I am very relieved, grateful and happy this weekend. After months in limbo, me and everyone else in Umeå in need of home care can finally relax. We are allowed to keep the companies best suiting us to help us out in our daily lives.
It was in November the news came that the majority in the City Council wanted to change the system for home care. Since 2005 people in need of help in their homes have had a free choice for whom would execute the care, Public City Care or private companies. The cost for the client is the same.
My experience from the Public City Care was dreadful. Every day new faces. After a month I was totally exhausted and I didn’t feel safe although frequently looked after. I know very many people tell the same stories, which is truly sad. It really shouldn’t be that way.
I switched to a local start up I knew of, Civil Care, owned by to young men, Peter Andersson and Awara Gulani. I was their 6th client, it was more like a family. Today Civil Care has around a hundred employees, nevertheless the heart and love is still there. And they have taken care of me in the best way possible for more than six years now.
So, in November the majority of the Council bursted the bomb that they would cancel the free choice system. Instead the City would decide for the clients. That’s a brief summery of the whole thing.
People in need of care in their home are most often elderly. Men and women who rarely speak up. Or even have the ability to do so. This is a vulnerable group in society. We are a vulnerable group. A quiet and unseen group. Hidden in the shadows.
I was devastated by the news. Civil Care is absolutely essential to my life. They are giving me a life within my limitations! And I new this was scary news to many many more.
In desperation I wrote a long text for publishing on Facebook. Since it was lengthy I didn't expect many in that medium would have the focus span reeding it. I was totally wrong though. Within a couple of days the text was shared around 90 times. It reached people way beyond my network, including politicians. I was stunned.
An intense debate in local media followed. Individuals, politicians and the local private home care companies. Everybody got involved and spoke up. We weren’t in the shadows any more.
The intensity of the debate made things shift. For a while the balance in the Council was even. Until suddenly the party to the left of the Left Party chocked everyone with being in favour of the free choice!
This Monday the case was up for decision in the City Council. The ultimate shift came already in December, but as anything can happen in politics, the Holidays were nervous to everybody involved. The debate in the Council on Monday was long. But eventually the free choice won the vote. The numbers were 34-30.
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