The
outsourcing company Capita offered freelance social workers financial
bonuses – and put them up in luxury hotels – to encourage them to help a
local authority cut disabled and older people’s care packages.
A
whistleblower has told Disability News Service (DNS) that Capita has
been piling pressure on its team of social workers – while paying them
more than £1,000 a week – to cut social care spending, on the orders of
Southampton City Council.
DNS revealed last September
that the council had employed Capita to clear a backlog of annual
reviews of the care packages of disabled and older people, in an
apparent attempt to cut costs.
But
DNS has now seen an email in which a Capita manager told her team
members that they could earn a bonus of £200 if they increased the cuts
to people’s care packages they achieved through those reviews by 20 per
cent.
In
the email, headed “Stop Press – Good News”, she passed on an offer from a
senior manager at Capita, who suggested an “extra incentive” for her
team if they could improve on their previous “performance”.
He suggested that the bonus “can be measured across both productivity levels and the savings achieved.
“If one person improves their productivity by 20 per cent and savings by 20 per cent they receive a £400 bonus.”
The whistleblower, Rebecca*, said she has been earning more than £1,000 a week – after tax – as part of the Capita team.
She
said her bosses made it clear that team members would only keep their
jobs if they produced enough cuts to the packages of the people whose
care needs they were assessing.
Capita said this week that it did not “recognise” Rebecca’s claims, although it has not denied any of her specific claims.
But
when it was later shown the “extra incentive” email, a Capita spokesman
appeared to accept that it was genuine and claimed the incentive
mentioned was “never introduced”, and that the company would not be
“updating” its original statement.
Southampton
City Council said the Capita project was part of its plan to
“transform” adult social care in the city, and claimed that the emphasis
was not on cost-cutting but on “carrying out a thorough review,
supporting people to take up alternatives such as enhanced telecare and
direct payments, if appropriate”.
It had not commented on the “extra incentive” email by 11am today (Thursday).
The
council’s link-up with Capita was first trialled through a pilot
project, which resulted in an average cut of seven per cent to disabled
people’s support packages.
That pilot project has now finished, and Capita is being paid by the council to continue the work.
Disabled
people in Southampton with continuing healthcare funding from the NHS
have already seen their local clinical commissioning group (CCG) attempt to push them into institutions,
by arguing that the needs of disabled people who need more than eight
hours of long-term healthcare a day “would be more appropriately met
within a residential placement”.
The
city council has also been forced to scrap plans to review the packages
of disabled people with high-cost support packages and try to force
them out of their own homes and into residential and nursing
institutions.
Now
Rebecca, one of the freelance social workers who has been working on
the Southampton project for Capita, has contacted DNS to describe the
pressure she and her colleagues have been put under to cut people’s care
packages during the day, while being put up in luxury, three-star
hotels at night.
DNS
has seen another email sent by a manager from the “Capita review team”
late last year, complaining that their latest results showed that the
cuts to care packages they had managed to find had “fallen
dramatically”.
The
manager adds in the email: “The senior managers [from the council]who
are leading this transformation want to know why it appears we are
failing to realise the results in service delivery and savings they
anticipated by commissioning this project.
“They in turn are being asked to explain to Councillors of SCC [Southampton City Council].”
The
manager then adds in the email: “I have stressed how hard you are all
working – but we don’t appear to be getting the results we had during
the Pilots.”
And she warns her team: “We don’t have very much time to turn this situation around.
“If we can’t/don’t do it all the hard work you have put in so far will have been for nothing.
“Not to put too fine a point on things WE ARE ALL ON THE WAY HOME.”
Capita’s freelance social workers stayed at plush three-star hotels such as the Bartley Lodge, the city’s Jury’s Inn hotel and the New Place (pictured), while they were being paid more than £1,000 a week to cut disabled people’s support to live independently.
Rebecca
told DNS: “Capita know nothing about social care. They don’t care about
social care. They only care about delivering or being seen to deliver
the savings.
“You
had to go hell for leather to produce these savings. A council manager
told us: ‘You have to continue with this because there is no plan B.'”
But Rebecca said the project was “so badly monitored and managed that I suspect a lot of the team had never had it so easy.
“We
often remarked it was one of the easiest social work jobs we had ever
had and the pressure only came from them wanting savings where under
social work values and ethics we were loathe to make those cuts.”
When
she was interviewed for the job, she said, the questions focused on
whether she would be happy to cut people’s care packages if needed.
She said: “I said if the care needs are not there, then yes. If they are there, then no.
“Many
of the social workers have been sacked by Capita along the way because
they weren’t making the savings, they weren’t cutting the cost of care.”
And
she said that the service-users with no support networks to advocate on
their behalf with the council were often the ones who were having their
packages cut.
Rebecca said: “There was a huge emphasis on making savings.
“There were constant ‘thinly veiled threats’ that we must make savings.
“You
were threatened with a glare or a glower if you questioned them, or if
you reminded them of the correct processes under the Care Act.
“You
knew you risked losing your job. One of the managers told us all the
time, ‘If you don’t do it, I will throw you under the bus.'”
Rebecca
said she and her colleagues were also put under huge pressure to
replace the care packages of service-users receiving 15-minute care
visits with “telecare” equipment.
This
could mean handing electronic pill-dispensing devices that opened at
set times every day to service-users who previously received short
visits from social workers to ensure they took their medication.
She said the service-users would often struggle with the dispensers when they were left alone to use them in their homes.
Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said the latest revelations of the council’s “underhand behaviour” were “shocking”.
She
said: “Southampton council and also the CCG seem to be trying their
hardest to prevent disabled people living independently in the community
with the right levels of support.”
She said Capita was “immoral, incompetent and obviously willing to stoop to any lengths to make money”.
Ian Loynes, chief executive of Spectrum Centre for Independent Living,
a user-led organisation which is based in Southampton and supports many
of the service-users affected by the review, said: “Every disabled
person, every older person, every social worker and every human being
who is concerned for the welfare of people who require care and support
will be deeply disturbed by these allegations, if they are an accurate
representation of what has been occurring.
“We
understand the financial pressures and difficulties that social care
managers are under; however there are better ways to deliver cost
savings.”
The
whistleblower’s concerns were raised in the same week that DNS reported
how nurses carrying out disability benefits assessments for Capita –
and fellow outsourcing company Atos – were guilty of widespread
dishonesty in how they were compiling their reports for the Department
for Work and Pensions.
After
being told of the whistleblower’s allegations, a Capita spokesman said
in a statement: “We do not recognise these claims, and nor do they
reflect the culture and behaviour of the team who help deliver this
service in partnership with Southampton City Council.
“We are not financially incentivised to deliver savings.
“Our
performance is measured on the delivery of needs based assessments that
ensure people are receiving the appropriate type and level of care as
well as meeting the requirements of the Care Act.”
A
council spokesman said: “The council is working on a joint initiative
with Capita to address a backlog of overdue social care assessments and
reviews, to ensure that individuals continue to have the care and
support needed to meet their eligible social care needs and to meet its
Care Act requirements.
“This
project is part of the council’s plan to transform adult social care
services and will help to ensure that timely and regular reviews are
carried out going forward, which will help people to live full and
independent lives wherever possible and ensure people get the care and
support that best meets their needs.
“Reviews
are being completed by qualified social workers who have been carefully
vetted for their skills, knowledge and experience and are registered
with the Health and Care Professions Council.
“The
emphasis is on carrying out a thorough review, supporting people to
take up alternatives such as enhanced telecare and direct payments, if
appropriate.”
He
added later: “The results so far confirm our view that this is the most
cost-effective way of completing the reviews in a timely way, to the
required quality.”
And he said that “so far, four out of five reviews have resulted in no change to the overall care package”.
But
Rebecca said the reason that four our of five reviews had led to no
change in a care package was because many of them covered residential or
nursing placements, which refuse to accept lowered fees.
She
said it was “understood, discussed and agreed that the biggest money
savings” lay among older and disabled people living in their own homes.
http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/immoral-capita-offered-200-bonuses-to-social-workers-to-slash-care-packages/
