The Mayor of Liverpool is to call on Liverpool Council to back striking nurses and ask the government to improve funding for social care.
Amid the backdrop of health care staff taking to the picket line and city region NHS bosses admitting they’re considering sending hospital staff into care homes to support social care, Joanne Anderson has laid down a motion for debate by the city council to stand behind nurses and look into how it can support the health service financially.
Nurses walked out from hospitals in Whiston, St Helens and Wirral yesterday morning as members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) staged another wave of industrial action over pay and conditions. Mayor Anderson’s motion has called on Liverpool Council to note the “mounting pressure on the NHS caused by under-funding and the effect this is having on staff, patients and social care requirements.”
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With that in mind, the Mayor is calling on councillors to back her push to ask Theresa Grant, interim chief executive, Anne Marie Lubanski, the strategic director of adult social care, and her own cabinet, to write to Steve Barclay MP, the health secretary, requesting increased funding for both the NHS and for local authorities to spend on social care, and for Mr Barclay to agree to the Royal College of Nurses pay claim, “correcting over a decade of decline in real terms salaries.”
Should members of the council agree to the motion, it would endorse the local authority to work with the Merseyside and Cheshire Integrated Care Board to identify pathways that will ease the pressures on the acute trust and identify community solutions to ease the pressures on the NHS. Mayor Anderson is seeking backing to write to the Liverpool branch of the RCN, Unison and GMB unions supporting the industrial action.
The motion also seeks to meet with all parties to “discuss the financial challenges of the market and to look at what is possible within the council’s financial envelope to support.” Mayor Anderson’s motion comes days after James Sumner, Liverpool University Hospitals Foundation Trust (LUHFT) chief executive, said hospital staff could be seconded to social care settings to assist with getting people out of hospitals into appropriate care.
The Mayor’s call, should members back it, seeks to continue meetings with LUHFT and identify the support required to discharge patients and the funding mechanisms “to make this practical across the system.” Liverpool Labour group leader Cllr Liam Robinson and Cllr Steve Munby, are also seeking authority support for action in social care, with a separate motion calling on the council to arrange urgent meetings with LUHFT to identify what further steps can be taken to help discharge patients and the funding mechanisms to make this practical.
It seeks approval to work with Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram, neighbouring local authorities, and NHS trusts to create a new training framework for social care and health workers, allowing planned progression between the two. The Labour motion calls upon members to back a plan to “identify steps necessary to create enhanced in-house capacity to deliver adult social care.”
The motions will be discussed at the full meeting of Liverpool Council at the Town Hall next week.
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