Legal Advice & Recommendations to the Board
This is copied from the Board notes.
Essentially the Trust now has to go back and do what the Sainsbury Centre advisors should have advised it to do in the first place. The roles arent any clearer and there is still a lot of uncertainty , and yes some concern too about what level of representation the workers will get this time round.
Therapeutic Payments
Background
Changes to the way that Work Services are provided were subject to consultation (‘Building on the Best’) during January to April this year. The results of the consultation confirmed the move to more individualised, locally based employment and social support services and the importance of offering a range of training and community based activities, with most of the services moving to Richmond Fellowship over the course of the year. The programme is on schedule, with around half of the centres having transferred from the Trust. Alongside this transfer, the Trust Board agreed (in January 2006) that the practice of awarding ‘therapeutic payments’ would cease on 31st May 2006. Therapeutic payments (usually totalling £3.00 per day) were given as recognition to those attending. They were not intended to represent payment for work.
In reviewing the impact of ceasing therapeutic payments, the main consideration given was to the impact of National Minimum Wage (NMW) legislation. NMW is currently set at £5.05 per hour (reviewed every October). Applying NMW to the hours for those attending work service activities could adversely impact upon the benefit that people receive. Further, it is unclear where NMW would apply, as people do not attend in order to provide significant output but to undertake training (most work service activities include NVQ assessment), to participate in therapeutic and social activities and, where possible, to prepare for employment. Work service activities are not reliant upon those attending undertaking work and the centres do not create a profit for the Trust.
Other day centres across the Trust have ceased therapeutic payments in line with the Trust Board decision, although the implementation has been phased over a longer timescale.
Areas of Concern
Impact on People attending Work Centres
The cessation of therapeutic payments, especially at the garden centres, has caused considerable concern to some people attending and their families, as well as members of the Trust’s Forum for People who Use Services and their Carers (FoCUS) and members of the public. Further, no assessment has been undertaken to ensure that people attending the Work Services activities are either undertaking paid work (for which NMW would apply) in line with benefit regulations or are attending on a voluntary basis for therapeutic or training activities.
Impact on Service Delivery
Concerns being raised could bring into question the viability of transferring services to external providers, who will not wish to take on any potential liability. Failure to ensure that a proper assessment of activities and individual assessments for people attending could mean that the modernisation in line with the wishes of people we serve (as identified through the consultation feedback) and the commissioners of the service is unable to proceed as agreed.
Advice to the Trust Board
In reaching the conclusion that therapeutic payments should cease, the information provided by the Trust’s legal advisors was not interpreted fully for the Trust Board. All work service centres were treated in the same way, but the legal advice regarding four centres (the two garden centres, the printing activity and the travel agent) indicated that some people may indeed be undertaking work in a similar way to people employed in those centres by the Trust. This cannot be determined without further assessment of the activities undertaken and the purpose of attendance at the centres.
The option recommended to the Board to cease therapeutic payments had not been discussed with the Trust’s legal advisors. Further, the advice to the Trust indicated that any decision made by the Board should take into account that the people concerned were very vulnerable and therefore the normal principles of risk management were not appropriate to the decision-making process.
2.4 Wider Impact on the Trust
As a result of the decision to cease therapeutic payments, there is considerable concern that the Trust has not treated people well.
Recommendations
The Trust acknowledges that the decision-making process and its outcomes have been far from satisfactory and adversely impacted on people who attend work services and their families and carers. The Trust is very sorry that this decision was made and apologises unreservedly for the distress and anxiety caused to those people who have been affected.
The Board is recommended to:
Re-instate therapeutic payments across the Trust with effect from 1st June 2006 (or the date on which the payments were stopped).
Write a letter of apology to every individual affected by the cessation of therapeutic payments
Require the Director of Operations (Mental Health Services) and the Director of Services for People with a Learning Disability to develop an action plan which will:
Assess activities undertaken and develop guidelines to differentiate between ‘work’ (for which the NMW or higher will apply), ‘therapy’, ‘training’ or ‘voluntary work’ (for which no payment, other than expenses, will apply).
Undertake individual assessments on those attending in order to ensure that payment for attending ‘work’ does not adversely impact on benefit.
Ensure that the work centres remain viable with any increased cost associated increased payments for work undertaken. Any change will be subject to further consultation.
The plan will be developed in conjunction with people using the services, their families and carers and care workers. Legal advice will be sought on the action plan prior to its implementation.
Fiona Edwards
Chief Executive
September 2006
posted by simply human @ 12:35 am
Listen to this article
4 comments
Dot This
4 Comments:
I am afraid that their real concern is financial as in :
'Concerns being raised could bring into question the viability of transferring services to external providers, who will not wish to take on any potential liability'
so basically by stopping the £3 a day payments they were tidying things up to make the package more attractive to these external providers like the Richmond Fellowship taking over. (Which doesn't say much for the Richmond Fellowship wanting to wriggle out of providing for the workers and seeing them just as a liability)
The cost cutting measure was done under the guise of 'modernisation' but it really was only cost cutting.
Now they cannot get away with this so blatently this new 'action plan' will appease the critics and the press but what will happen? I guess they will pay lip service to the Minimum Wage Act by giving a few of the workers real jobs and the rest, the majority, will be reclassified as 'volunteers'.
Sorry to sound so pessimistic but this is not an apology which aims to establish SABPT as a leading light in the area of employing disabled people. They are not saying they want to reform their discriminatory ways towards disabled people. It sounds like they just want to do basically what they were doing anyway but to look better doing it.
I think we will still have to watch what they do and how this 'action plan' is implemented closely or otherwise the same thing will happen again in a more palatable looking but not tasting package.
Oh well we'll just have to see...
Jill,
Yes, there is still a lot of uncertainty about SABP's motives and concern about what level of representation those involved in SABP's work services will get this time round.
There seems to me to be an urgent need for the Surrey and Borders NHS Trust to involve a truly independent 3rd party to look out for the interests of service users here as all the professional organisations involved have their own agendas none of which holds the needs , circumstances and rights of service users to be paramount.
The incentive for involving a 3rd party to represent the interests of service users is clear, SABP cannot afford to get things wrong again.
We can ask questions about this at the AGM as the Trust Board will want to be sure that the needs and rights of service users are properly assessed because further failure would reflect very badly on and perhaps even have serious liability implications for them.
As for the Richmond Fellowship, its remoteness to date suggests that it will pull out if difficulties arise, on the other hand, unless I'm mistaken, it largely wishes to use the garden centre as a training resource anyway, so its not going to be paying many people for working there. If this understanding is incorrect I'd welcome the Richmond Fellowship to get in touch to set the record straight.
This is such an important development that it will time take to digest and examine for its implications .
Its fantastic , but its only part of what must be done . The role of Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health in helping to create a rush to "social enterprise" when SABPT patients themselves appear to have had little feedback and hardly any real say is something that needs to be examined .
The Charities more widely are not accountable enough and must be - even for their own sakes because blunders will happen and they will suffer and become tarnished too .
Concealment is the tendency at the moment rather than openess and it is not helped by charities being adrift of the FOIA . Electronic copies of their project activities should be independently kept by the Charity Commission so we know who is involved with who in public affairs and how independently their projects are auditied if they 50k or more ..
There are no safeguards at the moment that are transparent to us .
When their activities have social aims Charities cease to have any rights of what appears to be misplaced privacy ....
.
Does anyone know where the bit has gone where she says 'the centres do not make a profit' ? I know I read it but I can't find where it is now and I need it because I am writing them all up at SABP a new letter on the benefits of turning liabilities into assets. Plus I am going on holiday later on so I need it quick.
Post a Comment
<< Home