Surrey County UNISON branch

1) Surrey County UNISON supports the Social Model of Disability, believing that it is society’s attitudes and the physical barriers within society which prevent disabled people playing a full, included role – not a person’s impairments. We support the principle that everyone should have the right to choice & control over their lives, including the services they receive.

2) Surrey County UNISON will campaign alongside service users and their representatives on the following issues:

i) Social Care funding – for full funding of social care services, including those within the voluntary sector. Surrey County UNISON will fight to defend existing services and support campaigns for new services identified from existing, proven or projected need.

ii) The balance of qualified and unqualified staff in social care teams – Surrey County UNISON believes that SCC is working towards a social care culture where care management qualifications will count for nothing. Already, Advisory Officers and Community Support Workers (mostly untrained) are carrying out the full range of care management tasks. We believe the risks, from this approach, to our members and the people we support are too high. Some AOs have already resigned from SCC because of these pressures - the situation is unacceptable. We will fight to defend and expand existing levels of qualified staff and oppose future attempts to use unqualified staff in clearly defined care management tasks.

iii) Independent Advocacy and complaints services, Independent Living Services and Benefits Advice services – Surrey County UNISON supports the principle that these types of services should be independent of statutory control and should be run by service users and their independent representatives. Since the advent of the Business Delivery Review (BDR), many of these services (such as AMIIS, SILC, Surrey Welfare Rights Unit etc) have been threatened with closure and/or being brought ‘in-house’. We will fight alongside service users to defend these services.

iv) Public services or private profit? – Surrey County UNISON opposes in principle the making of profits from the delivery of services to the most vulnerable people in society. We will fight to defend existing in-house services, such as home care and day services, from sell-off/privatisation or any long-term PFI contracts.

v) Outsourcing – Linked to privatisation (para; iv), we believe that outsourcing of essential services such as the Shared Service Centre, will be detrimental to our members and to the service users of Surrey. We will strongly oppose any attempt at outsourcing of services by Surrey County Council.

vi) Charging for services – Surrey County UNISON fully supports the service user-led campaign to abolish charging for essential services.

In furtherance of the above, Surrey County UNISON agrees to forward this position statement to all service user-led groups in Surrey, including Surrey Users Network, Surrey Independent Living Council and the N W Surrey Association of Disabled People, inviting comment.

Surrey County UNISON also agrees to try to send representative/s to any future Surrey-wide service-user led campaigns or coalitions, offering our support for joint campaigning on the above issues.