THE PRIVATE company UnitingCare has collapsed after only eight months and pulled out of running care for the elderly in Cambridgeshire.
The company won an £800 million-a-year, 5-year contract but has been forced to pull out stating that the service was not ‘financially sustainable’. Older people’s services in Cambridgeshire have now been handed back to the NHS.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group (CPCCG) have taken them back ‘in house’. Jo Rust from Unison said: ‘It cost over £1m to commission the UnitingCare partnership, to put it out to tender and this, the largest contract to date, was a shocking waste of money.’
Richard O’Leary, GMB Regional Organiser said: ‘Can the Government and the Clinical Commissioning Groups now heed the warnings of conflicts of interest and wasting money involved in these NHS outsourcings? GMB members spent a lot of their time lobbying for this outsourcing not to go ahead. They were ignored. GMB members were right and the CCG was wrong.’
Unison member Roger Hutt told News Line yesterday: ‘What we are fighting here is the oppression of a tyrannical government, because they want to privatise the NHS. Everything to them is for making profit.’ Hutt was in the leadership of a struggle where care workers in Doncaster took a total of 90 days of strike action against private care company Care UK.
He continued: ‘What has happened in Cambridgeshire is the tip of the iceberg. It is morally reprehensible in any civilised society that human beings are treated as commodities. Now Cambridgeshire has been taken back in house, we hope that it will stay there. We hope that because they have had their fingers burnt, they will learn the lesson that privatisation is a disaster waiting to happen.
‘However the jury is still out. We all know where those services in Cambridgeshire should remain and that it is the NHS. Undoubtedly all these private care companies must be taken back in house. The unions have to take action to this effect, without a shadow of a doubt, that is what we did. This is about safeguarding careers and safeguarding the people we care for.
‘We were working for Doncaster NHS and our services were taken over by Care UK which itself is owned by venture capitalist Bridgepoint, a private equity company. Since that time it has been sold again to Lifeways. This is health care; it is not a business. We all know about how elderly people are treated by private companies, the quality of care deteriorates. Care never comes first.’
UnitingCare’s £800m five-year contract covered:
• Urgent care for adults aged 65 and over, including inpatients and A&E services
• Mental Health Services for people aged 65 and over
• Adult community services for people aged 18 and over, including district nursing and rehabilitation services
• Health services to support the care of people aged 65 and over.
