Towards More Participatory Democracy, Media & Services

"when 'ordinary' citizens are presented with clear information and given the freedom and structure to deliberate on that information,they will come to decisions as reasons and balanced as those made by elected representatives or public officials".

Report of the Power Commission, Chaired by Helena Kennedy, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws QC a New Labour Life Peer and Member of the House of Lords.

"In my view, that is the basic sentiment that underpins participatory democracy. The people can do it if you give them the chance

Lord Gould of Brookwood, (Labour) commenting on the Power Commission's conclusions and the Governments wider committment to participatory democracy.

I suppose this blog is an exercise of sorts in participatory democracy, not an arrogant or unqualified exercise but one made necessary and brought about by patient and public outrage over the decision of public officials from the Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Trust to cut the £3 a day payments to people with learning difficulties working in the Trust's commercial garden centre with the expectation that they would simply work for nothing.

The Trust had the audacity to claim that it consulted widely over this and that their workers agreed with it.

Of course they didnt! They have learning difficulties, they are not stupid.

No one would be happy with being put in that situation .

This penny pinching did not come to light through Surrey & Borders own meaningless ' consultation process ' around 'modernising ' its Work Services , it came to light when a justifiably angry and disgusted parent of one of the garden centre workers became fed up with Surrey & Borders meanness and bullying and got the issue some very public attention through the local newspaper.

This blog is also an exercise in participatory media and again, not an arrogant or unqualified one , but one made necessary and brought about because the Surrey & Borders Trust and its PPI Forum made no attempt to provide its service users or members of the public with clear information for the Trust's decision, indeed both have colluded to control , restrict and severely limit information flow to lock ordinary people out of the decision making process so that they can keep the actual reason for their decision to steamroller their garden centre workers a secret and any real discussion of why, kept behind closed doors.

This is also an exercise in establishing participatory services as Surrey & Borders decision to discriminate against the disabled workers at its garden centre was not reasonable or balanced as there never was any meaningful consultation process for service users or members of the public, particularly those working at the garden centre and their carers , families and friends , to participate in the decision making process about the future of the work services they or the person they cared for were using.

The decision was just made by Surrey & Borders on high and imposed downwards on people who had no say in the matter at all.

Please help us to show the management of Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Trust the benefit of genuinely allowing their service users and ordinary members of the public to participate in deciding the future of services.

Please feel free to use the links in the right hand column to complain about/raise awareness of this issue and let us know how you get on and share any other comments or ideas you have on this issue.