Letter to Paul Mitchell, SABP's Corporate Affairs Manager
From Jill Goble
Today I wrote the following letter to Paul Mitchell, Surrey & Borders Corporate Affairs Manager after 2 unproductive phone calls with him fobbing me off until next week. After my mail he did at least reply almost straight away. I'll put in his reply as well as my mail below. Like you ( Jill was responding to Rosemary Moore commenting on Trust in-action on the apology, reinstatement and repayment issues at yesterday's FoCus meeting ) I feel there are delaying tactics still going on so that they can close the deal with Richmond Fellowship and be shot of the problem altogether.
I wonder if there is any legal way like getting an injunction or Judicial Review to stop Surrey & Borders going ahead with the transfer until the whole modernisation has been properly reinvestigated?
There must be something we can do.
Anyway will have to think things through over this weekend and get back to trying to get some answers next week.
Here is the mail I sent and Paul Mitchell's quick response:
From: Jill [mailto:jill@goblej
Sent: 06 October 2006 16:51
To: Paul Mitchell
Cc: Christine Carter; Declan Flynn; des curley
Subject: Missing Freedom of Information Act answers.
Dear Mr Paul Mitchell
I refer to the two telephone conversations I have had with you today.
I rang up to find out the answers to my missing Freedom of Information Act questions.
These are first the details of the minimum wage investigation which is being made at the Old Moat garden centre and the other priority enterprises which I asked to be made public to me. The second is on the details of the transfer to the external provider which we believe to be the Richmond Fellowship although even this has not been confirmed.
To these questions I further wish to ask questions under the Freedom of Information Act in particular as to whether in light of the apology, return of the £3 a day and promised review for all the disabled workers the transfer to the external provider will go ahead and if so under what timescale will this happen?
Will there be opportunities for further public consultation before any more transfers are finalised to determine if this is really in the best interests of the disabled workers? I ask this, bearing in mind, that the other decisions made in this modernisation have now been found to be inappropriate and public apologies and retractions have been made in the light of this discovery.
You informed me that Mr Declan Flynn who said he was dealing with my missing answers was off sick but you would ring me back this afternoon with any information you could find out on this matter. When you rang back you told me that you could not find out any information for me today and that I would need to get back in touch with Mr Declan Flynn when he returns to work next week.
I would like to point out that I have been waiting months for these FOIA request answers when the legal obligation is to reply within 20 days. I am also surprised that with all the extensive staff team up at SABP no one could be found to answer my questions today. I am sending copies of this mail to other associated members of your managerial teams who you say also could not provide any answers to my simple questions today.
Yours Sincerely
Jill Goble
Dear Jill
Thank you for this. I have forwarded it to Liz Nicholson and Stanley Riseborough who have been asked to co-ordinate a reply to you.
Paul Mitchell
Corporate Affairs Manager
Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Trust
18 Mole Business Park, Leatherhead, KT22 7AD
tel: 01372 205813
posted by simply human @ 10:09 pm
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1 Comments:
I am sorry that I forgot to ask in my mail to SABP today for us to see a copy of the letter of apology to the disabled workers.
I have also copied and pasted below the last few comments from the blog entry where this was originally discussed in case people have not seen them. We all seem to be concerned that the apology, the reinstatement of the £3 a day and the promised review were for public relations and the reality will be a quick transfer to the Richmond Fellowship where the disabled workers will be relegated to 'trainee' status and paid nothing. I have already written to Fiona Edwards that I do not think this is in the best interests of the disabled workers and she said she would get back to me on the plans for the garden centre after the board meeting. I will write reminding her of this promise next week and I also hope to get some legal advice this weekend on avenues we can take to protect the best interests of the disabled workers.
Here are the other comments:
What I would be interested in seeing is the letter of apology sent to the Garden Workers.
There is an awful lot of frantic paddling happening under the water but I don't know the details.
I think there is much more to Peter Kinsey's departure and Christine Carter's appearance than the Garden Centre.
Take a look at this link -
http://www.napicu.org.uk/July06.pdf#search=%22Christine%20Carter%20St%20Georges%20Trust%22
Rosemary in Surrey
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mentalmagazine
At 7:48 AM, Jill said...
I have looked at the link Rosemary and the information doesn't really give much away about Christine Carter but I looked up St George's where she used to work and came across this:
Good Practice Example 1
Employment support, South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust
Since 1995, the Trust has successfully increased its employment rate for people with severe and enduring mental health problems, with over 100 people being employed on the same terms and conditions as other staff...
The Trust has developed a Vocational Services Strategy based on the Individual Placement and Support approach. Occupational therapists and borough mental health and employment co-ordinators work within the clinical teams to enable people with severe mental health problems to access open employment and mainstream education. Ongoing support is included in care plans, with a focus on individual choice. In 2002, the Trust supported 161 people in open employment, 97 in voluntary work and 182 in mainstream education or training.
The early intervention team includes a part-time vocational specialist to co-ordinate vocational plans with the individual and the clinical team, help people to find and keep jobs and education courses, and provide access to benefits advice. After one year, the employment rate rose from 10 per cent to 40 per cent, and the percentage not engaged in education, training or employment dropped from 55 per cent to 5 per cent.
The Trust has begun to implement the Individual Placement and Support approach within the community mental health teams through integrating an employment specialist into community mental health teams. In addition, vocational outcomes have been negotiated with commissioners as a Key Performance Indicator for the Trust.
(Mental Health and Social Inclusion ODPM, 2004)
From that it looks like she may have an open attitude towards employing service users and perhaps the garden centre workers will benefit from this but we will have to see.
I would also like to see a copy of the letter of apology written to the workers and will plan to put in a freedom of information act request for one this week.
At 2:02 PM, Rosemary Moore said...
Yes, we will have to see.
Thanks for the employment information at St George's. Another interesting angle is Dr Rachel Perkins (see information about her also from the link). Do you know of her? She was an original member of UKsurvivors.
I'll let you know what happens.
At 7:30 PM, Rosemary Moore said...
Jill, you were basically right that the reinstatement of the payments has only been done for the sake of appearances.
Christine Carter didn't appear yesterday evening, nor did Tom Chan the Director of Older People's Services.
Jo Young Director of Learning Disability Services came along with Stanley Risborough who is the Trust's all purpose person - one of his jobs is being liaison person with the PPIF.
In fact, Jo Young is the right person to be dealing with. She has got the job of sorting all this out. I asked her afterwards why Kinsey had been the spokesperson and it appears this was because he was from the old Trust and had been dealing with things before.
Anyway, the questions were basically answered. The payments will be reinstated and letters sent out - apparently 200 - but it was confirmed they are going ahead with passing it over to Richmond Fellowship and I think there an uderlying message that the payments could be stopped again.
Tomorrow, we've got the North West FoCUS meeting (when this will be one of the issues reported back on) and I have my own AllSorts meeting in Woking tomorrow evening.
I've set up another Yahoo! board for the AllSorts group and I've put a message on there about the blog.
I am pretty sure that your work has been the reason the payments were reinstated, otherwise all that would have happened I think is that they would have said the matter would be "reviewed".
Here is the link to my new Yahoo! board.
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AllSortsMentalHealth/
At 8:11 PM, Justice for S&B NHS Garden Centre Workers said...
It's clear Chris Carter has been parachuted in to sort out the mess but its not so clear what SABP sees its priorities as right now apart from making sure Ms Carter doesnt tell us .
I imagine the 'externalisation' aspect of the so called modernisation of SABP's work services is crucial to the Trust to salvage because its probably bound up in all kinds of inter-departmental bureaucracy and legal contracts with other parties
- SCMH - PCT's - DoH, DWP and of course the Richmond Fellowship , and there's a deadline and probably an awful lot riding on that project as a pilot as well.
I can see two things I'd be worried about in SABP's shoes:
1.) the legal problems around work status raised by Jill and 2.) the potential for further legal action - i.e. Judicial Review - re. the 'Building on the Best' consultation process in which service users were manipulated rather than meaningfully consulted to arrive at an outcome that confirmed a movement to the type of services SABP had obviously agreed with the Richmond Fellowship and SCMH beforehand.
SABP has accepted that they didnt treat the workers well, it has not accepted that the consultation was flawed , it cant otherwise it will have to do it again.
I think the Richmond Fellowship should be frozen out of the deal here as the organisation has made no effort to respond to people's concerns which doesnt bode well for anyone who ends up working for the outfit for bugger all.
I still think the co-op idea is the superior option because you cant force people to accept the national minimum wage to help co-manage a garden centre whereas its pretty easy to force people into a crap unpaid training environment as the sham ' Building on the Best' consultation just that demonstrated.
At 1:32 PM, Rosemary Moore said...
Yesterday's FoCUS North West Surrey Area group meeting seemed to confirm that the Garden Workers and others who had their payment stopped aren't going to be treated any better now. As at yesterday, the letters hadn't gone out nor payments reinstated.
The decision had been made a good month before the Board meeting and that meeting was clearly just a rubber stamp exercise, or perhaps a delaying tactic in case a reason could be found not to reinstate the payments. So why is there still delay in sending out letters of apology - 200 - (signed by Fiona Edwards)and making the payments?
There is a further worry that those who decided not to work for nothing and left their schemes may lose it now the decision to stop the payments has been reversed. Furthermore, the assessments will be re-done and some of those who have had their payments reinstated may have them stopped again.
At the FoCUS meeting yesterday we were given copies of the Trust's October issue of its newspaper "Partnership People". The front page has a story about the £4m reduction in the Trust's income that was announced at the board meeting on 28 September.
Nothing about the reinstatement of payments to the workers. Nor about the apology that the Trust has promised to issue those affected.
The newspaper can be found on the Trust's website.
Rosemary in Surrey
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