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From The Socialist newspaper, 8 September 2021
Families demand rights for care home residents
photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)
Rosa, South Tyne & Wear Socialist Party
While government guidance now allows us to go to pubs and music festivals, go on holidays, and meet up with friends, care home residents are being kept under lockdown. Private, profit-making care home companies have restricted visits, sometimes to less than once a week, and only for 30 minutes.
Many care homes are deciding their own rules, as government guidelines are just that, with no legal requirements. Many families, after not seeing their loved ones for months, have found deterioration in quality of care as they have been unable to check on the welfare of family members.
This is not the fault of care workers who are doing their best on minimum wage, working extra shifts to cover staff shortages, and ignored by the bosses of the big care companies. Meanwhile, residents are denied the same rights as everyone else in society; the right to spend time with family and friends.
Most care homes are run by private companies looking at profit before their resident's welfare. To increase profits they cut corners and rely on the goodwill of staff who don't want to let residents down. Most residents are paying well over £1,000 per week for care, from their life savings and selling of their homes. It suits the care companies to restrict access to the residents, as they can't then raise complaints about cost-cutting and welfare issues.
'Rights for residents' is a group set up by families who are campaigning on behalf of their loved ones, to enable them to have the same rights as the rest of us. They are demonstrating outside Downing Street on 16 September. Families plan to travel from all over the country, many are people who have never protested or marched before. Let's show them some support.
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In The Socialist 8 September 2021:
NHS and social care
NHS and social care - make the rich pay, not the workers
Workers shouldn't pay for health and social care plans
End service cuts and care charges
Families demand rights for care home residents
Whipps Cross hospital workers reject the 3%
What we think
A pivotal moment for the trade union movement
Socialist Party news and campaigns
Socialist Party national council - members enthused by excellent in-person meeting
Why I joined the Socialist Party
Education
Union action needed to make schools Covid safe
Fighting NEU leadership needed to tackle school funding crisis
Schools funding crisis fails vulnerable children
University bosses push through pension cuts proposal
9/11 twenty years on
9/11 and the 'War on Terror' twenty years on
Workplace news
Bexley bin workers win big gains after six-week strike
Equity protest to save arts centre forces talks from Newham Council
DWP: Demand safe working and more jobs
DHL workers to strike against wage theft
Youth Fight for Jobs
Organising to defend our future: 9 October- Youth fight for jobs day of action
Building Youth Fight for Jobs in the South West
International news
Libya - ten years after Gaddafi's overthrow
US Supreme Court refuses to challenge Texas abortion ban
Keep fascists out of Portland: Build a mass movement to fight the right
Readers' opinion
Socialist change, not climate change
Vigil: A nuclear sub murder mystery
Obituary
Obituary: Roger Henshaw, comrade and class fighter
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2021