Maria Caulfield

Listening to Grant Shapps, housing minister on the radio tonight I was struck with the dilema I had with Right to Buy when I was Cabinet member for Housing. I was always a supporter of Right to Buy as for many in the 80's and 90's who could not get on the housing ladder it was a way forward and changed their lives and the lives of their families in many ways.

However the down side for me was always the loss of affordable rental properties which then created an increasing gap between those who were lucky enough to be able to access social housing and those who could not because of the falling number of properties available to them, leaving thousands on the waiting lists. So it was great news to hear that this issue is being addressed with a sell one, build one policy, although how quickly these like for like properties can be built remains to be seen.

For me a huge issue in social housing, which we were starting to resolve successfully at B&H council was addressing not just the number of properties we needed to build to deal with the housing shortage but also the type of properties that were required. For us at least 40% of the 13,000 people on our waiting list were waiting not for housing but larger social housing and what we were drastically short of were bigger properties. Therefore we introduced a radical policy of loft conversions, which although expensive were cheaper than building new houses and made best use of the assets we already had.

Likewise it is great to see a Conservative led coalition Government not just tackling the issue of helping families get on the housing ladder but also recognising that affordable social housing is still needed and needs to be available for those who can not afford to buy their home even with Right to Buy.

If you have ever heard IDS speak you will know how much passion and knowledge he has on the issue of social justice and helping those who have not had many advantages in life.  Yet those who oppose the benefits cap see IDS as someone who just wants to cut the benefits bill and is not interested in how it affects those who depend on this for their income. They could not be more wrong.

The current benefits system is unjust for two reasons.

Firstly for those on a low wage who earn less than £36k pre tax ,it must be a real slap in the face to see thousands of families who get this amount without going to work; getting up early each morning and working late evenings or doing extra shifts to make a bit of extra money. Going without things like holidays, days out and new clothes just to avoid getting in to more debt. The benefit system should be a safety net and not just a way of life.

Secondly for those on benefits it may seem like an easy life but we know that children who grow up in non working households have much poorer outcomes in life such as poorer education, health and job opportunities. Indeed in my ward of Moulsecoomb and Bevendean which had one of the highest rates of benefit claimants in the South East people living there had almost a ten year lower life expectancy than those living in the rest of Brighton and Hove. This is not social justice either.

I grew up in a very poor household in South London where my dad, who was a builder, was often made redundant because of the nature of his work. However he never claimed benefits ever and we had to often live on my mums part time wages as a nurse many times with my brother and I getting Saturday jobs at an early age to get some extra money. Did it do us any harm....No. Did we go without holidays and new clothes ...Yes. Do I appreciate what I have now ....Indeed I do and I am always very mindful of avoiding building up debt because of those experiences because you never know when hard times will hit.

The current benefit culture has taken away this individual responsibiity as people now often think, it does not matter if I do not work or get in to debt , the state can sort it out.

What IDS and the Conservatives are saying is that  the state is the oridinary worker who pays tax and NI contributions and you can not expect them to keep you in a better standard of living than they themselves can afford. Sure in bad times the state is there to help but not for the long term. That is social justice.

Over the last week or so I have been thinking about whether I will return to Rwanda this year as part of Project Umubano, the Conservative led social action project.

I really enjoyed being part of the project both on the education and health teams as even in two weeks you can really make a difference to the people you meet. From hearing people speak English for the first time and to learn how far they have travelled to do so or to see young mums walking for miles to health clinics to get access to clean water or vaccinations reminds me of how lucky we are in this country and yet we still never seem happy with our lot.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/conservatives/5729719001/in/set-72157626741875248

If you click on the link above you can see the education team that I was part of in 2010.

As a member of the team you get far more out than you put in and even though it is always two weeks of hard work, I always come back refreshed and relaxed and it is a great way to make new friends.

If work will allow then I hope to go back this summer but I do encourage you to join as it will make a huge difference not just to someone else's life but also your own

On first glance when reading the headlines where David Cameron criticizes nursing care in hospitals in England, most nurses could be forgiven for thinking “not someone else knocking us”. However when you read what he actually says, David Cameron really gets the problems of nursing in this country and it is such a breath of fresh air for someone to stand up and challenge the notion that nursing care is as good as it could be. It seems for too long politicians were afraid to say actually something very wrong is going on here, for fear of upsetting the unions or voters who see the NHS as sacred. However David Cameron in his speech is putting his head above the parapet and instead of being afraid of nursing leaders and unions, who for years have done no favours for the profession, he is standing up for patients and in turn actually the nursing profession itself.

I work as a nurse and have done so since 1994. I have worked under both Labour and Conservative governments. Both had their good points and bad in relation to NHS changes but the introduction of targets under the last Government probably brought about the biggest change that sees nursing where it is today. Overnight health care was not geared around professional judgement of care but around meeting a target that often had no clinical rational, driven by managers with little or no clinical experience. Financially the introduction of things like Agenda for Change and GP contracts saw millions spent but actually no improvement in patient care at all. Indeed I could tell you a million stories which would make Victor Meldrew utter his famous words every time

So is nursing care worse than it was ten years ago? Yes, in my experience. Labour claimed they increased nursing numbers and indeed they did but if you look carefully many experienced nursing roles which were driving high quality standards were removed and replaced with a couple of junior or non-nursing roles to save money. This penny wise and pound foolish way of working sees that now a ward sister who ten years ago would only ever be a band 7 post , which means a highly experienced and qualified nurse, is advertised frequently as a band 6, who in the past would have been a junior sister. Newly qualified nursing posts are now often replaced with health care assistants and roles that nurses used to do like feeding patients, washing them and even making beds have been given away to non-qualified staff, while nurses have been trained to take on doctor’s roles in taking bloods, doing pre op assessments and admitting patients as a cheap alternative. You hear time and time again managers saying, “ we are not paying for a qualified nurse to make a bed” and here is their mistake. A nurse when making a bed is not just making a bed. You talk to your patient; check they are eating, opening their bowels, that they have no pain or new problems. You check on their skin care, help them order their food for the day and check that their bed and surrounding area is clean and safe. This sadly, rarely happens and nurses as well as managers are as guilty of not respecting the true nature of nursing. The same has happened in the community. When I was newly qualified, a district nurse was always at senior sister level. Not now. Managers have deemed that anyone can dress a leg ulcer or wound at home and we do not need to pay a senior sister to do this. Again they are wrong. An experienced district nurse would dress the wound but would also check the patient was managing at home, eating well, was taking their medication as planned and would stay for nearly an hour at each visit in order to make a detailed assessment and this nurse had the same caseload of patients all the time to ensure continuity of care. Whereas today some dressings are done by non-qualified staff who are just handed out visits and the poor patient may see a different member of staff every day of the week which is not very satisfying for them or the staff involved

Very often it is nurses themselves who see basic nursing care as beneath them and this comes from leaders who for years have drummed in to us that we need degrees to be good nurses, nursing is degree entry only now, and we need advanced practice skills in order to get higher grades. Who has suffered as a result of this change in attitude? Two people. Nurses who went in to the profession to nurse, many who have now left or have become hardend in their approach as the only way to cope, and patients who have very few experienced nurses left to do the nursing. It is great to see the Prime Minister standing up for true nursing care and any nurse who feels uncomfortable by what he says needs to ask themselves “ Do you value basic nursing care and see this as a specialist role?” because until nurses respect their own profession and stop impersonating other health care staff then no one else, including managers or patients, will respect us or our work either.

Why I am supporting the calls to make squatting a criminal offence

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8363406/The-middle-class-serial-squatters-exploiting-the-law.html

Feedback on other blogs

 http://brightonpoliticsblogger.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/results-in-brighton-kemptown-that-will-have-nobby-clarke-and-dennis-hobden-spinning-in-their-graves/

We are launching a scheme in the City to set up a lettings agency in conjunction with the Universities with the aim to

1) improve the management of student housing for neighbours so they can report problems with nosie and rubbish more easily and get a better response

2) improve the quality of housing for students

3) manage the number of students living in one area better

4) any money made wil go back in to the universities or the council

let me know what you think

http://www.121move.co.uk/news/01195/Social-lettings-agency-for-students&urlHash=-8.074868851218782E-205

I am watching the news with great interest and see that Lib dem councillors are complaining about  local government settlements and they blame Eric Pickles for forcing them to cut front line services

Well my reply to that is

* if you want to take on a role as a councillor then you also have to take on the responsibility that comes with it

* saving money is not done by cutting budgets...you have to think bigger than that....we saved £150 million in our housing repairs just by procuring repairs differently

* it is too late to start looking for savings now...you missed the boat

We all knew over the last few years that whoever got in to government that these cuts were coming and there was plenty of time to look at budgets and reduce costs so that there were reserves available to plug the financial gap and sure in Brighton and Hove we have had to make tough decisions  but through long term financial planning we are not closing libraries and there are no large scale redundancies

if Noah had started to build his ark when the rain fell he would not have saved the animals.....if the lib dems or any other councillors have not planned for this day, that we all knew was coming, then they really need to look at their own actions and not those of Mr Pickles

Interesting analysis in Inside Housing

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/analysis/in-depth/in-the-grip/6513510.article

The Conservative group in Brighton and Hove have made the tough decision that the money that funds our sheltered housing schemes, our homelessness projects and the community services which help people live at home independantly, will be protected no matter what our settlement from Central Government is.

We see that being penny wise and pound foolish is not the way forward and we welcome Grant Shapps' direction that it is up to local government as to how our money is spent and for us here in Brighton and Hove, Supporting People funding is too important to go in the general pot of money and in order to support those most in need in our community we are protecting it as much as we can.

As can be seen in Inside Housing

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/care-and-support/brighton-promises-to-protect-services/6513409.article

In Brighton and Hove we are one of the few authorities to protect spending on those in most need of housing support. It is very easy to blame Central Government for spending cuts but actually as elected councillors it is also our responsibility to manage the reductions

We spent years asking for more say in how we run things and now we have the chance we must accept our responsibilities and deliver