Garden Centre Workers to Get Apology & Money Back?
Rosemary Moore has just posted the following message on her Yahoo group Mental Magazine .
Today I got the papers for the Surrey & Borders AGM and Board meeting which will be held on 28 September. They won't be released into the wild (be on the S&B website) until Monday. The papers include an unreserved apology for the decision to stop the payments and for the distress and anxiety caused to those affected. The Chief Executive's recommendation to the Board is that payments be re-instated from the date they were stopped and a letter of apology be sent to "every individual affected by the cessation of the payments". It is noticeable that the patient and public involvement forum (PPIF) is not included in the people who have expressed concern.
This is brilliant news and hats off to Surrey & Borders Chief Executive Fiona Edwards for arriving at what must have been a very difficult and politically loaded decision to personally and professionally distance herself and her Trust from the 'advice and actions of the so called 'modernising' experts from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and do what was right for the garden centre workers.
This still leaves the garden centre workers in a precarious position financially - their status and rights as workers are no clearer - and we have yet to see how they fare under the Richmond Fellowship - please take note Surrey & Borders PPI - so there's still a need for ongoing scrutiny here to see if real jobs , real wages and other real stabilising and supportive non employment based services emerge from this mess or whether services and lives will have been disrupted to suit a few selfish and thoughtless academics from the remorseless Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.
Well done everyone.
posted by simply human @ 8:18 pm
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Wow this is great news...
Still have a load of questions on the details and what the official status of the workers will be etc but so far I'm very impressed with this news...
Yes so am I but there is another problem with the backdating of payments, this may cause difficulties with the benefits agency.
There is also the handover to the Richmond Fellowship and real concerns about how many of the LD workers, who appear to have been at the Old Moat centre for some time, are going to make it through the transition period.
Unless I'm mistake the Richmond Fellowship envision more throughput at the garden centre and a greater proportion of MH service users.
Then of course there is the minimum wage issue - its quite depressing once you remember that we are back where we started on this one - but I think if we hang in here and get the PPI to monitor properly other positive and necessary changes will follow.
In fairness though , Surrey & Borders is hardly unique in bungling user employment and day services issues , its a complex area, but we also need to make sure that the real culprits here, the academics from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health are held to account for their morally bankrupt and now officially discredited actions as Bob Groves and Helen Lockett advised SABP into this mess and yet they are still wildly, as per their latest job advertisement, talking up expertise in an area that they really dont have. .
I wonder if Groves and Lockett will be at the AGM to defend their decision to cut the garden centre workers £3 a day payments.
Are You coming to the AGM on the 20th sept at Ewell?
Great news, but lets hope the re instate payments
I'm going to try to get there.
Certainly its a partly holy moment granted after sacrifices ..
Well done everyone ..
I shall be very pleased to examine Fiona's paperwork from Surrey to look at the details ..
Can someone confirm this because I thought the AGM was on the 28th? If it is the 20th I will be away and won't be able to go.
Yes the details of this deal are very important. We'll have to see...
Its on the 28th Jill. Thats the date on Rosemary's board.
yes I think I made a maistake, It would be good if we could try and meet up, be good to put a face to the names, and celebate out huge victory over Fiona Edwards and co, and find out exactly what the staus of the garden centre workers will be, and other workers. big pat on the4 back for everyone
Oh yeah I've just read the document that is being sent around and it is really flattering to be described in terms of being a
'potential liability' isn't it. That is all they think of the disabled workers and all they think of us people with mental health disabilities. Just 'potential liabilities' so the private/voluntary sector might not want to take us on after all.
Well why don't you get us to run our own services then?
I am really sick of this. Why hasn't that document been put up on the blog anyway? What is this big secret we are keeping for them?
Sorry but I am not so keen on the great news at the moment...
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