Sidestepping social care workers’ pay ‘unacceptable’
IT IS unacceptable for the Government to sidestep the issue of social care workers pay with the announcement of a public sector pay rise that won’t include them.
Care workers are here to care and have been a stalwart of the Covid-19 frontline.
24 hours a day, seven days a week our professional care home staff have continued to provide care under the most challenging of circumstances.
They – like their amazing colleagues in health – have done this with compassion, providing a lifeline for the most vulnerable across all our communities.
This has never been a low-skilled job, and should never again be consigned as a low paid role.
We need the Government to act now to ensure that each and every care worker is recognised and rewarded for their extraordinary work.
Vic Rayner
Executive Director
National Care Forum
Thank you Bromsgrove for your kindness!
THANK you, Bromsgrove.
As a volunteer with Bromsgrove and Redditch Welcome Refugees, who usually works with a small number of Syrian families living in Bromsgrove, it has been a pleasure to work temporarily with the asylum seekers in the Bromsgrove hotel.
Although they receive meals and accommodation, they have very little money so we provide toiletries and clothes, toys for the children and books to help them improve /start to learn English.
I have invariably found the hotel guests to be polite and friendly and often with either a good command of English, having lived in the UK for some years, or keen to learn our language.
At BRWR we have been delighted by the generous response of Bromsgrove and Redditch people, churches, the Supporting our Bromsgrove Asylum Seekers social media group and sports clubs. They responded to our request for items which are needed and much appreciated by the hotel guests.
Thanks to cash donations we have been able to provide a weekly outdoors keep fit session to keep up morale and fitness during their short stay here.
Many local people have welcomed the strangers and shown them kindness at this difficult time in their lives.
Although asylum seekers are not allowed to take paid employment until their claim had been allowed their very presence at the hotel is helping our economy by allowing a closed hotel to reopen.
There is nothing the asylum seekers would rather do than work and growing numbers of UK residents are asking the Government to legislate to allow them to go to work during the long wait for a decision on their claim.
They would then contribute through taxes to the UK economy, earn respect for the skills they have and make local friends.
Your readers can help by supporting the #LifttheBan campaign.
Grateful volunteer
Group of 140 in hotel is ‘shocking situation’
AS A Bromsgrove / Catshill homeowner and resident, I find it absolutely shocking 140 economic migrants, not asylum seekers have been housed in the Bromsgrove Hotel just up the road from me.
The thing I find most shocking is you stated in your paper this has the backing of local residents with overwhelming support.
How do you get to this opinion? As to this day I was not told this was going to be happening not even a letter from the council, the first time I heard of this is when Nigel Farage posted up a video, how shocking is that?
So please stop printing this view as it’s incorrect and an insult to the local community.
There are now groups of these individuals walking around and it’s making people very angry and some scared to leave the house.
Ricky Jukes
Standard’s asylum seeker report is ‘biased journalism’
I HAVE never read such a biased piece of journalism in my life.
Since when have the Lib dems been relevant in Bromsgrove, they certainly don’t speak for many in Bromsgrove only managing 2,488 votes to the Conservatives’ 33,493 votes.
Speak to the constituents of Bromsgrove not an irrelevant political party to achieve an unbiased view in future please.
Carolyn Williams
A Bromsgrove constituent
EDITOR’S NOTE – With regard to this being the first time this has come to light, this week’s story is the third time we have covered it. We printed stories on the situation at the end of April and again in May. As we clarified on this letters page previously, the view that residents and the community were supportive towards the asylum seekers was Serco’s opinion and attributed as such. Residents have had their say – on both sides of the argument – on this letters page and on our social media pages.
Asylum seekers are ‘vulnerable’ and have legal right
‘VULNERABLE homeless people sheltered in vacant rooms during pandemic’, was the shocking revelation the Brexit Party leader made on his chauffeur-driven visit to Bromsgrove last week.
The right to seek asylum is a legal right we all share.
I appreciate that the Home Office decision to use hotels across the country to house them during these unprecedented times was in the interests of the health of the guests as well as that of the general public.
Most of us cannot imagine having to flee our own country because of war or persecution, but should that ever happen, we would hope to be treated fairly and decently.
Bromsgrove resident.
EDITOR’S COMMENT
THE GRANT for the historic Grade II listed farmhouse and proposals for the building are a welcome win-win situation.
This once beautiful building will be restored to its former glory and also provide much-needed affordable housing.
The accompanying research plans will enable the possible links to the family of King Henry VIII’s wife Catherine of Aragon to be thoroughly investigated.
And with the wealth of history experts and groups Droitwich has this project could not be in a better place.
We welcome your letters…..
What pressing issues do you feel need addressing in Bromsgrove, Droitwich, Rubery and South Birmingham? Send us your views to [email protected] or [email protected]
