to not understand the alck of empthy for people being made redundant from state services?

[ScramVonChubby]

OK so I get many agree with the redundancies but it is not about that really.

I mean empathy for the actual humans involved.

I keep hearing 'oh well they're state paid jobs, hard luck' and that's often followed by a rant about the numbers of unemployed.

Or people brushing off concerns because 'it's just managerial / abckroom people'.

Regardless, they are still humans who have bills and probably a family to support. Even if we have declared their post ended, cannot we feel some empathy for the individuals concerned? They are not people who deliberately harmed any economy but bang on average people in the main who went out, applied for an advertised job as one does, and got on with it like anyone else.

DH lost his job through redundancy from a private employer a while abck and I hate that others are going into this and being treated as some kind of pariahs on top. My own city is badly hit ATM (if you saw QT last night you know why) and I don't get the lack of compassion at all.

It's not the if needed part that's the problem really.

Schools have been closing/merging for decades now.

Hospitals have closed without the will of the people concerned.

Police stations even close now after 10pm.

Public baths, public toilets and other amenities slammed shut and this is all before the measures took/are taking place.

I don't see what difference it will make in the long run because it was already running down year by year.

Obviously it's not pleasant when people lose their jobs, it never is but those cuts have to be made. In a real world it would be the bureaucrats that would be shown the door, but it never is.

Can we fight this?

I wouldn't fight for it given the apathy about the public services that were taken over the years.

Disabled people are taking more than their fair share of cuts. I feel anger for the attrocious way that respite/ special ed. budgets have been cut. I feel angry for the way Riven's family have been treated.

I have been given a redunancy notice, but am not asking for anyone's pity. I feel positive about the future and I have plans.

The majority of cuts are front line people.

I get annoyed as well at the statistics that hide the reality for many people. I don't work in the public sector, but work with public sector staff a lot. Some of them get a very poor deal.

For example, I work with youth service. They rely on unqualified and locally qualified staff who earn £6 to £7.50 per hour for working in the evening with gobby young people.

The reason the average wage in public sector is high is because

1. People at higher levels are paid well.
2. A lot of the minimum wage jobs are contracted out to the private sector.

Statistics can be very misleading.

The youth service is the first thing I'd cut. Most people working in the evening with teenagers - guides, scouts, running coaches, football coaches, youth theatre leaders, art club tutors get paid nothing whatsoever. Youth activities are one of the few areas that actually should be (and mostly are) run by volunteers for free.

Hymie do you think it's going to lead to BETTER services though or reduced Council tax? really?

yes jobs will go - and services along with them

I work for the careers service - I specialise in working with young unemployed people, teenage parents and those with multiple problems - the work I do will vanish after April 2012 and will not be replaced - with youth unemployment at a record high

it's madness

don't worry gordy milly will send someone from the girl guides to volunteer to do your job

what actually pees me off is that our council has massive reserves and they could have used this to save jobs and services - but being good little tories found some lame excuse not to.

they could also have made the cuts over three years meaning less unemployed but oh not that's not evil enough.

pmsl Yeh I'd like to see volunteers do my job - level 7 qualified baby oh yeh - laughs at self at the very idea that it even matters anymore - had

I personally feel it's the way that public services are treated by the press that's the problem. No one wants less bin collections, no one wants less playgrounds or TA's at schools, certainly no one wants less carers. But, everyone seems to agree that the public service needs to loss jobs and are vastly overinflated. And that seems to be because it's the prevailing attitude of the national press.
Personally, I've just finished a job with a Local Authority. I worked 30 hours a week processing claims for housing benefit. Admittedly, I'm not a carer or a bin man but it's still an important service. My salary was £12k PA not massive salary by any means. No pay rise for two years and none in sight in the future.
By 2013 everyone in my office, which is about fifty people, will be gone due to the Universal Credit. It will be the same in every council up and down the country. As well as the DWP staff. The Universal Credit will be administered in large processing centres in central locations. It's actually being modelled on the Tax Credits system (and we all know how well that's worked).
I'm from the same town as the OP. When these fifty jobs go at the Council, another fifty or so in the Jobcentre and the two hundred and fifty from Wales' only passport office where is everyone going to find jobs? Our local paper this week had one job advertisement - a fixed term job as a play worker for four weeks of the summer holidays.

SEA, most people who volunteer for such organisations do have some kind of related experiences in their paid employment. I used to be a guide leader and I used to do a job very similar to Gordy's(which is why I feel that I can say from a position of experience that most of what the Youth Service claims to do is utter nonsense, although I don't aim that at Gordy). My fellow guide leader had high level qualifications in SEN and work for social services.

Most of the activity groups DD and DS go to are likewise run by people who have qualifications in both what they are teaching and qualifications for working with young people.

But for some reason the Youth Service pays unqualified people, according to both Lesley on this thread and people I have known who worked for the Youth Service. I have no idea why we are paying them, and Gordy herself has made it clear that she is not unqualified.

But feel free to be patronising and misleading.

but if those jobs didn't exist where would they get their experience to volunteer from?

and i think you were being patrionising by using your experience as the norm across the country

I think there is sympathy for the individuals caught up in it but it is coupled with the realisation that we couldn't have carried on with the status quo.

SEA, so you think children with multiple problems live in some kind of a bubble and don't attend things like guides? There is nothing patronising about suggesting that many people working or volunteering with children work with vulnerable groups like children in care.

There are lots of jobs where people get experience of working with children - teaching, social services, classroom assistants, nursing etc. Getting rid of some bloated areas like the youth service doesn't mean that every career working with children will cease to exist.

I don't work for the youth service though

I don';t know many Rainbow leaders who would take the LP role in a CAF or be able to access emergency housing, food parcels etc

There are many wonderful volunteers out there - I volunteered for 17 years - but volunteers can't do everything and they can't be used to replace professionally qualified staff

i'll tell my mate who is just starting a youth and community development degree not to bother and be a TA instead then shall i

Re the figures quoted on the previous page, I believe that the higher rate in London is accounted for by London Weighting. Anyone having to commute to London (or worse, afford to live there!) will appreciate why that is paid.

gordyslovesheep Fri 25-Feb-11 17:29:55
Hymie do you think it's going to lead to BETTER services though or reduced Council tax? really?

___

Not at all....but they really can't get any worse.

I don't want "Better service"...just some sort of service would do for a change.

SEA, as I have said, I am talking about unqualified staff, which was what Lesley was referring to. I think doing a degree in order to work in a support role is a very good idea.

The problem is that there is replication of services, and as Gordy's post shows, a lot of the work is actually 'accessing' services which essentially means passing the individual round to different workers who have control over different things.

I used to have clients who had 3 different support workers (drugs, housing, youth service) plus a social worker and a CAB advice worker. The support workers were all in different organisations and replicating work. Then there are other clients, particularly people with mental health issues, who receive almost no help at all.

The system would work better if there was a degree in support work which trained people to deal with housing, mental health, drug use and so on, and each client had one support worker. These support workers could then be supported by legal specialists in housing law, law around domestic violence and so on.

I would situate this within housing or connected to it(and certainly not sack Gordy - who is qualified), as most other interventions are useless if you are homeless or unable to manage your tenancy. Each client would then only need one support worker and the youth service could be cut. People who had youth work degrees could move into a general support work role and receive additional ongoing training at work.

While it is ridculous to suggest that the local drama group or whatever could access food parcels, it is also ridiculous that this role is being given to an entirely unqualified member of staff at some evening event. Vulnerable people should be given expert help and advice because the system is complex to navigate.

having worked in the public sector i have little sympathay the majority were unemployable anywhere else. i would meet managers who had risen simply by staying in posts for several years waiting for someone to die or retire. every time i tried to make a change up popped the union sorry our members wont do that. every manager had a deputy who also had a deputy. many front line staff the hardest working and underpaid were treat like dirt. i would attend meetings where the only purpose was to arrange meetings to plan meetings. i met other managers who had come in to council work from other areas and they all agreed that huge cuts could and should be made. to many are simply sitting there doing non jobs and refusing to move forward. as one senior manager told me when i suggested a more efficient way for a process to be carried outhe had been there for 30 years it had always been done that way and he wasnt have changes made for anyone.

This percieved dictomany between the public and private sector is garbage. I've worked in both and both have good and bad practices and employees.

I currently work for a large public sector organisation. 75% of the staff are temps. No flexible working, no pension, you can be sacked for being late once... A woman was forced to leave recently because she refused to change her hours as she has a severely ill child she needs to be there for at certain times. The pay is aweful.

It is not as wondeful as the right wing would like to make out.

MillyR here they are called Tenancy Support Workers, my last employed post was allied to them (I worked for HomeStart) and yes they were very good.

you still need the others though: for example you cannot advocate for MH clients without a specific qualification, even if you have other advocacy training, and that is legally bound.

StuckIn that was my experience too: most people wher I was were on fixed term contracts, inelgible to apply internally, just there for the short term. In 1995 our wages were under £6k, the Unions ended up getting them uppsed but still not by much.

Thereiver even if they were so bad (I don;t agree, many I know now work in the private sector fine as the office was closed eventually) they are still human beings with all the emotions of the rest of us- fear being a primary one ATM I would guess. I don;t ascribe empathy absed on any perceived value of someone's ontribution anyway: otherwise my own disbaled son would be stuffed.

sea- I wouldn't bother advising her to be a TA- that job will be gone in a few years. The training programme has already stopped in preparation.

In slight defence to Bristoljim I too have friends in the public sector and education who came out with a few choice comments during the recession when the private sector was badly hit. I agree however this was the minority who made these comments. Members of my own family work for the local council and it's awful to see what they're going through now with uncertaintly as to whether or not they'll keep they're jobs. As for the few who made those choice comments to me a few years ago perhaps your time has come too.