Joint UNISON and Unite Strike in Early Intervention for Psychosis Service in Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Trust
One day of strike action followed by continuing ‘work to rule’, including working only contracted hours, taking breaks, limiting caseloads, and a further two days of strike planned for Friday 8th and Monday 11th November.
The strikers aren’t asking for better pay. They are calling for more funding to ensure that their service can deliver adequate care to some of the most vulnerable people in society. Several service users joined them on the picket line to support their action.
Lack of funding means staff are only able to deal with the most serious crises, and can do very little preventative care that would stop people reaching crisis point. They are dealing with caseloads of up to 40 patients when there should be no more than 15. Freezes on vacancies and over-reliance on temporary agency and bank staff mean lack of consistency in care. Patients, many of whom require long-term support and continuity of care from specific clinicians, often just get fleeting visits from different staff, or no-one at all.
For some years, the EIS staff were outsourced to Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber Mental Health Trust, which separated them from Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) they should have been working with closely and fragmented the service. They were brought back in-house, but their continuing grievances about understaffing and lack of support were never dealt with properly. They were promised that a bid had gone into the commissioners for extra funding and was likely to be successful – but if it was ever granted it didn’t find its way to the teams.
Underinvestment in EIS and CMHTs has led to numerous grievances over the years and strikes in 2007/8, so management cannot claim to have been unaware. Yet senior management have said that negotiations are under way to understand the actions needed to address the staff members’ concerns. Why has it taken so long?
Manchester has one of the highest mental health death rates in the country, and the EIS staff fear that the under-resourcing of their service is putting patients at risk every day. The CMHTs are threatened with yet another restructuring, a ‘transformation’ without the funding to ensure the safe, skilled staffing to deliver it.
With Greater Manchester ICB trying to fill a £175 million funding hole, all NHS services in GM are faced with cuts. There are demands for ‘service improvements’ (doing more with less) but a refusal to pay for the skilled staff needed to provide the service. Yet up to £30 million a year is spent on out of area beds for severely ill patients, because inpatient beds have been severely cut. That’s money going straight into the pockets of private health providers rather than being invested in NHS services.
