Jill's Letter to Dianne Woods, East Surrey ( now Surrey-wide ) PCT

From Jill Goble

To Diane Woods, Service Manager, East Surrey PCT.

Dear Diane Woods,

Referring to the telephone conversation I had with you on Friday October 20th I am writing to confirm the following details.

First that you told me there is currently no contract with MCCH Ltd to run The Old Moat Garden Centre but that they are doing a report on the options for this centre which will be with you in about a month. You agreed that I could obtain a copy of this report from you when it becomes available. I would also like to know what will happen once the report becomes available and what measures will be taken to ensure that there is sufficient consultation with services users, carers and other concerned parties before any contract is awarded? Will it be possible to make any representations concerning alternative options for the Garden Centre as we have already done to Ms Fiona Edwards, Chief Executive of Surrey and Borders Partnership Trust, who currently run the centre? Where and to whom can we make these representations and what group of staff will be responsible for ultimately awarding the contract? Will the option to keep the Old Moat , as an NHS service, which could be managed and run by service users themselves, be considered?

Secondly I confirm that you told me that The Richmond Fellowship have already been awarded a 5 year contract to run the other work schemes in the current Priority Enterprises although Queens Park, Craft and Art Matters and Assembly Matters will not transfer over to them until next year. You said that as a Freedom of Information Request you will email me a copy of the contract with the sensitive information taken out and that it is based on the Task Force/3rd Sector Model Document designed by the Department of Health. You said that the £3 a day payments to the workers which Ms Fiona Edwards at SABP has recently agreed to reinstate will not be continued by the Richmond Fellowship and that it is argued these are discriminatory and against the minimum wage act in themselves. My argument is that the contract with the Richmond Fellowship is not in the best interests of the disabled service users because it does not create any new job opportunities which pay at least the minimum wage or above and expects them to work as unpaid labour as volunteers in the kind of work non disabled people would not be expected to do for free. But because the Richmond Fellowship are a charity there are few rules to prevent long hours spent volunteering and the following guide from the government also supports the view that these schemes are exploitative :

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


There are many other reasons why our campaign does not think that the contract with the Richmond Fellowship is in the best interests of the disabled service users and our objections can be found in detail on the campaign site at http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/

Thirdly I quoted to you part of a document by Helen Lockett written in May 2006 which confirms that the contract with Richmond Fellowship would go ahead and that:

'The implementation and continued operation of these new services will be monitored through the performance framework by the PCT Commissioning Manager and through the Work Services Operational Group (WSOG) which reports to the Local Implementation Team'.

You confirmed that Emmanuel Gbetuwa Mental Health Commissioning Manager is on the WSOG group which is made up of people from each of the providers but you did not say if the reports that they make are public? I am still confused about how the new contract with the Richmond Fellowship is going to be monitored and hope you can give me more detailed information about how we can be kept informed about this and how we can make representations we consider necessary concerning the implementation and monitoring of the contract?

Fourthly we are concerned by a project on the Richmond Fellowship website which they run in Swindon .. This states that they are running out of funding and will have to cut back the project unless they find alternative providers. Are the services in Surrey also in danger of this happening? Can you please give me detailed information about the funding arrangements for the Richmond Fellowship regarding these new contracts as well as the amounts Surrey will be paying both to commission the services and to place service users in the projects once they are running?

Finally we are wondering about the role of Surrey County Council in the externatisation of these services. The contracts officer I spoke to at Surrey County Council told me that they currently do not want to take over the contract with the Richmond Fellowship from the Primary Care Trust.

Please can you treat all my questions as Freedom of Information Act enquiries and can I also thank you for your response to my phone call on Friday which gave us some clear information which previously we had found it very difficult to obtain despite all our enquiries and FOIA requests to Surrey and Borders NHS Partnership Trust and others including MCCH Ltd.

Yours Sincerely

Jill Goble
http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/

I can also be contected on Jill@goblej.freeserve.co.uk