A FIGHTBACK against the crisis in Britain’s privatised social care system was launched in Manchester on Saturday as unions and campaigners rallied with angry care workers.

They demanded an end to the profit-driven exploitation that has seen 170,000 workers leave the social care sector, leaving the system in danger of collapse.

The protest, organised by Care & Support Workers Organise, was backed by the TUC, public-sector unions and various campaign groups including Keep Our NHS Public.

Jacquie Hadfield, secretary of Reclaim Social Care Greater Manchester, told the rally that campaigners wanted “a social care service of which we can all be proud.”

“Sadly that service is long overdue, leaving those who work in care and support services, those who need support in their daily lives and the thousands of unpaid carers who look after family and friends, exhausted, in despair and worried about a bleak future,” she said.

Ms Hadfield said the government’s recently published Green Paper on social care “focuses mainly on the cost of benefits and supporting people with health conditions and disabilities to find work.”

Karen Buckley, of Manchester People’s Assembly, told the rally that her father worked in social care.

“He had a minor heart attack one day but had to go in to work the day after as he was on a zero-hours contract and could not afford to stay off work,” she said.

Privatisation of the care system has led to a race for profits that has driven workers out of the sector, attacked wages and cut time allowed to care for individuals at home to an impossible 15 minutes, axeing payment for time spent by carers travelling between clients and cutting allowances for overnight stays with vulnerable people.

The exodus of workers has led to hospital beds clogged with vulnerable people who the NHS cannot discharge as there are no care home places or homecare workers to look after them, according to a survey of care managers.

And Tory cuts to local authority spending have precipitated a race to the bottom in an already poorly funded sector and restricted access to services —  Age UK says that between March 2017 and February 2019, 626,701 people had their requests for social care turned down by local authorities.