Mr Pickles said the assessments - conducted jointly by the Audit Commission, Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, HM Inspectorate of Probation and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary - were an example of "unnecessary red tape and paperwork".The Today programme is inviting suggestions for cost cutting. This morning they referred to a suggestion from a worker for an unnamed local authority. When they have a disabled council tenant, they convert the kitchen, bathroom etc for them. Only when that's done do the occupational therapists or other professionals become involved.
For example, he suggested, Tory-run Leicestershire County Council faced 83 inspections a year and had assigned 90 full-time staff to prepare information for central government - at a cost of £3.7m.
Sometimes the disabled person still can't use the facilities, because the conversion isn't suitable for them. So it has to be done again.
If this is frequent, it's amazing.
Her suggestion is that the health professionals should be involved before the conversion is work is done. Why not? Would they be obstructive, or want to over-provide for their clients? We don't know. But at the very least it's interesting to see these internal tensions becoming public.
1 comments:
Pickles has got his facts wrong. The 90 staff and 3.7million was not just for Leicestershire County Council but included the City Council, all 6 District Councils, the two NHS primary care trusts - county and city, the police, probation and fire services. A rather different picture than that he painted. He should get his facts right before pontificating. Information was from a Deloitte study October 2009
http://www.leicestershiretogether.org/oct09_deloitte_inspection_rpt.pdf
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