Privatisation of social care direct – where will it end?

Barnet Council Consultant says: “People should apply for the job if they like the look of it. Where it is, is important but perhaps less important. When I’m applying for a job I think firstly about the role. The location is really not that important.”

Unfortunately it is very important for most people and the colleagues in Social Care Direct are like most of us. Location, location, location – it’s important! This is one of the things they heard at the meeting today which told them that all Assessment Enablement Officers will be going into the Customer Call Centre.

There will be the opportunity for 2 professionally qualified colleagues to go with them. The other colleagues will be put into a Rapid Response Team or redeployed across the service. We do not yet know what a Rapid Response Team will look like. This is to be worked out in tandem with the process of the others going into the Call Centre.

The colleagues going into the Call Centre will then be transferred onto BT or Capita, sometime early in the New Year. It is not known if these companies intend to operate from Barnet.

The branch will be organising a union meeting for all Adult Social Services workers in the next 2 weeks or so. This restructure has big implications for all of us in this sector as there are potential knock-on effects in our workloads.