Campaign against S&BP's exploitation of disabled people working for its Old Moat Garden Centre in Epsom, Surrey which has now dragged on for almost a year.
The scrolling images above are of board members , directors and senior managers of SABP and MCCH Society Ltd. These images are already available online on SABP's and MCCH's own websites. Click on images for details of who these people are.
posted by simply human @ 9:57 pm
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We are campaigning to see that SABP's disabled workers at least get the national minimum wage or if they are on benefits paid at the appropriate permitted work rules rates.
We are also appalled that Surrey & Borders has treated its disabled workers in this way while claiming that its services are User Friendly.
This uncaring 'professional' attitude towards and exploitation of disabled workers isnt just happening in Surrey, it appears to be part of wider DWP and NIMHE policy . Please use the Action Links below to support the campaign and let other people know what is going on.
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6 Comments:
The garden centre is in the middle of countryside so I doubt if they have a local Sainsburys (although those supermarkets get everywhere these days) but I wonder if the newspaper that wrote the orignal article which led us to this campaign would like an update linking the £3 a day cuts to the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health via Helen Lockett? I can't seem to find the orginal newspaper article in the archives by the way. Is it here?
Anyway the paper could show the high profits Sainsburys make compared to the paltry £3 a day that has been taken from the disabled workers. AND the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health is supposed to be a charity working FOR the disabled people not TAKING AWAY the little bit of money they were getting.
The more we look into this issue the worse all the officials involved seem to have acted.
When you get the campaign email address we can discuss plans for future demos as well...
Oh I'm sure that there will be a Sainsburys near SABP's plush new HQ.
By the way, the Modernisation has been planned for longer than 18 months as in Helen Lockett's presentation ' Externalisation of Social Firms from the NHS ' she states the process has been going on for 5 years with the final ' work services' review taking place 2 years ago. That document here treats service users as an afterthought.
The document does not really mention service users at all does it. In fact reading the document you would think they don't even exist. Just a load of managers making changes for their own ends.
Now that Travel Matters Ltd is a limited company though we will be able to get their accounts from companies house. But they won't have to submit any for a year. I'd like to see what kind of money is changing hands in all these projects where the workers are unpaid labour. Apart from the huge managers salaries. How much has Helen Lockett been paid for her 'consultancy' work I wonder? Can't we get that as an FOIA request? Presumably she also gets a salary from the charity funded Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health where the funders claim they want to make better lives for the disadvantaged. The 'disadvantaged' are not getting a look in are they.
We just have to keep going with this campaign and follow up all the routes. Do the Gatsby Foundation who give out the grants know the money is being used this way? I couldn't see an email address on their site so I may snail mail them.
I hope to get my FOIA answers from SABPT tomorrow as they are overdue from last week. See what questions they refuse to answer this time...
"Just a load of managers making changes for their own ends."
That's exactly what is happening Jill, nice salaries and comfortable careers are being made off the back of Orwellian-like claims of providing 'employment for all' when service users clearly have no real say in the matter and , as here , even end up out of pocket to fund managements 'Big Ideas'.
Dr's Groves, Lockett and Secker play an important role in this cruel 'national fraud' as they pretend to objectively evaluate MH employment policies , practices and iniatives even as they promote and financially benefit from them.
There is no independent scientific approach here, Groves, Lockett and Secker are , to corrupt the current politically correct jargon, ' Experts by Expedience', vaselining in Government policy through the back passage and - when it becomes all too clear that they are abusing public money - the deep pockets of shadowy grant making Trusts which link directly back to Government anyway.
Travel Matters are probably doing everything by the book however if MH Trusts and charities connive with consultants way too closely linked to Government policy whilst keeping service users and their carers in the dark suspicions are going to be aroused and the professionals have only themselves to blame for this.
Name & Registered Office:
TRAVEL MATTERS (ENTERPRISES) LIMITED
RAWLINSON HOUSE, 9 LONDON ROAD
REDHILL
SURREY
RH1 1LY
Company No. 05652032
Status: Active
Date of Incorporation: 12/12/2005
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Company Type: PRI/LTD BY GUAR/NSC (Private, limited by guarantee, no share capital)
Nature of Business (SIC(03)):
None Supplied
Accounting Reference Date: 31/03
Last Accounts Made Up To: (NO ACCOUNTS FILED)
Next Accounts Due: 12/10/2007
Last Return Made Up To:
Next Return Due: 09/01/2007
Just sent this to ICSurreyOnline who published the original article.
In June you published the following article:
THE father of a man with learning difficulties is furious that health bosses have axed his £3-a-day wages for working at a NHS Trustowned garden centre.
>
> By Joan Mulcaster
>
> © owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2006
>
> This means that for digging, hoeing, weeding, shovelling, planting, moving and potting at The Moat Garden Centre in Epsom, owned by
> Surrey and Borders NHS Trust, Brian Hall, 44, now gets nothing.
>
> And the same goes for his other £3-a-day job, filling envelopes at the trust's Office Project in Cobham.
>
> Brian's father, David Hall of Green Lane, Ewell, said: "From very, very cheap labour he and his friends are now being used as free labour - how low can you get?"
>
> Brian, who lives in a trust community home in Langley Vale and others housed in similar homes and also employed in its various
> commercial enterprises, are having their pay docked as part of a modernisation policy.
>
> Bosses claim this is not a cost cutting exercise.
>
> Mr Hall added: "I am disgusted at this treatment of the most vulnerable members of our society who carry out hard manual work for
what is a commercial garden centre."
> "News of this was broken at the centre last Friday.>
> "It was 'we won't be paying you any more' and some of the chaps didn't realise what was going on.>
>
> "It is disgraceful that this penny-pinching NHS Trust should penalise these vulnerable, disabled people working for them.>
>
> Epsom and Ewell MP Chris Grayling said: "It is beyond belief that they save money by depriving the people who work for them.
>
>
> "They paid them hardly anything and now they are paying them nothing."
>
>
> The Moat House Garden Centre was launched as a showpiece project to be run as a commercial enterprise and staffed by supervised adults with learning difficulties.
>
> However, the £3-a-day pay - described by the trust as therapeutic
> reward money - compares badly with pay convicted criminals earn on
> prison enterprises.
>
>
> A statement from trust director of operations Peter Quinsey
> said: "Payments are a throwback to the days of large mental health
> and learning disability institutions when patients were rewarded for
> work or therapy activities.
>
>
> "This is now outdated and many mental health institutions do not
> recognise the practice so the trust has decided to end these
> payments.
>
>
> "Work services are being remodelled to reflect modern practices
> which clearly distinguish between paid work, voluntary work,
> training and therapy."
>
> http://icsurreyonline.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0700epsomandbanstead/t
Since the article we have had a campaign blog protesting about the £3 a day cut and that the disabled workers are now being used as unpaid labour. The blog is at
http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/
It has recently come to our attention that the project manager for the 'modernisation' and cutting the £3 a day payments to the disabled workers is Helen Lockett who for 18 months has been seconded from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health is funded by charity money of some £20 million a year from The gatsby Foundation. The first thing on the Gatsby Foundation website is 'we hope to make like better for the disadvantaged'. But instead of making life better their money has gone on cutting the already mean £3 a day payments to the disabled workers. Helen Lockett herself should also know better because she was co-author of a report: 'Paying a Real Wage to People in Work Projects'. But instead of paying the disabled workers any kind of real wage she has project managed the decision to cut their payments altogether.
We have found out a lot about the issues involved although the managers at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Trust have done everything to delay and avoid answering our Freedom of Information Act requests. We have also complained to the Minimum Wage Act and Disability Discrimination Act people but we are people with mental health problems ourselves and would like the press to help with our campaign to get justice for the disabled workers.
Yours Sincerely
Jill Goble
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