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EDWIN Poots reaffirmed to the Assembly today that he is pressing ahead with his ‘Transforming Your Care’ plan to close and privatise all NHS care homes despite the distress caused last week and the negative health impacts this will have.

His plan is 100% withdrawal from NHS homes, even though there is a projected population rise in older people of 40% by 2020.

No evidence based reason for the closure have ever been produced despite that fact that in the future the older population will need a strong combination of home care, residential care and nursing care including full access to hospitals.

Today he gives a hollow assurance that last week’s process is ‘dead’ but then announces that the 100% closure programme starts again today.

It will be implemented more slowly and we will witness the closure of one home at a time as in the past.

The doors will be closed to new admissions.

The remaining residents will see out their days as a dwindling community or their relatives will be forced to move them out. This is a war of attritions against older people.

UNISON is challenging the Minister to answer the following:

• Why did the Minister state that someone other than him had the power to make the closure decisions when he, John Compton of the Board and Andrew McCormick the Permanent Secretary DHSSP had already confirmed to the Assembly Health Committee (10 Oct 2012) that the Minister had the power? • The Minister claims that the NHS now provides only 25% of residential care in Northern Ireland. Why does he deny that this has been a sustained drive to privatisation?

• If there is no need or desire for residential care in Northern Ireland why does the Health & Social Services system contract with almost 200 private residential care homes? (Belfast Trust alone spends £100m per annum on private residential care. This is big business.) Who is profiting?

• What is the relationship between the hundreds of private sector vacancies and the decision to transfer all remaining NHS care? If there is no relationship then why did the Northern Trust include this information in its consultation document?

• Domicillary (home) care has been steadily privatised for more than 20 years under the guise of better ‘care in the community’. Home helps now make up less of the workforce than senior managers (4%).

Under his Transforming Your Care plans the Minister is moving to rapidily transfer remaining home care to the private sector.

This is despite formal reports criticising the quality of care provided by much of the private sector. Why is the Minister transferring this Care? Regrettably the Minister was at best economical with the truth today and for this there must be consequences.

The Minister has pushed the closure proposals from the beginning. It is public record (Hansard) that he spoke of them to the Assembly Health Committee in October 2012 and March 2013.

Transcripts Summary from Health Committee meetings with Minister Poots and John Compton (10 Oct 12, and 20 march 13).

Oct 2012 transcript – John Compton explained the personal role of the Minister in any controversial home closures; and in response to Jim Wells agreed that in some areas all residential homes could close (in the draft Strategic Implementation Plan it was explicit that all Western Trust homes would close).

Minister Poots stated that in a lot of homes ‘there has been a non-admission policy for some time’ , so confirming that homes have been deliberately run down over several years.

(UNISON note: this fatally undermines the DHSPSS arugment that demand is falling.)

March 2013 transcript – Minister Poots acknowledged that elderly people will be obliged to move and that the upheaval should be minimised. Compton said he expected proposals from Trusts to close a number of homes in 2013/14.

As Commissioner he obviously had prior knowledge of what Trusts were about to do. But he said “The debate and consultation will be about how, not why, it is done…”

(UNISON Note: the “why”, as described by TYC and its spinoff documents, was never properly explained.)

In March the Minister publicly launched the plan for what was called ‘at least 50%’ closure in the short term.

It is, in fact, nearer 72%.

Consider what has actually happened in recent days:

• Trusts cannot move ahead without the approval of the Commissioner which is the Health & Social Care Board. • Trusts cannot move ahead without Ministerial Approval. Approval had already been stated in the Plan launched by the Minister in March 2013. Trusts moved ahead with the stated plan.

• Residents, relatives, staff and UNISON reacted swiftly and publicly and the Minister was forced to back down. He blamed the Trusts that both he and the Health Care Board control. They said they were implementing his own plans. The Minister saw the problem as bad PR and not as bad health policy.

Today he gave a hollow assurance that last week’s process is ‘dead’ but he then immediately announced that the closure programme starts again today.

It will be implemented more slowly and we will witness the closure of one home at a time as in the past. The doors will be closed to new admissions. The remaining residents will see out their days as a dwindling community or their relatives will be forced to move them out. This is a war of attrition against older people.

These are the same strong, articulate residents that called him to account. They will continue to so. So too will UNISON. It is imperative that the public and press keep asking questions and demanding truthful answers.