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 @ 1:03 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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7 Comments:
I see we even have our own cutting edge, cool publicity department on this campaign...
Cutting edge?
When I created that Flash website the point was to prove that the net could be the new televisual pulpit for the masses , my specific point at the time was to literally push the boundaries with figures and 3d spacecraft challenging the ' it all happens within this box ' thing.
Check back with the image to see what I mean.
Nowadays cutting edge means Web 2.0 and ways of manipulating information.
That's cool too.
I just thought 'cutting edge' is the sort of phase advertising agencies say...! I do see what you mean and it is a very striking sucessful image.
It is also a striking contrast to the SABP website and the Priority Enterprises websites which are slow, hard to navigate and generally do not promote those organisations in any dynamic way. Yet presumably someone has and is being paid a lot of money to build and maintain their websites. In contrast everything that is done on this blog including maintaining it every day as you do is for free. Like our disabled workers in the garden centre we are unpaid volunteers who receive no funding. We are all or have been service users who are often vulnerable ourselves. Keeping this campaign going as well as other activites we are involved in ,and I know you also have to work in your gardening jobs, is quite stressful. It is too early to say whether or not we will see the garden centre workers get justice. But considering we started with no resources and no funding I think we are doing Ok with this campaign so far.
So have a brownie point everyone.
Or if you prefer it a gold star! Our funding won't run to any other rewards...
Problem is that I can't get the posters/leaflets on the pledge to work. Keep getting notice
'Sorry we weren't able to make your poster. Unknown ref 'Justice in Work'
Anyone know what is wrong?
Am trying to get some leaflets done ready for the Thursday AGM.
Great poster, very striking
It is Ok. I have now managed to make up some leaflets on publisher. Just have to print them out tomorrow ready for Thursdays AGM and Trust Board meeting.
Jill,
I read your comments about us being unfunded and working for nothing on this campaign and I want to add a personal biographical aspect to what you said . Its a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of getting involved in any employment or training schemes ran by or associated with MH services.
Unlike Dr Bob Groves and Helen Lockett I have worked for two employment and training schemes , one in the private sector, another services funded. I left the latter job at 15 minutes notice after a legally trained Trustee phoned me at work on behalf of my manager and threatened to make an allegation of racism against me if I didnt leave immediately.
My crime?
I had just been promoted from an IT trainer to an employment officer and I had questioned the manager as to why she was trying to pressgang the people I had just trained to use pc's - so therefore knew more than she did - into an employment scheme and jobs they couldnt cope with and didnt want.
In other words, I questioned why she was simply targetting people because they were on benefits rather than , as I wanted to do, trying to find work for people with MH issues who wanted jobs and were able to cope with them, irrespective if they were on benefits or not.
People like me.
I had also explained to my psychiatrist at the time that I was being placed in a very compromising position at work as my care worker, who had orginally got me the job, informed me that he was going join and run the organisation I worked for and then started to pad out the board with his mates .I told him I was unhappy about this, as boundaries were blurring, he said he didnt care.
On the day I was given 15 minutes to clear my desk and leave or face a false and wholly malicious allegation of racism my former care worker took over control of the organisation . He later responded to a formal complaint I had made by e-mailing me at night asking me to call him at his home and signing off ' mate'.
I wrote back civilly pointing out that his approach was inappropriate, I went to great lenths to reassure him that it simply was and that I didnt want conflict with him. He wrote back covering himself saying I had invited him to contact me in this way, which I clearly had not, then he investigated my complaint, dismissed it and issued a legal warning about me threatening his staff, which I had not done.
I complained to my Trust about this situation as it part funded the organisation in question but the Chief Executive wrote back explaining that it could not investigate anything my former careworker did in his spare time.He was actually seconded to the organisation I worked for by services and the fact that this was conveniently ignored just undermines what I meant by the blurring of roles.
I know of no other profession that has a blindspot for how its members deal with their clients in their spare time.
What your lawyer pocketed the proceeds from that house sale? Sorry, we cant look into that as he did it on his day off.
This experience was traumatic and although I have a background of working in the voluntary sector and for goverment departments and local authorities, I would never feel safe working in that type of environment again. Its become a phobia.
My actual decision to resign, something I was pondering over because the job paid £21,000 a year, was prompted by a telephone conversation I overheard between two managers concerning another woman who had resigned and denounced the organisation I worked for as the most unprofessional she had ever had the misfortune to work for.
The two managers were laughing about this woman and planning how they could get out of paying her her last weeks wage. Not considering the legality of or whether it was practical or reasonable it but simply scheming to deprive the woman of what was owed to her and really enjoying it as if it were a game.
I knew from that instant that I could no longer continue working in that environment and my suspicion is lots of these so called disabled employment and training organisations are run in this way and doing little more than exploiting ordinary disabled people to pay people like the above managers and Declan Flynn, who still wont correct his unprofessional florid green signature on his letters , large salaries for massaging outcomes.
In an investigative report produced by services - yes ,despite being the complainant I was investigated - my experience was described as being like 'a typical pathways to work success .
In fact , I no longer feel capable of working in the public or voluntary sector, contact with services terminated shortly after I resigned and I have spent £18,000 of my life savings - read it all - and undertaken blackmarket part time gardening work to stay afloat.My Trust has also taken one year - I first asked for help last September - to help me with a DLA claim .
This process is ongoing. This is the way you are treated when you make the transition from patient to complainant. They dont just dismiss your complaints, they dismiss the whole basis of you being a patient as well.
I also want and need to work - many people with MH issues do - but for all the claims of the Trusts, NIMHE and the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health they arent doing anything to get people who want jobs into employment , as the schemes arent based on peoples need or desire and ability to work, the sole qualifying factor is being on benefits.
I am not on benefits and dont qualify for help finding work because there's no financial incentive for services to do this.
No savings can be exacted from helping me!
Weird that isnt it. We have a multi-million pound employment and training industry spearheaded by NIMHE and the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health but if you ask them for a decent job unconnected with MH and they cant or wont find one if you are not on benefits.
This is why highlighting this abuse has become my unpaid work.
I'm all for helping people with MH issues find training jobs they can benefit from and cope with - which is why I worked in that area - but I'm against schemes that treat people like shit , that spare no thought to what happens if things go badly wrong and basically exis to massage fraudulent outcomes to suit the DWP and the now thoroughly discredited academics of the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.
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