Odsal Redevelopment, Council Finances, Council Services & The Private Sector

May be "Ring Fenced" General
However the problem is they are spending their money out of the Bradford district another kick in the teeth for downtrodden Bradford traders it really makes my blood boil
Good luck to whoever calls round local companies pleading for sponsorship they may get more than they bargain for
Another of the many reasons they are failing to attract businesses to the area
Bradford at it's best again!!!!

 

Having worked for a public funded body in my early years, non of this surprises me. There was no control over what was spent, it wasn't their money after all, just the tax payers. We were eventually privatised and when the managers had to actually think to earn the cash, it was not long before the redundancy's started. The blue collar workers went first, which made it even harder for said business, too many chief's and not enough indians , as the saying goes.
Some of these so called top leaders/ managers are not fit for purpose.Bradford council a prime example.

 

That is an earth shattering thought. Do they feed these kids on caviar ?

 

No. They are in the main run by private companies and hedge funds after Councils were encouraged to outsource childrens' home provision. They now have Councils over a barrel and can charge what they like and make enormous profits. As Councils have a statutory obligation to provide these services they have to pay through the nose, or rather we do, and the services are now often of poor quality. A poor strategic decision.
This article sets out the problem well
https://transparencyproject.org.uk/privatisation-of-childrens-services-is-bad-for-children-and-bad-for-taxpayers/

 

We’ve had this discussion before. There are several things going on.
When I started working for Bradford Social Services in 1984 we were the best social services department in the region, attracting quality staff from various neighbouring authorities. And it got even better into the 90s. We had effective preventative services working intensively with the parents of kids at risk of coming into care, so we were able to prevent that happening to many, despite the fact that Bradford was and is a poorer area than most, with consequently higher likelihood of neglect and abuse.
We had lots of council-run children’s homes and also many council-run care and nursing homes for old people. They were far from perfect, but they were mostly a bloody sight better than what’s out there in the private sector today. Residential staff were better paid and better trained and generally stayed in post far longer than today’s highly rotational care workforce.
But other areas forged economically ahead of Bradford and enticed experienced staff away. Salary levels fell behind other areas and we became more reliant on agency staff due to chronic recruitment and retention problems. This trend accelerated following the 2008 banking crash and the decade of relentless Tory budget cuts from 2010. So we’ve ended up with child protection teams full of inexperienced, newly qualified social workers and transient, expensive agency staff.
We saw wholesale closure of council residential homes for kids and adults, as well as cuts to and privatisation of home care services, as budget cuts forced staff cuts.
To make matters worse, a tiny number of child death tragedies nationally - Baby P, Star Hobson etc - (measured against the many thousands of successful cases) created a moral panic that has seen the threshold for child protection interventions drop dramatically. This has led to far more admissions to care as child protection services everywhere have become more risk-averse for fear of adverse publicity (as though any system, in any walk of life can never make the occasional mistake). And, of course, the pandemic exacerbated the child protection and elderly care problems that we already had in spades.
So we’ve got a perfect storm:
- higher than average child admissions to care
- poor population with complex elderly needs
- very few preventative services
- sub-optimal (but expensive) child protection teams
- very few in-house residential facilities
- massive over reliance on private elderly care homes and (mostly out of area) hyper-expensive private children’s homes.

The council’s budget is a fraction of what it used to be. We’re by no means the only council, of any political persuasion, on the verge of bankruptcy - there are many nationally - but not all of them have the ingrained structural problems that we have. The amount of money that is need to restore local care services to what they used to be is frightening and, tbh, I can’t see it ever happening, whoever is in power locally or nationally.

 

This

 

This is a very good analysis of what has happened in Bradford Children’s service over the last 30 years or so. I landed in 1989. I was appalled when they decided to shut the residential units down and dispense with well trained residential staff. Not to mention the preventive work carried out in communities right across Bradford.

 

If you want standards and outcome’s to improve for young ppl, you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I am sorry I was never asked about the wishy washy middle class view that all children benefit from being in a foster care facility. They do not, often the young ppl who I worked with were very badly damaged before coming into care, and you can’t just wish that away.
When you are working with statutory legislation as Children's services come under having a private fragmented service provider who operate as a business for profit model is wholly irresponsible in my view. We have not seen strong leadership at Government or Council level; grabbing hold of easy decisions to ‘if it saves money’ it’s ok. Who knew that private companies wouldn’t raise their prices once they knew they had Councils at their mercy? Nobody wants to touch this politically, so here we are in this complete and utter mess with children’s lives no better.

 

Just one of the many examples of ‘private sector good, public sector bad’ that have decimated our public services and cost us billions (and counting).
It’s a statement of the bleeding obvious to say that privatised services will a) (after their initial unrealistic tenders) charge more because, unlike the public sector, they have to make a profit and b) reduce wages and service quality to maximise profits. Then, once we’ve closed down the public alternatives they have the worst thing - a private monopoly that can do what the hell it wants, which is where we are now. This was all so utterly predictable. But, no, the Tories’ mythical private sector ‘efficiency’ was going to do it all so much better and cheaper. How long do we keep falling for this utterly discredited Thatcherite bollocks?

 

All public services should be run by the state. Privatisation only results in poorer service and the enrichment of those responsible. Which was, of course, the intention all along.

 

Spot on. But the right use the ‘efficiency’ myth to justify it, despite the legion of private sector disasters over the past decades. And Blair’s Labour government bought into the myth too.
It’s also driven by an ideological hatred of the public sector by many Tories, who still believe the Friedmanite myth that any money spent on government/public sector is dead money that the private sector could otherwise use to do things better. We’ve all seen how that’s played out. Track & trace in the pandemic is a classic example. Instead of building on the existing national network of expertise in every local authority, the Tories ignored that and tried to reinvent the wheel in the private sector. Result - billions in squandered public money, some very enriched shareholders and an utterly ineffective track & trace system. You couldn’t make it up.

 

You might have known my dad Steve, he was pretty high up in children's social services until he died in 1986.

 

What was his name?

 

Well said.....far too many examples....energy, buses, railways, education etc etc....

 

It is absolutely disgusting that these companies are hiding in plain sight. I would like to say I am shocked but I am not. When I first started in Bradford you had a mixed case load, children, elderly and MH. We had good residential homes for the elderly. Good care given by experienced staff and no one need seek out private care as what the Council was offering was just as good if not better. However, they went as it was initially costing more than private to run. My question then and now is how? There you have it @Dennis. Once the council homes went the price went up!

plus here we go with the price increase of Council Tax

 

Good grief. The situation is even more horrific than I realised.
The hypocrisy is mind-blowing. These holding companies, stuffed with Tory ex-ministers etc, are the ones paying poverty wages to care staff. So few British people are prepared to do such tough work for so little money that we are importing hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, mostly from Africa, to cover our essential workforce shortage. So it’s actually the Tories, their friends, donators etc who are responsible for the huge legal immigrant ‘crisis’ that their government is having a meltdown about.

 

And the misery continues. If Cleverley’s proposed minimum income changes, and ban on dependents (which many on these pages support) go through we are going to see the influx of essential care workers dry up and many existing care staff leave. The prospects for the care sector are horrific, as are the knock on effects on the NHS. This is where Tory austerity economics and privatisation have got us.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/dec/18/if-we-fail-the-nhs-will-fail-tories-drive-to-cut-migration-leaves-social-care-on-a-cliff-edge?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other