Cheshire East Council approves £2M fund to support care providers and those they care for

At the Cheshire East Council Cabinet meeting yesterday, a £2M scheme to support care providers in Cheshire East. Recipients of the emergency funding will be expected to maintain full pay for those individuals who are sick, shielding or self-isolating.

These payments will be in addition to PPE provided by the Council to the care sector.

But it is not just care workers who would benefit from improvements in the care sector. It is vitally important for vulnerable residents that their carers have PPE and take time off work if they have covid-19 symptoms or need to self-isolate because a member of their household has covid-19 symptoms. It would be dreadful if an infectious care worker was under financial pressure to attend work when they should be self-isolating due to covid-19.

Throughout this crisis Cheshire East Council has been supplying PPE to care workers. To supplement the 350,000 items provided by the government, the council has purchased more than five million items of PPE. Nearly two million items of PPE have been distributed by the council to key workers.

James Barber, Labour Councillor for Broken Cross & Upton said, “Despite the failure of government to supply adequate PPE, Cheshire East Council has never run out of PPE, although at times our stocks have been very low. Thank goodness we didn’t rely on government promises to supply adequate PPE – their ‘Clipper’ distribution system for PPE is STILL not working.”

Hazel Faddes, Labour Councillor for Crewe East, said “I am pleased that Cheshire East Council has delivered support for care workers and for those they care for. I thank the Unison national ‘StopTheSpread’ campaign for highlighting the importance of ensuring that when social care staff need to be away from work for infection control purposes, they are not penalised for doing so.”

https://www.unison.org.uk/our-campaigns/stop-the-spread/