Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Surprise Surprise! Something is being done at Lucam Lodge!
Our new electronic doors are being fitted at the front entrance!

Well.....WOW!
I mean....like how many years have we waited? And sadly a couple of the residents here who would have benefited most are no longer with us!
But that is Genesis Housing Association for you! Hang around, prevaricate and wait until everything that ever needs doing is going to cost at least twice as much as it would have if done when needed.
Like the painting, we're now into autumn, so another four or five months at least before that gets done!
Like the fire hazards flagged up some three years ago, I cannot help but wonder when, if ever, that is put right!
Like the lifts we had upgraded, so very expensively, to modern day standards with, among other assets, voice notification for the visually impaired.
Those so very well versed engineers that Genesis insisted on giving the maintenance contract to, without any consultation with us again, manage to screw the whole system on almost every visit! (We did get someone to rectify it once, but within two day it was stuffed yet again!) 
And so it goes on and will continue to do so for ever more until there is a total cultural revamp of the Genesis culture.
Genesis cannot cope with leasehold supported housing with it's current setup.It will never be able to meet the demands or needs of elderly leaseholders while it continues to wallow in the bureaucracy that currently stifles it!
It must change. It must change now!  
PLEASE!

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Pete’s Wandering Words.




Much discussion lately around elder-care in the United Kingdom, in particular concerning the soaring astronomical costs, and, additionally, about the recent cases of care home abuses and the many failures within the system.
The government claim to be seeking to reduce the bill for social care while improving care provision for the elderly and infirm.
Also the government continue to wrestle with the problem of forcing both young and old to work where there is insufficient work to be done!
I have the feeling that one massive black hole is being dug, a hole the country will never be able to climb out of! The elderly working until they drop with youngsters never developing any work skills!
Not seeking to save the nation but an idea that may help some.
Benefits and tax credits unearned and hotly disputed by many, are widely dispensed, frequently to those undeserving, the welfare state is now out of control with freebies considered to be a human right.
While welfare benefits are under revue adjustments could be effected that would go a long way to reducing the elder-care bill shifting ‘care’ back into the family.
While reducing benefits and tax credits consideration could well be given to making provisions that would encourage families to accept and care for their more senior family members.
Extra payments to house an older family member in the family home, or possibly a reduction in Council Tax, could well help to encourage a return to family providing more comprehensive, far more supportive and much less expensive, care with less reliance on the state.
A random thought, am I the only one feeling that we had no pension fund worries until the Chancellor of the Exchequer grabbed an annual five billion pounds off the insurance companies? Saying there was far too much sitting there? I do believe it is still going on, I could be wrong, in this situation I would love to have missed something, but I do not believe I have!
Before I go, our new committee here continue to find Genesis HA as immovably intransigent as were Springboard HA before them with little ever being achieved, so very long on promise, so short on action!
Bureaucratic, intransigent, incompetent and totally incapable of breaking out of their closed little world, could not, by all accounts, organise a beano in the brewery! 
And that was putting it politely!