Council cuts could leave 750 vulnerable people in Lincolnshire without cash for care

COST-CUTTING proposals could leave more than 750 vulnerable people without cash for their care and Telecare.

Lincolnshire County Council is planning to make people with "moderate needs" ineligible for care funding in a bid to save £4.6 million a year.

Officials say 3,096 people are classed as moderate, which is where they cannot care for themselves properly without help or specialist equipment.

Of these 1,509 will have to be reassessed, with predictions suggesting half of these people will lose their cash.

The other half are expected to be upgraded from moderate to substantial – the second highest level behind critical.

People who are only given special equipment will not be affected by the changes.

A council consultation found 88 per cent of people who responded were against the move.

Labour group leader Councillor Robert Parker said the proposed action was "scandalous", bearing in mind the majority who responded to the consultation were not in favour of it.

The Lincoln West member said he remained unconvinced that the Big Society – family, friends, neighbours and voluntary groups – could provide a replacement service to cope with the people's needs.

Mr Parker said: "You can't get it any clearer. The council goes out to consultation to reduce the support for people with moderate needs, 88 per cent say it shouldn't be withdrawn and the council is taking no notice.

"Consultation in Lincolnshire is becoming meaningless as the council takes no notice of it."

The council's adults scrutiny committee will discuss the idea next Wednesday, with the Conservative executive making a decision on Tuesday, October 4.

It is the latest example of the authority cutting back its adult social care responsibilities, following decisions to close council-owned care homes and consult on reducing in-house council services.

The authority says it will attempt to limit the impact on those who no longer qualify for financial support.

Councillor Graham Marsh, the council's executive member for adult social care, said a growing elderly population meant a decreasing budget faced increasing pressures.

Up to £39 million has to be saved by adult social care by 2015.

Mr Marsh said: "We need to limit the number of people who receive funding, rather than spreading the money too thinly and seeing no one receive the quality level of service they need.

"The proposed change to our eligibility criteria will see Lincolnshire join almost 80 per cent of authorities nationwide in funding people with substantial needs and above – in fact some only fund those with critical needs.

"This will ensure our services are in place for the future to support and improve the lives of about 13,000 people."

But opposition leader Councillor Marianne Overton said there could be greater cost for the authority by making this short-term saving.

The independent councillor said: "Moderate care sounds OK, but it means a person cannot carry out three essential personal care tasks.

"For example, they cannot get out of bed, go to the toilet and make their breakfast. People in that situation will receive no support from the council, even though they have no other income. They say they will provide alternatives, but Telecare is expensive.

"These are not people who are perfectly fine and want a little bit of help on Sundays."

A Lincoln woman, who uses council services, also told the authority: "Without this support I would struggle to move to be more independent and would become more lonely and depressed as I could not afford to pay for services out of my benefits.

"This would make me more isolated."

The council received 630 responses to its consultation.

Forty-six per cent suggested the criteria should be lowered to include all four care levels.

Petition calls for changes to working alone rules in Saskatchewan

The killing of a convenience store employee in Saskatchewan in June has spurred the provincial labour federation to support a petition to change regulations for retail employees working alone.

Many delegates attending the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour's (SFL) annual Occupational Health and Safety Conference from September 11 to 13 strongly supported and signed a petition calling for the introduction of "Jimmy's Law" into the provincial legislature, says Larry Hubich, president of the SFL. The proposed law is named after Jimmy Wiebe, who was murdered at a gas station convenience store on June 20 in Yorkton.

It would require employers to schedule two employees to work together between the hours of 10 or 11 pm and 6 am or provide protective barriers between lone workers and the public.

The incident that prompted the petition occurred in the early morning hours of June 20. At about 4:50 am, members of the Yorkton RCMP received a report of a man who had been found deceased in the Shell Canada convenience store by a customer, says Corporal Rob King, a spokesman for the Saskatchewan RCMP division. Four days after, King says, the Yorkton RCMP detachment charged Kyle Furness, 20, with first-degree murder in connection with the homicide of the 50-year-old worker, an employee of the store for more than 10 years.

Jimmy's Law is modeled after similar working alone regulations in British Columbia which were introduced in 2008, but have not yet come into effect because of the complexity of the issue, says Megan Johnston, a spokeswoman for WorkSafeBC. That year, however, BC introduced a separate pay-then-pump requirement following the death of a young gas station attendant.

"Grant's Law" - named after Grant De Patie, who was dragged to his death in March of 2005 while trying to prevent the theft of gas from a station in Maple Ridge, BC - requires mandatory pre-payment of fuel at all gas stations in BC, Johnston says.
Wayne Hoskins, president of the Western Convenience Stores Association (WCSA) in Surrey, BC, says it's important to note the distinction between mandatory pre-payment of gas and the requirement for multiple workers or barriers. "While Grant's Law was well-intended, it refers to outside, or ex-store, and not in-store coverage," Hoskins explains.

"There are some things you can do everything in the world to try and prevent or protect from happening, but they're going to happen anyway," he says. "Having an additional employee is not necessarily going to save the unfortunate tragedy from happening. It may stop that person from going to that store. If you build a better mousetrap, the mice figure out how to get around it."

In British Columbia, the working alone regulations - known as the Late Night Retail Safety Procedures and Requirements - consist of an engineering control (barrier) or administrative control (extra staff), Johnston says. Hoskins says that a third option has also been proposed: additional training, testing and certification. This option, a combination of both engineering and administrative controls, will be presented to WorkSafeBC's board of directors in October. Meanwhile, the SFL will discuss Jimmy's Law at its executive meeting on September 19 and 20 and decide on the next course of action, Hubich says.

Ontario also considering pre-payment option

Ontario is another jurisdiction considering a mandatory pre-paid policy for gas stations following a recent gas-and-dash incident. On May 19 at about 4:55 pm, gas attendant Hashem Rad, 62, was struck by a vehicle that took off with unpaid gas at a Petro-Canada station in Mississauga, Ontario (COHSN June 13, 2011). Rad was taken to hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries the following day.

Whatever the outcome with British Columbia's third option, Hoskins warns against an "emotional knee-jerk reaction" whenever there is a fatal incident at a retail outlet. "When there's random acts of violence, everybody is an expert on what the solution might be before they look into it," he contends.

"I don't know how sitting down and having a discussion about how we make sure workplaces are safe and that people who are in these vulnerable workplaces like conveniences stores and gas stations where there is a chance of them being assaulted and murdered... is a knee-jerk reaction," Hubich counters.