DELEGATES supported a Unison plan for a public sector-led national care service for Wales at the Welsh Labour conference this weekend.

This included Welsh Labour developing a timetable setting out a full transition to a national care service and bringing this to next year’s conference.

Unison’s Labour Link delegate Sarah Taylor explained that the crisis facing social care would not be solved without fundamental changes.

She said: “Unison members work across this sector and they are telling us on a daily basis of the difficulties they are facing, particularly in the private sector — staff shortages, poor pay, poor training, shortages of the correct equipment and job insecurity when dealing with transfers from  one employer to the next.”

She explained that the private providers of social care do not see staff or those in care as people. “They see them as numbers on a spreadsheet and profit margins in the accounts,” she said.

Unison Cymru/Wales commissioned a report from the Association of Public Service Excellence that details how public money drove up the capital value of care firms, making them more attractive as targets for merger and acquisition.

Ms Taylor said: “Unison welcomed the co-operation agreement that contained a commitment to creating a national care service for Wales.

“Healthcare free at the point of use is now engrained in our country’s culture, and that is where we should be going with a national care service for Wales.”

Kelly Andrews, from the GMB, supported the demand to increase funding for local authorities to bring care contracts back in-house and to improve the pay and conditions of careworkers.