Workers and families unite to save lifeline care service

Families of some of the most vulnerable citizens in Glasgow joined their carers today to protect a lifeline support service.

GMB Scotland is urging Glasgow City Council to save the Supported Living service that helps frail people, many enduring some form of dementia or psychiatric condition, to continue living at home.

At a rally outside the City Chambers before a meeting with councillors, workers were joined by relatives who described their work as irreplaceable.

Staff fear the lives of some of the most vulnerable and frail residents will be “turned upside down” by the proposed closure of the service.

The service delivers bespoke support with staff spending more time with the elderly clients, building up strong personal relationships, and helping them stay in their own homes for as long as possible.

Staff have been warned the future of the service is uncertain with a proposal to merge it into general home care to be discussed tomorrow.

Pauline Mulheron has worked in care for 25 years, the last six with Supported Living, and says the level of support offered to clients could never be replicated in mainstream home care.

She said: “These clients are the most vulnerable in our communities and giving them the support they need takes a lot of time, patience and people skills.

“We have looked after them for years in some cases and that relationship and trust is crucial.

“Many of our clients have no one else and we become their voice when they need one. They have come to know us over years and the whole service rests on that continuity.”

The Supported Living carers provide an intensive package of care tailored to each client, helping them at home and on trips into the community.

Mulheron said: “They live independently, and want to, but without us it would be very difficult if not impossible.

“We’re there for everything from making sure they’ve had something to eat and watching them take the right medication to accompanying them to the shops or the bank. That all needs time.

“Supported Living was launched with the specific aim of giving staff the necessary time to provide a service that could sit between mainstream home care and residential.

“The service is needed now more than ever and the suggestion that the complex needs of these clients can be met in mainstream home care is nonsense.

“This level of care demands spending time with clients and Supported Living is designed to give us that time.”

Forty clients are currently cared for in the Supported Living service but John Slaven, GMB Scotland organiser in Glasgow City Council, said staff suspect the service is not promoted to deliberately limit the number of clients referred by social workers.

He said: “This is a specialist service providing intensive care for people who, without it, will undoubtedly struggle to live independently.

“It was introduced with that specific purpose and has a skilled and experienced workforce absolutely committed to the care of their clients.

“The council might prefer those workers to be seeing far more clients in the mainstream service but cannot be allowed to pretend that some of the city’s most vulnerable people will suffer.

“Their lives will be turned upside down.

“To suggest that specialist care can be wrapped into the mainstream service without undermining the ability of these vulnerable individuals to live safely at home is reckless and must be challenged.”

The proposal to close the service and transfer the staff and clients into mainstream home care will be discussed by the city’s Integration Joint Board, responsible for community health and social care services, at a meeting next week.

A delegation of workers and family members met Councillor Chris Cunningham, chair of the city's Integration Joint Board, today before the Health and Social Care Partnership discuss the plans to merge Supported Living into mainstream home care tomorrow.