Choosing quality services

It is also vital that the public services we provide are of the best possible quality. Despite decades of attacks, there are many examples of the benefits high quality services provide.

The use in Renfrewshire of a Library of Information for the Elderly, for example, helped local elderly people secure over £1.7m to which they were entitled, - six times the cost of the project.

 

Successful DLOs throughout Scotland (80% of those trading according to the Accounts Commission) have made net surpluses of £21m. Money to be reinvested in local services - not to be removed from the system as private profits.

The Scottish Parliament must ensure that it is responsive to the demands of the Scottish people in delivering the services they want.

Good services are not provided by cutting costs. The best value for the Scottish people will be obtained by providing quality services with trained, well treated staff. Not on the cheap.

People not Profit

The best way of doing this is by using services owned and run publicly, without a profit margin. Experience in Scotland has shown that private involvement in the provision of public services will almost always result in a poorer quality service to the public. Private ownership, maintenance, and running of our public services means they would be less flexible, less controllable and more expensive.

UNISON argues for publicly owned and run services, not the quick-fix illusion and long term burden, of schools, clinics and hospitals owned and run by the private sector under the Private Finance Initiative.

These projects take away people's say, tie them into inflexible contracts, and put a massive cost burden on our children in the future.

To ensure accessibility to our Parliament and to our public services we would support family friendly policies such as improved nursery and childcare provision. Equality built into our legislation and the positive promotion of equal opportunities for all in access to public services.

We urge the Scottish Parliament to enact the recommendations of the Constitutional Steering Group on Equalities in the Scottish Parliament to ensure the equalities agenda is progressed from the start of the parliament.

We believe that the parliament, and all the bodies it is responsible for, should draw up plans to implement equal opportunities. These should cover policy appraisal, public access and information, and monitoring. There is also a strong case for setting up a Human Rights Commission and a Department of Equality.

A key priority is to combat the inequalities in health care and to that extent UNISON welcomes the government green paper - Working together for a healthier Scotland.

	Jim Cosgrove is the manager of the Community Equipment Store based at St John's Hospital in West Lothian. Managing a community facility run jointly by the NHS Trust and the local authority. he knows the benefits properly integrated services can mean.
"Equipment is delivered to people's homes following assessment by professional community care staff. We can carry an extensive range and we ensure that professional staff can work together, and ensure people's needs are taken into account."

It should be clear that the parliament will assess health care on the basis of need. The patient, whatever their income, circumstances or position must be able to access the best available care.

The emphasis on primary health care is one that should be strengthened and increased, and action must be taken to replace wasteful competition with co-operation in the delivery of health care.

After years of being driven down the dead-end of the internal market and competition, the Scottish Parliament must reassert the public service ethos at the heart of our health service.

The Parliament must support initiatives to bolster community care, and encourage closer collaboration between health services, local government and the voluntary sector.

Lifelong learning for all is an important step towards providing the support and back up to improve people's lives. This, by its very nature, must be integrated and responsive to people's needs across the generations. To this end links between pre-school education, schools, further and higher education, and community education should be reintroduced, and be able to be democratically controlled.

Above all the Parliament must ensure that Scotland has the resources to provide the economic and logistical infrastructure through services such as Scotland's health and educational services, water and housing, and an integrated transport system.

There must be no artificial barrier to using the tax varying powers of the Scottish Parliament to provide such resources.

The 'fair needs assessment' (or Barnett) formula that determines Scottish share of total UK public expenditure should continue.

A major step towards providing good quality, flexible public services is the importance of these services being integrated - working with one another to provide holistic services. A good example of this is the Community Equipment Store at St John's Hospital in West Lothian, where staff from the local social work department and health care trust work together to assess and provide help to people who need physical aids and equipment.

Planning for the community

UNISON would like to see the adoption of Community Planning across a whole range of services. Public services should be able to be determined and shaped by the people who need them at a local level. Local authorities are best placed to adopt the strategic overview, allowing them to co-ordinate and integrate as well as deliver, the services that people want, when and where they want them.

This co-ordination will become increasingly difficult where different sections of the service are run by different companies/ trusts/authorities and quangos. The team will become divided, locked into bureacracy and set against one another.

Best value in service provision demands that services can respond to people's needs quickly and efficiently. This is best done by publicly owned and run services. Not by privately run, inflexibility contracted, profit-motivated companies. Private companies, by their nature have to be profit motivated. That creates a conflict in public service meaning that, even if the private sector is involved, they should not own or run the service.

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Choosing teamwork

To provide public services that are responsive, democratically accountable and of high quality, parliament must recognise the importance of the public service team. They are the public faces of the service - the people who must interpret funding decisions and policy changes to the users. Through them the services are perceived.

This means that we must value all the team that provide our services - treating them fairly and equally with decent conditions and fair pay. Devices such as staging pay awards should be scrapped, and the low pay problem endemic in parts of the public services should be tackled.

Team Spirit

If the team are all employed by the organisation providing the service, they have a commitment to the services they provide. This means the auxiliary as well as the doctor; the school meals staff as well as the teacher; the home help as well as the social worker. From the cleaner to the chief executive.

The continued pressure towards 'outsourcing' via PFI, trusts, market testing and others is unacceptable and must be stopped. The Public Services Team must be re-assembled to provide an integrated, flexible accountable services with fairly, equally treated staff. The provision of quality training at the workplace is crucial, if the aim of lifelong learning for the whole team - whatever their background - is to mean anything at work.

In the voluntary sector in particular the Parliament must find means to ensure that the staff working for the sector have the same rights, security, conditions and training opportunities that we expect for other public services. Only then can we ensure consistency of service, and quality of service.

Maureen Gallagher is a sister working in the Acute Trauma Unit of the Western Infirmary in Glasgow. "The treatment of health care staff and services must be a top priority for our Scottish Parliament" she says
"With poor pay for most members of our team and the continued bed and ward closures I often feel like chucking it all in. Many good colleagues have already done so. The reason I don't is because I care about this service. It should be the jewel in the crown and if the Parliament can restore the faith I once had then it will have been worthwhile."

The provision of proper training, job security and conditions are a positive contribution to responsive and high quality public services. These can best be provided for by a directly employed team rather than employees of a variety of private sector employers and/or trusts with will have different aims, objectives and vested interests.

Again to treat employees equally - providing family friendly employment policies and promoting equal opportunities is a positive contribution towards decently run public services. These services can assist both their own employees and those of other companies by providing child care and training.

The Foxlea Family Centre and Paisley Learning Access Network for example which provides affordable and flexible childcare and provision of learning and education for all ages. This allows parents to work and/or study knowing their children are looked after by qualified, trained and caring staff.

Services that treat their own team equally, whatever their gender, ethnic origin, sexuality, age or physical ability, will be positively placed to offer an equal range of services to all Scotland's citizens.

Index

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Serving Scotland

Scotland's new Parliament is the time for a new chapter in the tradition of serving the Scottish people.

It was created because the Scottish people made protection of their public services a priority, defending them throughout the eighties. They recognised that the attacks being made then on their services would never have come from a Scottish Parliament.

A positive partnership is the aim - a partnership between central and local government, the health services, the voluntary sector and educational institutions.

The partnership must be based firmly on the three principles that have underpinned this document.

+ We must give people a say in their services.

+ We must choose quality services.

+ We must choose teamwork to provide our public services.

UNISON will be promoting this positive agenda for Scotland's public services in the coming months, raising the issues with other trade unions, political parties, community and voluntary groups; with prospective MSPs directly, and of course with our own members.

We are looking forward to the future with hope and optimism. The public services we provide are important to all our lives - important to the life of Scotland. We fully intend that our campaign will ensure that their importance is high on the priorities of our Parliament and our
representatives.

Only then will we be able to say that our public services are

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Thanks are due to Alan Wylie for all the photographs, West Lothian NHS Trust, West Lothian Council and the Radnor Street Clinic. Thanks are also due to all the people who agreed to take part.

It should go without saying that the policies contained herein are the responsibilities of UNISONScotland alone, and not attributable to any individual, or institution who co-operated with the making of this manifesto.

Serving Scotland is UNISONScotland's manifesto for Scottish public services. It is published by UNISONScotland, UNISON House, 14 West Campbell Street, Glasgow G2 6RX. Tel 0141 332 0006. It is printed by John S Burns and Sons, 25 Finlas Street, Glasgow G22 5DS.

CDS/98/20/a

campaigning for Scotland's public services

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