT GET OLD IN THIS CITY. THEY DO NOT GIVE A FUCK.

The two muppets responsible for all this, senior social care  bosses SHEENA ‘GRIM REAPER’ HUGGINS and VARETA ‘MAD DOG’ BRYAN have now turned their attention to the Bush residential.  This is a home for children with learning difficulties who live at home.  The service gives a break to parents who look after their children and the plans are to CUT THE SERVICE BY 50%.

If parents lose this service, some will have to put their children in residential care, costing us, the tax payer, a whole lot more than the £250K these demented managers think they are going to save.

Parents were only given a couple of hours notice of a meeting to discuss the plans while managers know full well that these caring parents find it difficult to drop everything to come to meeting.

The council are refusing to talk properly to the parents mainly because they know their plans are barking mad and dangerous  but they don’t care. ‘Mad Dog’ is getting a
redundancy package of tens of thousands of pounds soon. A suitable reward for decimating
services and lives?

Don’t let them get away with it. These managers should be held fully accountable for their decisions, the cost to our city and the destroyed lives.

When will they stop?  When they finally kill someone?