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A direct threat to caretaking service
• WE would like this opportunity express our profound concern over the attack on caretaking with regards to the recruitment of estate cleaners.
Camden is currently recruiting for the posts of estate cleaner, five full-time and two part-time.
Unison have objected to the role of estate cleaner as we have always felt that it is an unfair two-tier system that encourages inequality in pay for the same job.
This is mainly due to the fact the jobs boundaries are very easily crossed and blurred, and misuse of the estate cleaner is commonplace across all districts.
This is more of a concern with this current recruitment as the job profiles have been changed, making the differences in the post of caretaker and estate cleaner even more unclear. However, the difference in pay is two scales.
Unison feel very strongly that what is needed is recruitment of more full-time caretakers who will take responsibility for their sites, bond professionally with the community they work with and provided a vital front-line service by, among other things:
• reporting and following up anti-social behaviour and communal repairs;
• visiting venerable tenants;
• being a constant in the often difficult personal world of some of our tenants.
This front-line service also includes reporting child protection issues, which is a policy that, I believe, is due to be re-evaluated by the Camden Safeguarding Board following the tragic death of Baby P.
Caretakers and estate officers alike are often the vital eyes and ears of these sections.
Camden have already reduced this contact and, in some cases, lost the interaction that our knowledgeable estate officers and caretakers have with our clients and now it seems that they aim to withdraw more protection and safety nets from Camden’s vulnerable by reducing and dissolving another vital link to the children and adults we aim to protect.
This situation leaves all concerned open to serious issues with regards to health and safety, liability, client and service user satisfaction; break-down in liaison with outside agencies, including emergency services.
This may be cheaper but it is clear to Unison that this is not better.
Unison feel that this proposal is now a direct threat to the service, and the back-door policy that we felt management were adopting previously is now so obvious that it can no longer be denied.
Unison also feel that that swamping the service with lower paid staff who, in reality, carry out the same function, but are mainly used to plug caretaker shortages, will go a long way to making it easier and cheaper to transfer staff under Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations.
MANDY BERGER
Unison Co-Convener
Housing and Adult
Social Care
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