Good luck to the strikers.

Doncaster care workers set to intensify strike in fight for living wage.

As one solution: perhaps the suits at Bridgepoint Capital & the CareUK execs could themselves be re-employed as care assistants, at something close to the minimum wage… although I suspect they wouldn’t last five minutes. 👿

It makes me almost unspeakably angry that care-workers are being treated in this manner – nobody goes into it expecting to be well-remunerated, or in order to bump the profits of opaque PE firms.

Care UK reports in its latest accounts that public funds accounted for 88% of the company’s revenues in the year ending September 2013. Yet it also admits to using “tax-efficient” financial structures involving the Channel Islands. Its sister company, Silver Sea, is domiciled in low-tax Luxembourg.

Care UK has not paid a penny in corporation tax since it was bought by the private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital in 2010.
They are stealing from us all

We should insist they pay tax here on the money we give them or else they cannot have our money

Care UK won the supported living contract from the council after telling officials that it could deliver it for £6.7m over three years. Yet the wage bill alone for the service was £7m.

Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and anti-poverty campaigner who has analysed Care UK’s business model for another union, Unite, said he recognised similarities with all the major private equity-backed care firms.

He said: “They often win contracts on the basis of making losses or small profits. At the same time they are putting in place what look to be tax-driven structures that are designed to mitigate taxes on profits. I believe that what a lot of these companies are trying to do is to undermine any chance that an NHS organisation can win contracts.

“Once they have squeezed out the state sector, and the third sector, we will then see prices rise; then we will see profits; then we will see these tax-efficient structures working.”

Depressing.

It’s very depressing. Particularly given that Care UK are by no means the worst.

A simple solution to this is to bar firms involved in ‘tax efficiency’ schemes like this from bidding for public sector contracts. They are ****ing parasites!! It’s the ultimate in hypocrisy! Leeching public funds while paying no tax!

Unfortunately these are exactly the companies that the morons in Westminster, of all colours, are in awe of, thinking they offer some kind of answer to everything. When in reality they’re a bunch of frauds and shysters!!!

Yup another private company being lined up to take over the NHS, if it’s not stopped your free at source healthcare will be something you’ll tell your grandkids about. If you can afford to live long enough to have any.

So who is caring for the disabled people then, the council, private companies paid for by the council or families not being paid anything.

Disgusting its been allowed to happen, but the start of a slippery slope to privatisation of all nhs services, to the lowest bidder.

I am a care worker and am in broad agreement with every post so far.

Same here.

Bloody good luck to them.

Care UK are playing the long game re: profits, demand for any paid employment in that region and indeed share of the market.

Also let’s remember how long Care UK have been, errr, “investing” in the contracting out of health and social care.

And then remember that this is the same Andrew Lansley who sponsored the transparency of Lobbying bill/act which does the square root of bugger all to legislate against, to pluck an example out of the air, shadow health secretaries having their ears bent and their future policies shaped by significant donors from private enterprise with excellent understanding of tax legislation. Really, this should be the stuff of Italy or somewhere in latin america, not the United Kingdom. 👿

And if you want to see where this race to the bottom, and limitless greed for more profit leads, then look at the scandal of the children’s homes in Rochdale. What level of ‘care’ was provided?

The homes were set up by private equity firms like Care UK as Rochdale has the cheapest property prices in the country. They then became dumping grounds for troubled teenagers from all over the country. Where, it transpired, they were being systematically groomed, then brutally gang raped. All while the supposed ‘carers’ watched on and did nothing. And this has been going on for years!

The price charged to every local council, per child, per year… ? Between £250,000 and £400,000. A year! To receive a level of care that does nothing as you are brutalised.

It’s a profitable business, wilful neglect. Somebody made an awful lot of money out of all those young girls having their lives destroyed. And it would appear that the system that allowed this to happen is now the template for ‘care’ in the NHS

Sometimes the society I live in absolutely sickens me!

Bloody good luck to them.

Absolutely.

They then became dumping grounds

The “warehousing” of vulnerable patients/clients – an increasingly common feature of investment portfolios. 😕

Care UK reports in its latest accounts that public funds accounted for 88% of the company’s revenues in the year ending September 2013. Yet it also admits to using “tax-efficient” financial structures involving the Channel Islands. Its sister company, Silver Sea, is domiciled in low-tax Luxembourg.

You can’t blame Care UK for taking advantage of the rules, IMO yet again it is the public sector (senior management, ie Govt) that is failing the taxpayer.

You can’t blame Care UK for taking advantage of the rules

Because – like a fat metabolically-challenged kid in a sweet shop – they just can’t help themselves, right?

FWIW, I know what you’re saying – but, in my view, this goes to the heart of the “lobbying” issue, esp re the current Health & Social Care Act. Care_UK CEO Mike Parish co-wrote a Reform report on how “change is needed but there is a “false loyalty” to traditional models and organisations”… which is pretty (and literally) rich of him, given how the likes of Care_UK are largely dependant upon (in other words, they leech off it) NHS acute capacity & workforce training!

we can blame them because they are not forced to do this and they choose to operate like this

No one is compelled to exploit the rules[ and act against the spirit of the rules and society in general] to their own personal advantage.

binners.. keep seeing all these allegations of abuse in rochdale but so far not one person has been interviewed never mind arrested..

Ironic that Mike Parish Care UK CEO is talking about ‘false loyalty to traditional models and organisations’, when what Care UK and their ilk (hello SERCO, hi ATOS, yo G4S) are operating is one of the most traditional models of all – leaching public funds to asset strip public services in order to run these services badly and run them down – and then run away with the profits, leaving the state to pick up the pieces.

Haven’t we been here before? Isn’t this why the state took over the running of most public services in the first place? Because the private sector couldn’t be trusted to run things consistently, reliably and equitably? Snouts in the trough, shareholders and CEOs making killings, while staff and service users are left shivering in the cold of the sheer inadequacy of the private sector’s ability to run the proverbial piss up in the national brewery.

But this will not change until we decide to challenge the mantra that ‘private is best’. This is the song that’s been sung by different singers since 1979 – Thatcher, Major, Blair, even Brown and his chums, and now this remarkable con-man Cameron with his ideological storm troopers Osborne and Boris Johnson. We have to spell it out – they are WRONG and they are FLEECING US ALL!

It’s just a revolving door. the ministers responsible for handing out these newly privatised contracts then magically appear on the boards of the companies awarded them, once they’ve been booted out of office. On a suitably obscene salary, with their pockets rammed full of shares and bonuses! Alan Johnson has connections with the PE firm that run Care UK. Patricia Hewitt advises American private healthcare companies looking to get into milking the NHS. David Blunkett popped up on the board of the American Company doing biometric passports. And just look at Blair!! The ****!!! Who’s dirty money isn’t he taking?

This lot will be even more shameless no doubt. The whole thing is just a gravy train, dishing out taxpayers money to themselves and their bent, morally bankrupt, parasitic mates

we can blame them because they are not forced to do this and they choose to operate like this

Surely that applies to the council too? Nobody forces the council to award contracts on a lowest cost basis (public procurement can and often is perfectly legitimately carried out on a MEAT basis) – to award it and the basis of the assessments were political decisions by local authority overseen by locally elected councillors.

I recall something from a few years back: CareUK – delivering less for more. 😆

Useless bastards.