UNISON survey shows Scotland’s occupational therapists struggling to maintain service

A report out today (Tuesday) by UNISON shows that Scotland’s occupational therapists are struggling to maintain the level of service their patients need in light of budget cuts and staffing shortages.

Those surveyed in the report – Under Pressure: Scotland’s occupational therapists speak out – said they had huge concerns about the impact cuts are having on the service. An overwhelming majority (82%) reported increased workloads, 60% reported having to cope with reduced members of staff and almost half (48%) reported funding cuts.

There were recurring themes among the concerns: assessments being overruled because of resource pressures; and failure by management to replace absent colleagues, specifically for maternity leave which, given the virtually all-female composition of the workforce, is more common than in many other groups of staff. When asked if they regularly worked more than their contracted hours 60% of respondents said they did – an extra five hours a week was the average.

While the majority (58%) of respondents reported their standard of living had dropped in the last 3-4 years. Some of the views included:

• “Staffing has gone down in the last few years but the same level of service is expected. You begin to dread someone saying they are pregnant because you know you will be left really short during mat leave which is an unpleasant feeling because you want to be pleased for people’s good news.”

• “Senior managers are now scrutinising OT recommendations and refusing some, despite a qualified OT having made the clinical decision that equipment or adaptations are required to meet the client’s needs.”

• “Everything costs more but pay doesn’t match the increase. I have to be careful to only buy essentials when shopping.”

Sandra Dee Masson, an occupational therapist and vice chair of UNISON Scotland’s Health Committee, said: “Occupational therapy plays a vital role and yet isn’t taken into account when planning services and looking forward to patient care. Failing to properly utilise occupational therapists in the planning process completely undermines the effectiveness of change, there are instances where patients are discharged from hospital with inadequate OT consideration which results in readmission.

“Better investment in and coordination with occupational therapists would not only improve the patient journey, but it would improve outcomes, deliver better value for public money and improve the working lives of a dedicated group of workers who are very definitely under pressure.”

Dave Watson, UNISON’s head of bargaining and campaigns, said: “The picture that emerges from this report is one of a dedicated but frustrated workforce wanting to deliver a service but finding it increasingly difficult to do so. Pressures on budgets and changes to service delivery mean they are increasingly unable to deliver a service to the standard of which they are capable. Workforce demand is increasing while the workforce itself is diminishing. “This is played out against a backdrop of the majority of the workforce finding that their own personal circumstances are becoming more difficult as inflation and minimal or absent pay rises eat away at the value of their wages.”

Copies of the report can be found here

East Kilbride News highlights issues in Hairmyres

Article from this week's East Kilbride news on ISS at Hairmyres bringing in cleaner's from Coventry to help clean hospital following a Healthcare Enviroment Inspectorate visit. This despite the fact that ISS have earned extra thousands of £££'s from the taxpayer through NHS Lanarkshire. This weeks EK News article here

An easy way to contact your local politicians.

We have produced a put online a draft letter for you too use/adapt while writing to local politicians, which can be downloaded. Below you will find the same text and a link to send it to your local politicians MSPs, MPs and Councillors simply by imputing your postcode. Simples! Copy and paste the letter below and then visit this page .

Suggested letter

Dear

NHS LANARKSHIRE: HAIRMYRES AND WISHAW PFI CONTRACTS

I am writing as a constituent who has grave concerns surrounding the proposals of NHS Lanarkshire to extend the Soft Facilities Management (cleaning, portering, catering, and security) contracts with private contractors Serco at Wishaw General and ISS at Hairmyres Hospital.The NHS Lanarkshire Board requires to make this decision by the end of 2014.

It is my understanding that the Board intends to simply roll on the contracts with the existing Private providers, thereby continuing to pay taxpayers money to the shareholders of SERCO and ISS, for the provision of public services. UNISON and the other Health Unions and Professional Associations are campaigning to have the services brought back in house, and I as a constituent and service user support this view and would request your support to lobby the Board on this issue.

I firmly believe that staff employed in Wishaw General and Hairmyres should be employed by the NHS and not private companies who are in the NHS to bleed money from it. There is a real opportunity for NHS Lanarkshire to bring back in-house these services and ensure quality and public control of public money.

I look forward to hearing your view of this vitally important issue.

Yours sincerely

We would like to thank those friends and supporters who have already acted on this request. Please share widely and encourage others to do likewise remember PFIs bleed the NHS dry!

Happy Birthday NHS - 66 today!

UNISON Lanarkshire health Branch wishing our National Health Service a happy 66th birthday today.

Hundreds of health workers win backdated maternity leave public holidays

Women health workers in Scotland are to receive backdated public holidays they were wrongly denied while on maternity leave.

NHS mums, including nurses, physiotherapists, cleaners, midwives, admin workers and other staff, could receive up to seven days if they were in full time posts. Women who have had more than one period of maternity leave since 2008 would be due backdated holidays for each period.

UNISON, the public services union, took up the case after the NHS employees, were told they could not accrue public holidays on top of their annual leave, while they were off on maternity leave.

Willie Duffy, the UNISON lead on the NHS, said that management conceded an argument first raised and won by the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde UNISON branch.

He said: “As a result of UNISON’s efforts, potentially hundreds of women in the NHS will be getting back some backdated annual leave that they were refused previously.

“We knew that we were right to argue this should apply Scotland wide. The employers have agreed we were correct and agreed to implement it from April 2012. However, at first they would not backdate this any further.

“I am pleased that the employers side has now accepted that they made a mistake which they are committed to fixing and will backdate it to April 2008.”

UNISON supports annulment call on changes to NHS pension scheme

UNISON has voiced its support for an annulment of the NHS pension amendment regulations, which will be moved at the Scottish Parliament today (Tuesday).

At a meeting of the Health and Sport Committee in Edinburgh, Drew Smith MSP will call for the regulations to be annulled, leading to a debate among the MSPs.

The proposed changes outlined in the regulations include a year one increase to employee contributions of up to 2.4 per cent – effectively a pension tax on health workers. There is no need for the increase as the NHS pension scheme across the UK is in surplus, and not one penny of this increase will go to the pension scheme.

The Scottish Government has said it is opposed in principle to these contribution increases, but it plans to implement them regardless.

Tam Waterson, chair of UNISON’s Scottish Health Committee, said: “The Scottish Government has the responsibility to address these issues in Scotland, so they have a duty to fully explore a Scottish solution for health workers.

“We welcome this call for an annulment of the regulations and would urge MSPs to put a halt on proposed changes until sufficient time has been given for negotiation and to look at alternative solutions.

“MSPs have to realise that asking hard-pressed NHS workers who cannot afford to contribute more to their pension at a time of pay restraint just doesn’t make sense.”

Finance staff strike at Monklands and lunch time protests

UNISON Lanarkshire Health Branch would like to put on record our thanks to our membership in Finance at Monklands Hospital who undertook strike action today.

Their generosity in taking action on behalf of the wider membership and their contribution today was greatly appreciated by the branch as a whole.

Many thanks colleagues for making a such a serious issue as strike action - a good humoured day!

Additionally we would like to thank our fellow workers who came out at Kirklands, Wishaw General and Hairmyres in lunch time protests in support of the action.

Solidarity forever the union makes us strong.

Some of the strikers at Monklands today.

Proposal to Scan Health Records

The NHS Scotland eHealth Strategy 2011-2017 explicitly states that NHS Boards should ‘by 2014 have well established programmes to replace paper with digital equivalents’. In response to this, and building on previous eHealth investments, NHS Lanarkshire proposes to eliminate the majority of its paper health records over the next 10 years as part of its programme to implement comprehensive electronic patient records.  This will be achieved through scanning and digitisation of both past and current health records. These ‘electronic’ records will be easily available at the point of care through a clinical portal.

This project will have substantial effect on staffing numbers especially within Health Records in the 3 Acute General Hospitals, but it will also see changes to Portering requirements, Medical Secretaries workload and many other areas. Current baseline figures that have still need to be fully reviewed/agreed suggest staffing levels in Health Records may reduce by up to 70 WTE.

To accommodate the proposed central scanning unit, the RMS service currently based in Hairmyres will be moved to Kirklands leading to a large number of staff being asked to re-locate to Bothwell from East Kilbride or if this isn’t a viable option, these staff being placed on the redeployment list.

UNISON stewards are fully involved in the staff consultation that is currently taking place until the 31^st March 2012 and will be highly involved in all project boards and project sub-group that get set-up following this consultation period to support our members during this project.