Campaign Pledge
I made the following pledge on the MySociety Pledgebank site
"I will Work for 1 hour for nothing for anyone willing to support and get other people to support the Justice for the Surrey & Borders NHS Trusts Garden Workers Campaign but only if 25 other people will actively support the campaign."
— des curley, citizen
Deadline to sign up by: 1st January 2007
0 people have signed up, 25 more needed
Country: United Kingdom
More details
The Justice for the Surrey & Borders NHS Trust's Garden Centre Workers campaign blog is at www.justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com and this campaign started after the Surrey and Borders Trust decided to cut the paltry £3 a day it was paying to workers with learning difficulties at its commercial Old Moat Garden Centre in Ewell, Surrey to nothing.
In return for your support I will freely provide IT support , gardening services or any other reasonable work task you want me to do for one hour.
posted by simply human @ 2:55 pm
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S'funny, SABP has spent years scheming with the Sainsbury quackademics Groves and Lockett to dupe the garden centre workers into working for nothing and here I am volunteering to work for nothing and no takers yet....
Received this from Tim on Pledgebank and hope he doesnt mind me reproducing his message here as privacy considerations aside views this need airing.
'I would ask you for your labour and for it to be employed in cleaning these windows. I would like and enjoy a clearer view of life around me. Which is surely not the case for the window licking inbreeds who populate the ‘managerial’ levels of
‘Trusts’. I should say I’d prefer you to summon these particularly repulsive monobrows currently grabbing wads of Blair’s extra ‘NHS Funding’ to a court of justice and to require them to answer the charge of corporate larceny and corruption.'
Thanks Tim - and try to spend £3 less in Sainsburys:)
I've signed up and hope a load of others will to but I'll let you off cleaning the windows! Surprised none of the managers have grabbed the chance as they seen to like getting people to work for nothing so much...
I've got the following reply to my mail from Helen Lockett. Must say it makes a change to get quick reply instead of waiting months from the male managers...
She is now saying the £3 a day was not ment to be a wage but an 'attendance allowance'. I have looked up everything on 'attendance allowance' and only get references to a benefit for people over 65 which is irrelevant to this case. Whatever it is called there is no reason for this allowance to have been replaced with no allowance at all.
The work is now also being called 'voluntary work' and I am in the process of looking up everything on voluntary work sand have so far found out that expenses can be paid for travel, meals and things like clothes that are needed to do the work. So as far as I can see instead of cutting £3 a day money entirely it could still be paid to the workers as expenses rather than attendance allowance. There is more in the letter that I want to comment on but that will do for the moment.
Here is the mail:
Jill
I am responding to your e-mail of 27th August.
Together with colleagues from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health I was
asked to conduct the review and modernisation of work services in Eastern
Surrey working on behalf of the commissioners, East Surrey and East Elmbridge
and Mid-Surrey PCTs and Surrey County Council.
In setting up the review the commissioners recognised that existing services
did not comply with modern standards and in particular offered little
individual choice of integrated activity or support into employment for people
who wanted to improve their lives in this way. The remit of our work was, in
partnership with existing service users and other stakeholders, to review
current services run by, what was then Surrey Oaklands NHS Trust, to make
recommendations for future service developments and then to support the
implementation of those recommendations. The commissioners also recognised
that directly provided "non health" services of this kind were unsustainable
with an NHS funding framework. The modernisation process therefore included
moving the current services out of the NHS so that could be more effectively
managed by specialists in the field, like the Richmond Fellowship or so that
they could develop independently, like Travel Matters Enterprises. The change
process was governed by several key principles:
To gain better outcomes for current and future service users,
particularly:
- Support to gain and maintain employment
- Support to take part in the local community
To modernise the services in line with the National Service Framework for
Mental Health, the recommendations of the Social Exclusion Unit report (2004),
Valuing People, Our health, or care, our say, (2006), internationally
recognised evidence-based practice and sensitively to the needs of the local
communities
To offer co-ordinated and more flexible services which allow individuals to
create their own care and support pathways
To be more responsive to individual needs in local areas, ensuring equality
of access and an increased range and choice of services
To be able to involve service users and carers in the design, running and
evaluation of services
To bring in specialists in the field from the independent sector to build
partnerships with our local community and voluntary sector providers as
recommended by COMPACT
To attract new funding sources to enhance services
Above all we were required to support the design and implementation of quality
services that can support individual needs. In particular services that can
respond to individual choice, whether that be to access employment, gain a
qualification, build confidence and self-belief or take part in community
activities.
The Disability Discrimination Act and the National Minimum Wage Act were at
the forefront of our considerations throughout the process and it is for this
reason that we made the recommendations that we did. The DDA aims to prevent
discrimination against disabled people in employment both in the recruitment
process and in the workplace. The existing work services were
not intended to be a form of employment, but were undertaken voluntarily to
fill the day and to prepare people for employment. The fact that they were
unsuccessful in this last aim is one of the main reasons for chage. The £3
per day was an attendance allowance unrelated to either the productivity of
the individual or the profitability of the service. We believe it is
important to be clear on the role and function of services and any payments
which are made to people in services. It is important to make a clear
distinction between work that is voluntary and work that is paid and where
work is paid, to ensure it complies with relevant policies and legislation
e.g. National Minimum Wage Act, Employment Law and Welfare Benefits
regulations. We would argue that in making competitive waged employment the
focus of the work services and improving access to normal activities for
people who feel they are not ready to work the new services comply more
effectively with both the spirit and the letter of the DDA and the NMW Act.
Yours sincerely
Helen Lockett
"The £3 per day was an attendance allowance unrelated to either the productivity of the individual or the profitability of the service."
My God ! What a hypocrit Helen Lockett is as the majority of service users linked to SCMH and NIMHE get paid ' attendance allowances ' for turning up at user involvment meetings and those payments are not related to productivity or profitability either however Helen is happy to be an uncritical beneficiary of those payments .
This woman's actions directly led to people stopping using a service that was , in addition to underpaying them, probably providing a sense of belonging and support.
Apparently Helen does not compute at this level.
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