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Careline alarm calls to be contracted out
Surprise deal with housing association offshoot
AFTER an embarrassing rejection and in the face of months of protest, council care chiefs have agreed to contract out their alarm call system for vulnerable old people – to a company owned by one of Camden’s biggest housing associations.
Calls to Careline, a service for 3,600 elderly people who live in their own homes but need emergency contact with carers, will from early next year be answered from a call centre run by Kent-based Invicta Telecare.
The contract was awarded as a result of what council lawyers call a “mini-tender” after finance bosses decided that the current arrangement, in which carers spend part of the time fielding calls from the service’s subscribers, could yield £150,000 in savings a year by employing a call centre instead.
Their first attempt to outsource the service hit a set-back when no companies bid in August’s tender for the contract – described as ‘unexpected and disappointing’ by the adult social care director’s report – but Invicta, which had been approached in the first tender but declined to bid, was then approached separately.
A negotiated deal involving no competitors and requiring the payment of a £67,000 sign-up fee in addition to the £334,000 contract was rubber-stamped by the council executive last night (Wednesday).
Rebecca Harrington, assistant director of social services, said Invicta had not initially responded to the tender because it had too much work on, but that “on subsequent discussions they felt that they could”.
Social care chief Councillor Martin Davies stressed that only the call-handling aspects of the job would be contracted to Invicta and that the actual carers visiting clients would be unchanged.
He said: “The main response will remain double-handed- which is unusual in London.
“This will allow us to boost staffing levels during weekday hours.”
Council chiefs made no mention of the fact that contract-winner Invicta is a subsidiary of Circle Anglia Housing Association – which in the form of another subsidiary, Circle 33 Trust, is one of the ‘big four’ housing associations active in the borough as landlord of 1,379 rented homes.
The revelation prompted anger from representatives of the Town Hall union UNISON, who have opposed the tender on the grounds that it is a privatisation of care as well as the proposed seven job ‘deletions’.
UNISON convener Mandy Berger said: “The whole of the tendering process was wholly dubious – we have not had an explanation as to why nobody bid for that contract, and Careline management and staff have been demoralised by the way it has been done.
“They have never revealed any connection to Circle 33 – what with the options around our housing stock and this administration selling off our voids, it seems that this administration is being extremely cosy with the housing associations.”
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