Care Revolution | Interview: A campaign introduces itself - nationwide risk report!
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Interview: A campaign introduces itself - nationwide risk report!

Aktuelles – 04. October 2016 – Debate
Article in the Perspectives series. With risk reports, (professional) carers can draw attention to situations that pose a risk to people in the event of overwork or staff shortages. With the campaign "Nationwide risk report", professional and family carers now want to make their demands accessible to a broad public, draw attention to their difficult situation and initiate change. Roger from "Pflege am Boden - Frankfurt" presents the campaign for us in an interview withAnna (from the Care Revolution Network): We have an appointment today to talk about your currently planned campaign on the difficult situation in care. Let's just get started: What kind of campaign are you planning, what is it about and what stage of planning are you currently at?Roger: Yes, we are currently finalising the flyers. We are developing concrete joint demands for this. And we have integrated a letter to politicians into the flyers, which serves as a "nationwide endangerment notice". We will publish and circulate these flyers in three different versions in the near future. In them, we will report on the difficult situations in hospital care, care for the elderly and from the perspective of family carers. With the three different areas we are covering, the different campaign participants are also bringing together the three major areas of care in society and, contrary to the normal approach, we are not concerned here with what divides us, but primarily with what we have in common and what connects us. First of all, there are different ideas as to which re-financing models would be good for each sector, but at the same time there is also a common basis and that is, for example, the demand for more staff. More staff will benefit the carers on the one hand and the relatives on the other, because the current situation is that relatives sometimes place their carers in short-term care, for example to go on holiday and relax. But then they are often called by the short-term care provider when they are on holiday if there are problems. And of course there are more problems when you have fewer staff and less time for people. It's not necessarily in the spirit of the inventor that people are left in care to recover on holiday and then have to be looked after again. But patient safety is also a big issue, for example, there was a study that showed that one carer is responsible for up to 52 residents and that is not a situation that makes humane and safe care possible without complications. To summarise, it was and is a challenge to become active together, but we firmly believe that we will succeed in developing "unity in diversity and diversity in unity" and making this public. It is also important to us to not only address the traditional trade union sphere, i.e. to fight within the company, but also to address the external sphere.So you want to include different perspectives. Who is on board with you, i.e. who is behind this campaign and who is currently supporting it?At the moment, the nationwide alliance "Pflege am Boden", the Bremen initiative "Pflege steht auf", the Siegen group "Wa(h)re Gesundheit - Da hilft nur noch beten?", which regularly offers a space for exchange and protection for the topic in Siegen's Martini Church, and "WIR! - Vereinigung pflegender Angehöriger in Deutschland e.V." are firmly involved. Last but not least, the "Landespflegekammer Rheinland-Pfalz" (Rhineland-Palatinate State Chamber of Nursing) is now also actively involved. As we are concerned with the cause and not with sensitivities, we informed numerous care groups about the campaign in advance (including professional associations, trade unions and self-help organisations) and can confidently say that the "nationwide endangerment notice" campaign was actively advertised in advance. We are still in a promising dialogue with a Christian association and are expecting binding feedback from the board's decision shortly. In the meantime, the "Pflege in Bewegung" association has been founded in the background - which will also support the campaign. The crazy idea has now actually become a broad alliance of five to seven care groups that are actively behind it! And in addition to the aforementioned flyers, both a website and a Facebook page are currently being prepared. In addition to the group of initiators, there will then be a 'co-operation partners' section on the homepage, which would be an opportunity for the Care Revolution network or other interested groups who say they like the idea and would like to support it to actively and visibly support the campaign. Of course, this gives us the opportunity to build an even broader alliance.And what things or actions are currently being planned? So what are you planning to do together in the near future?Yes, so maybe I'll start from the beginning. The campaign will conclude with a day of action on 12 May 2017 in Berlin. On this day, we will hand over the collected endangerment reports to the politicians and I can already say that there will be a closing event in cooperation with the Care Slam from Berlin. The campaign will be launched next weekend at the strike conference in Frankfurt, where we will make our first public appearance with the campaign and provide information about it. We will then continue via the various channels such as the homepage, Facebook and the various groups involved, which in turn have different local partners. The next stopover will definitely be the Care Revolution network meeting in Hamburg in October, where we will also provide information. In November, we will then be organising a "socio-political theme day" with "UmCare" at the Haus am Dom in Frankfurt. We will be represented here by the Care Revolution Rhine-Main network group, among others. And next year, we want to and will definitely be present at the German Care Day in March and continue to promote the campaign. These are the larger and fixed dates where we will definitely be visible as an action campaign. We are still working out what other stops we will make between now and May, but there are plenty of ideas.Who are you actually targeting with the campaign? I mean, are you focussing more on the general public or more on legislation? Or do you want to draw attention to the issue in the first place and raise awareness of the fact that there are interconnected problems?It's good that you mention this, because it's really complex, because basically we want to link everything together. On the one hand, all the laws have been introduced: Care Strengthening Act 1, Care Strengthening Act 2 and now 3 is imminent and this in turn provides for far-reaching redistributions and changes that do not necessarily actively address the actual and currently most urgent problems. One example is that it was also stipulated that it would be possible to agree by 2020 which staff assessment instruments could be useful in order to then think about more staff positions. This means that the federal government has successfully handed over responsibility to the federal states. However, as we are now in 2016, the question remains as to what can and should happen by then. We need more staff now and not just in 2020! Our first concern is therefore to hold the legislator to account, and this can only be achieved through nationwide campaigns and alliances. Beyond this, however, we are also concerned with informing the public about the difficult conditions in society and at the same time emphasising that care is a social value. Here we can - no, must - ask ourselves the questions: Firstly, what is good care? And secondly, what is good care worth to us? Because under the current framework conditions, good care is basically possible, but only with self-sacrifice and then it is still the case that this is not rewarded. At the moment, it is rather bad care that is financially rewarded - i.e. if I employ staff with questionable working time models, employ them in questionable pay conditions and increase the time pressure, then I am productive and make a profit. It doesn't matter whether I am a small private care service or a large corporation. Both the care recipients and the carers suffer from this, both professionally and as a family, because all savings are ultimately made at the expense of safety, health and quality. One of our main difficulties at the moment is also mobilising professional carers, because they are increasingly moving between 'cool out' and 'burn out', and in between there is often the issue of bullying, as someone who draws attention to grievances is often seen as a stain on the nest. Professional carers therefore find themselves in a field of tension between absolute dullness a la "I do my job every day - the main thing is that it goes by" and between being burnt out because they have sacrificed too much for those in need and the system. However, carers are also an enormously important part, because there are very, very many of them in this country - basically they like to say they are "the largest care service in Germany". An estimated 2.4-4 million people are actively involved here, most of them women, but also increasingly children and young people. And the reward for this commitment is increasing poverty in old age - current legislative efforts are unlikely to reverse this any time soon, although there are signals in the right direction. Another important concern is to bring professional carers, with around 1-1.5 million people, and family carers out of their isolated anonymity and onto the streets together. Strengthening togetherness and developing solidarity - to make it clear that we are all in the same boat. Because from the cradle to the grave: care can affect anyone!Yes, great, that really is a good cause. Ultimately, that's what Care Revolution always has in mind. It's about making sure that these different levels are not played off against each other, for example that professional carers and family carers don't recognise each other's work. Instead, we should try to work together to change the poor framework conditions and take to the streets together.It will be difficult to reverse the previous divisions, but it should be possible to promote mutual understanding and at the same time say: "We are in the same boat", and we are committed to this. Then, in a further step, it is also a matter of not only campaigning in the care sector, but also beyond. And that's why I think the campaign is also a bit of an anticipation of a perspective step that could come next, namely bringing in the other professional groups and carers. That is also the aim of Care Revolution. So I think that would be the next step, with a larger campaign to make the whole care sector a bit more powerful together, because in principle the division is already continuing in hospitals. The Charité in Berlin has fought for more staff and negotiated a collective labour agreement, which was also celebrated as a milestone in care. At the same time, the subsidiaries now have to become active somehow, because in these other areas of the hospitals they are trying to make savings and, in case of doubt, could then argue that, yes, nursing gets more money, that's why you're getting less. That's why solidarity is very important here.Yes, and then we also talked about the fact that this economisation of the social sector is not limited to Germany. And that it should not just be limited to Germany, but should also be considered and tackled on a European or international level.Yes, of course. There are also movements in this area in Switzerland, Austria and the USA, for example. And Poland and the other Eastern European countries will also have difficulties, because although there are many skilled workers there, many of them are migrating to us at the same time. And they then work here in the "illegal", domestic sector in dubious models. There are a lot of interactions beyond our own national borders. But if we don't start locally, we will be even less successful internationally. Of course, it would be exciting to share experiences from the USA, for example, with its strong lobby of relatives, and from Germany with the trade unions.Back to your campaign: people can support you by signing the endangerment notices, becoming a cooperation partner or coming to Berlin on 12 May 2017. Are there any other ways in which people can support you? Yes, of course! Apply for leave now, because we want a lot of people from the grassroots to take to the streets on 12 May to signal that a change in the care sector must be heralded. Specifically, we are planning a closing with a care slam and to hand over collected letters to politicians on this day. Buses from other federal states to Berlin are also to be organised for this. However, this is still at the planning stage, but there is of course also the opportunity to distribute and support our campaign via virtual channels. There will be a download area on the homepage where you can download the campaign materials and the various flyers. There will also be stickers to create visibility. And, of course, various interim actions can be organised. As co-operation partners, everyone is called upon not only to be silent followers, but also to contribute their own ideas and perhaps initiate local actions. We hope to see lots of colourful and creative campaigns and look forward to hearing from lots of people who would like to get involved!Thank you, Roger, for this motivating interview and I wish you every success with your campaign!
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Care Revolution Rhine-Main network active at strike conference 12. October 2016
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