UNISON City of Edinburgh Branch
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Social Work Social Work Home UNISON Scotland SW Resource Pages Occupational Therapists Joint Future			29/4/04 Social Work Reorganisation Now it's Tory plans for reorganisation The City of Edinburgh Council voted today (29 April 2004) to push ahead with its discredited plans for splitting Social Work into Education & Children & Families and a Department of Health and Social Care. Astonishingly, the Labour Group forced this through by accepting a Tory amendment that:- Demands a report on turning Health and Social Care into a not-for-profit trust Insists that devolved school management and school boards have a key role in defining local children & family services - including (we assume) child protection. John Stevenson, UNISON Branch Secretary, said, "The original Labour plan was bad enough but it is unbelievable that they backed the Tory amendment. "Trusts have been shown to be unworkable and wasteful in the Health Service and have been phased out. They are unaccountable, they create wasteful internal markets and they create expensive and inefficient privatatisations. It is unbelievable that councillors voted against their own policies to back this amendment. "The ignorance of how childrens services, and child protection in particular work is graphically demonstrated in the link the amendment makes to devolved school management and school boards. How can a school board have a view on the highest risk group of young people, those who are under school age? "The whole affair is now a hotch-potch of ill-thought out and politically convenient fixes. We thought it couldn't get worse. It just has". "Social Workers in the galleries were furious that Cllr Donald Anderson chose to deride the quality of social work organisation and practice in his summing up "It displayed a deeply hostile attitude, based on prejudice rather than fact, and ignored the fact that it is widely accepted that his council is not putting in enough money to let the service work properly. Reorganisation will not cover that up. We will not let it". The roll-call vote, where every councillor had to announce their vote, was: For the Labour motion which accepted the Tory amendment = 40 For the Lib Dem amendment which would have extended the consultation and re-examined the proposals = 15 Had the Tory amendment not been accepted and had the Tories voted against, the result would have been a narrow 28-27 for the reorganisation. ENDS top       See also, UNISON Submission to full council 29 April 2004 and Evening News article 27 April