Jacqui Kennedy
Director of Human Resources
C/o Belfast Health & Social Care Trust
Sent via email
9 th January 2023
Dear Jacqui
Re. Nipsa Branch 730 Position Regarding Excessive Caseloads ACOPS
& CCS
I am writing to you as Chair of NIPSA Branch 730 to inform you of future
actions which will be taken by NIPSA Branch 730 in response to issues widely
raised by members who work across Children’s Community Services (CCS)
and Adult Community Older Peoples Services (ACOPS) in the Belfast H&SC
Trust (BHSCT).
This purpose of this letter is to advise you of NIPSA Branch 730’s intention to
use the next round of notification for Action Short of Strike to directly address
the excessive and in some settings unsafe workloads, that are currently being
experienced by NIPSA members in the ACOPS and CCS Directorates.
This action will be in line with our current ballot mandate. It will indicate both
Nipsa Branch 730’s intent in this regard and contains our first requests for
engagement upon the issues raised by our members.
By way of background, NIPSA views the Departments abdication of
responsibility for effective workforce planning and the virtual ‘omnishambles’
that is the current BSO recruitment platform, as core elements in creating
what we see as an untenable and often unsafe workforce situation across
many of the community directorates.
In addition to the above, it is NIPSA’s view that the financial smoke and mirror
games of both the Dept. of Health and the SPPG, in terms of budgetary
allocations, when combined with the Health Trusts seemingly insatiable
appetite to capitalise on opportunistic staff savings, have all made key
contributions to the current crisis of workforce.
While this means there is plenty of blame to be apportioned as to the whys
and wherefores as to how the current Social Work and Social Care
workforces of these directorates are in the position they are in, which in our
view has fundamentally more to do with the HSC/BHSCT corporate
approaches with a limited interface with operational leadership. However, this
is not the purpose of this correspondence.
NIPSA, also of course, acknowledges the system wide impact of Covid upon
both the service users we serve and the workforce we represent.
Covid recovery, particularly as it manifests itself in these service areas, often
consists of managing the twin pressures of particular service demand
increases driven by the poorer health and social welfare outcomes for the
population served by BHSCT. Combined with the particular pressures on
community workforces, which are the knock on impact of attempting to
address pressures experienced by our acute sector colleagues in isolation.
In all of the above, we are certain of one thing: none of these rising demand
pressures, or acute financial pressures or overly bureaucratic systems are the
fault of our hard pressed and committed members.
They are asked to continue delivering in chronically understaffed and over
worked teams. Our members are regularly asked to absorb demand
pressures, which continue to rise in both the volume and complexity of referral
and subsequent service allocation and work.
NIPSA members regularly report that they are subject to a false narrative in
many areas, which in their view states that it is their personal responsibility to
go an extra mile, then an extra mile again for a seemingly ever-increasing
number of service users that they are told they are individually responsible for.
Or that somehow service responses must be made, regardless of the capacity
of their team, to address the needs of service users that their team is
uniquely responsible for, regardless of underlying service or capacity
pressures.
It remains NIPSA’s view that it is the conscious failings of others that have put
services under such pressure and the responsibility for addressing this
scenario is clearly one that lies with the employer.
NIPSA Branch 730 is therefore intending to begin to use the next industrial
action notification period to address the excessive and unsafe workload
scenarios our members find themselves in, as a result of what NIPSA sees as
these long running and chronic staffing deficits.
The actions of Nipsa Branch 730 will be framed in terms of dealing with the
operational impact of doing your own job, not covering the work of the Trusts
ghost army of workloads and in addressing, by direction, the excessive
workloads placed upon our members, particularly since the last period of
industrial action.
I am at pains to emphasise on behalf of the Branch, that in no way will our
actions be an attempt to achieve any of the professional nirvanas of normative
staffing, or professionally safe caseloads. These are conversations for other
fora and with other people, which we are also happy to continue engaging in.
We know that moving onto this territory because of our dispute could well
have substantive impacts upon service users, in terms of both the potential
availability of service and the expectations of the services they may then
receive.
We want to emphasise that NIPSA regards itself as a responsible Trade
Union However, we believe such actions will be essential to protect services,
service users and our members working under the conditions outlined above.
Therefore, we are seeking an urgent meeting with the relevant operational
directors in ACOPS and CCS in the first instance, to set out our intentions and
discuss how best to engage on any service changes needed.
This is essential to ensure that there is an opportunity to put in place any
safety nets identified at an early point. However, we wish to be clear that
workloads must be reflective of the current workforce capacity available.
Which for the avoidance of doubt is most definitely NOT 100% of current work
activity.
Happy to discuss any and all of the points above.
Yours sincerely
Gerry Largey
Chairperson
On behalf of NIPSA Branch 730
Belfast Health Branch