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.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Jill Goble's Letter to MCCH

Ms Sandy Hampson

Project Development Manager

MCCH Ltd


Dear Ms Sandy Hampson,

I have been given your name and number as the person responsible for The Old Moat Garden Centre in Surrey by your Head Office. I left a message on your answer phone yesterday but so far have not heard from you. Since June I have been involved in a campaign to get justice for the disabled workers at the Old Moat Garden Centre and our campaign can be found on the internet at:

http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/



The campaign started when we found out that the disabled workers at the garden centre had their £3 a day wages cut to nothing by Surrey and Borders NHS Partnership Trust (SABP) who currently run the centre. In the course of the campaign we have complained to the Disability Rights Commission, on the Minimum Wage and to SABP who delayed answering our freedom of information requests. In the course of our investigations it became clear that there is a pattern of avoiding paying the minimum wage to disabled people in this country and that many are in exploitative situations without rights or equality. The best interests of the garden centre workers were not taken into account and they have been treated particularly badly.



Finally on September 28th at their board meeting SABP backed down and offered written apologies to all the disabled workers affected as well as return of their £3 a day payments which will be backdated to when payments ceased. SABP also agreed to conduct a review in which they would:



(c) 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 (other work services are affected but we believe these are due to be taken over by the Richmond fellowship rather than MCCH Ltd) 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.



While our campaign has been pleased with this progress on behalf of SABP in the best interests of the disabled workers we have also been informed by Ms Fiona Edwards, the Chief Executive of SABP, that the transfer to external providers will go ahead. I am therefore contacting you because we have many questions concerning your plans for the centre and your treatment of the disabled workers.



In particular I was especially concerned by a phase in Ms Edwards report that indicates MCCH Ltd as the external provider would now become reluctant to take over the centre because you would see the obligation to pay the disabled workers their £3 a day as well as be assessed for their entitlement to the minimum wage as a liability

Could you confirm whether or not you are going ahead with taking over the Old Moat Garden Centre under these circumstances and on what date you expect to take over?

Could you please also confirm that you do not see the disabled workers as a ‘liability’, are there to work in their best interests and will continue to honour their right to receive their £3 a day and preferably be employed properly on at least the minimum wage?



I have read the document ‘Paying a Real Wage to People in Work Projects’ which was published by MCCH Ltd and edited by Helen Lockett who coincidentally project managed the modernisation at SABP which cut the disabled workers £3 a day payments.

I am troubled by the emphasis you and Helen Lockett place on the unpaid labour of disabled ‘volunteers’ in these projects. The government also describes these ‘volunteering’ positions as exploitative in the report below:



From 'You can work it out. Best practice in employment for people with a learning difficulty' :

As services seek to help people find more meaningful activities than sitting around in day centres, employment is acknowledged as playing a crucial role in people’s lives. But success in getting people in to paid work remains woefully inadequate. Instead, services have created a world based on work for which few people get paid. There is a growing variety of training, social enterprises, work-related projects, work experience and volunteering schemes. There are people who to all intents and purposes are working, but who receive little or no payment.

This is illegal unless there is genuinely no obligation to attend and no obligation to do anything.

There are people who are described as volunteering- this conveniently gets around the issue of employment contracts and payments. These situations are exploitative.’

This guide can be found at:
www.valuingpeople.gov.uk/EmploymentGuides.htm

I am therefore very concerned that the disabled workers at the Old Moat Garden Centre will go from one bad situation of being exploited as very cheap labour by SABP to another with MCCH Ltd where they will be classed as ‘volunteers’ rather than workers entitled to at least the minimum wage and their exploitation will continue. Could you please reassure us at the campaign that you are not planning on using the disabled workers as unpaid labour and give us a full explanation of what your plans are to protect their best interests, make sure they are treated equally and not discriminated against because they are disabled.

I would also like to ask if you are planning on keeping the garden centre as a commercial business and expanding on the services it currently offers such as in internet and mail order sales and in increased opening hours? I ask this because although it is said that the garden centre is currently a commercial business it is not being run in a way to maximise the potential opportunities available for the disabled workers. This is important given recent reports that disabled workers all over the country are illegally not being paid at least the minimum wage they are entitled to and good opportunities are very limited. I would also like to ask if any purely therapeutic element of activity will remain at the centre given concerns by some campaigners that more vulnerable people might otherwise be excluded?

Finally I would like to say that we hope our campaigns communications with your organisation will be productive and all responses we receive or do not receive will be reported on our campaign blog.

Yours Sincerely

Jill Goble

Help us get Justice at:

http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/

posted by simply human @ 6:50 pm   Listen to this article Listen to this article 4 comments

4 Comments:

At 10:23 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very good letter, Jill. This is exactly right.

Last year in my bit of Surrey the charity Together (formerly MACA)
were negotiating with the then Surrey Primary Care Trust to take over a home in Addlestone that had for many years been run by the Welmede Housing Association a specialist learning diability and mental health organisation. The reason it happened from what I have been able to understand is that the Trust wanted to downgrade the home and Welmede did not want to continue running it on that basis. In the end, the home was not downgraded but Together has still taken it over.

The problem with that situation is that there has been no outside challenge, as is being done by your campaign for the Garden Workers.

I only know about the home in Addlestone because my brother has a good friend who lives there and he visits regularly.

It is the same principle as the Moat Garden - the business is being passed over to non statutory organisations and is all part of the privatisation of the NHS.

Incidentally, Together is the charity that held the "Doing for Ourselves" event in Birmingham earlier this year with the Mental Health Foundation and are claiming to be setting up a national user network. And at the same time as the charity has the advocacy contracts for the three "Special" hospitals, Broadmoor, Ashworth and Rampton and various other advocacy schemes, the people in their own homes such as the one they have taken over in Addlestone have no access to advocacy to protect their rights.

 
At 1:40 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It is very useful to have your local knowledge with us on the campaign Rosemary. Yes I do think a lot of privatisation of the NHS is going on by the back door and a lot of the organisations getting the contracts do not seem to have to be accountable. I will have to look up the Together people you write about when I get time.

Anyway I have had the following fast response from Sandy Hanson at MCCH Ltd. She has passed me on to her Director of Operations Karen Wooding who I have not heard from yet but at least she sent a fast response. Unlike SABP who, surprise, surprise, she hasn't heard from either... Here is her mail:

Dear Jill



Thank you for your e-mail.



Following your voicemail on Tuesday, I e-mailed Jo Young as I have not had any involvement with the campaign or the Trust’s discussions or decisions regarding the therapeutic rewards and wanted some information from her before responding to you. As of yet I haven’t heard from Jo, but am copying her in to this e-mail.



In the meantime, my Director of Operations, Karen Wooding, will be happy to discuss the issues you raise in your e-mail with you and I’ve passed your number on to her.



Regards



Sandy Hampson



Project Development Manager

MCCH Society Ltd

 
At 4:13 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks, Jill.

I do think the combination of people asking questions from outside and those of us with as you say local knowledge, is a good one.

The response you've got from MCCH looks reasonable and it always surprising (not in a good way) to see how bad communication is between authorities that are claiming to be "partners" in some endeavour or other.

With regard to Together, the expert on these user involvement shenannigans is Des. If you go to the Together site
http://www.together-uk.org/index.asp and click on "Directorate of Service User Involvement" you'll be guided to the various documents from the Conference in Birmingham in March and the follow-up.

The immediate connection to Surrey is that when Mike Cox wrote on my mentalmagazine discussion board with his report of the Conference and said that there were people from all other the country and named a few counties, including Surrey, I asked him who had been there from Surrey. He didn't know but when I asked Anne Beales (SU Director at Together) she told me that it had been someone from the Leatherhead Clubhouse. (I've mentioned in another posting on the blog that Roshan Bailey a non-executive Director of S&B, who was present on 28 September, is a Trustee of the Mary Frances Trust that runs the Leatherhead Clubhouse.)
When I contacted the Clubhouse I found the person who had gone to the Conference and he subsequently told me that the Trust had paid his expenses to get there. But he was the sole person who had been at the Conference from Surrey.
There is a lot of crossing over (and double working, ie conflict of interest) from the statutory to the charities and back in Surrey (probably elsewhere also of course). For example, Sue Bond who is now employed as the CE of the Mary Frances Trust, was the Chair of the charity - and in fact is still listed as such on the website - and at that time was employed by East Elmbridge & Mid Surrey Primary Care Trust as Project and Commissioning Support Manager and would have been involved in the "Building on the Best Work Services Review Eastern Surrey" published in January 2006.

The 5 Primary Care Trusts in Surrey were amalgamated into one PCT on 1 October and the shake-up of jobs is still going on. Some wastage of course which doesn't do staff morale any good. The Chief Executive of the new Surrey-wide PCT is Mr Chris Butler who has a London connection as he comes from Hammersmith and Fulham.

Rosemary in Surrey

 
At 11:37 pm, Blogger simply human said...

I think its important that everyone shares information.

I'd also like more information on Helen Lockett's connections with MCCH as she appears to have been in a position here to influence awarding the contract their way.

 

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