Prompt Response from MCCH Society Ltd
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
posted by simply human @ 9:55 pm
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By the way Jill, our friends from MCCH Society Ltd have shown a very keen interest in this site since they received your little bomshell.
Someone has even been testing what combination of words with 'Surrey , disability , centre etc. turn up results for this blog in Google.
I know you have some kind of majic powers to tell where visitors to this site are based because a while ago you said we get about 40 visitors a day mostly from Surrey and London but also as far away as the US. But I can't believe your powers extend to Google search engines do they!
Anyway I welcome anyone from MCCH and anywhere else who visits this site. We are doing everything we can to promote and protect the best interests of the disabled workers at the garden centre and by implication disabled people who are being exploited everywhere. As campaigners we are mainly disabled people with mental health problems ourselves we know our disabilities do not prevent us from recognising injustice when we see it and from having fought hard against it since you started this site months ago in June. Along the way we have learned some shocking things about the system which operates supposedly to help disabled people but which often exploits us. We do not want disability to mean inequality and that is why we keep on campaigning for justice.
Good Morning
I received the following email from Karen Wooding, Director of Operations at MCCH Ltd last Friday. I was waiting for our site owner to see the mail before putting it up here but he is away and I am not sure when he will be able to log back in. I think it only fair that campaigners can see this mail and are free to make any comments you want to make. MCCH Ltd on the other hand have put a disclaimer at the bottom of the mail stating that it is confidential and dissemination or copying of the mail is strictly prohibited.
In my reply to Karen Wooding which I have also copied here after her mail I state that I cannot accept such a disclaimer and have already made it clear that all replies or lack or replies will be made available here. We have had these kind of threatening disclaimers before and have always ignored them because they are not justifiable in a public campaign. If anyone else has any opinions on these disclaimers please put up your comments.
In Karen Wooding's mail she also claims that the photos of their board members we now have up are causing distress to some of their unpaid non executive board members. I have said that I will wait until the site owner logs back in before we decide whether to take them down or not. My own feeling is that we are here because of the distress that has been caused to the disabled workers and although they now have their £3 a day returned their long term position is no more secure now MCCH are taking over than it was under SABP. This may still be another exploitative 'make disabled people work for free' project where all or the majority of the disabled workers have their status reduced to that of unpaid volunteers. Karen Wooding has put nothing in her mail about MCCHs plans for the garden centre and claims there are inaccuracies on this website but does not say what these are. She asks for a meeting in order to clear up these misunderstandings and I in turn have asked if MCCH will agree to such a meeting being recorded and the recording made available here. In the meantime as far as their photos on this site are concerned these are already in the public domain and I support whichever decision the blog owner makes to keep them up or put them down. As I said it is the distress of the disabled workers that we are concerned about here. This site is only here because the disabled workers have been treated with injustice and suffered distress themselves. They are the ones who also have to do hard manual labour for the pittance of £3 a day. It is their distress that concerns me.But in the interests of diplomatic relations with MCCH the site owner may wish to take the photos down. I cannot second guess his opinion on this matter. I would be interested in other campaigners comments on this as well.
Here is Karen Woodings mail to me and my reply to her:
Dear Ms. Goble
Further to Sandy Hampson’s e-mail yesterday, we did try to phone you in the afternoon but unfortunately there was no reply.
We have looked at your campaign website and would be pleased to meet with you so that we can discuss your concerns more fully.
There are a lot of inaccuracies on the web-site, which I am sure would not have been included if the facts were known; also the photographs that you are showing that were taken from our own web-site are causing distress as a number of the people are unpaid non-executive directors of MCCH and give their time freely.
A meeting would give us the opportunity to put the record straight.
MCCH is proud of its record of developing and delivering high quality person-centred services.
Please let me know if you would like to meet so that we can arrange a mutually convenient appointment as quickly as possible.
Yours sincerely,
Karen Wooding
Director of Operations (Counties) H
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note:
The information contained in this message may be confidential and thus protected from disclosure.
If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible
for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination,
distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer.
MCCH Society and any of its subsidiaries each reserve the right to monitor all e-mail
communications through its networks.
Thank You.
My reply to Karen Wooding last Friday was as follows:
Dear Ms Karen Wooding
Thank you for your quick response to my enquiries.
As far as the photos on our campaign website at
http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/
are concerned the site owner is currently on his way flying to the United States. He will be logging back in every few days while he is away. When he does this I will pass on your mail and comments regarding the photos so we can decide whether or not to take them
down. We have had photos of the board members of Surrey and Borders Partnership Trust up on the site since we opened.
As far as a meeting is concerned I hope that this would be productive as well. Would you have any objection to this being recorded? Would you have any objections to the recordings being made available on our campaign site?
In the meantime if you would like to write to me with a list of the inaccuracies you claim are on the site we can publish these for you as well as any other matters you wish to raise as well.
I am afraid that I have already made it clear that all responses or lack or responses from MCCH Ltd will be published on our campaign site and we do not recognise
the disclaimer at the end of your mail that this is a confidential correspondence.
Finally if as you say MCCH is proud of its record of developing
and delivering high quality person-centred services then you will be pleased that we as campaigners are here to ensure the rights and best interests of the disabled workers at the garden centre are met.
I look forward to hearing from you further.
Regards
Jill Goble
Dear Jill
I have been in touch with MCCH Society Ltd since reading your post this morning.
I looked at the website here:
http://www.mcch.co.uk/ and see that the photos reproduced on the blog are on that site.
I'd suggest that some information about MCCH is put on the blog with an explanation about the photos. I would have thought that if individuals were not happy with the photos being displayed (although I understand from a conversation with MCCH this morning it is more about the captions) then those people should take that up with the blog themselves. However, I don't see it as relevant that these people are paid or unpaid. And having been a trustee of a charity I would say that non-executive directors or voluntary trustees are not really unpaid. We get expenses and our travel paid and quite a bit of free food along the way.
I have asked for a copy of the Annual Report and I also asked when the company's AGM was being held. Unfortunately, it has already happened, in September.
But I know from the blog entries that you have been offered a meeting to discuss the issues so I think that is fair enough.
I explained to the PA I spoke to who I was and my connection with your campaign. I am sending MCCH a copy of my last Notice for the meetings in October (5 and 7) which includes a photocopy of your two-sided leaflet that you took and distributed at the Surrey & Borders Board Meeting and AGM on 28 September.
Rosemary in Surrey
Sorry, Jill, forgot about the earlier posting from you about MCCH that gives full details of its activities.
The "Transfer to MCCH Ltd" post -
http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/2006/10/transfer-to-mcch-ltd.html
Well done.
Rosemary in Surrey
Oh I'm glad you have been in contact with MCCH as well Rosemary.
Yes I do think it is fair enough to have a meeting with them but I do want their agreement to tape the meeting and put the tape up here so that those who can't attend will be able to form their own opinions.
I still don't know what we will do about the photos. Will have to wait and see on that one.
Hi Jill
I think it is fair enough that you wait to discuss points with the site owner before you change anything on this site.
As for sharing information here. I think that is fair enough too. There is so little transparency in decision making processes and by the very nature of what you are doing you are accountable.
I think people sometimes forget about accountability. They make decisions very much behind closed doors and with little consultation going on.
If there is nothing to hide it should be seen..and if there is something to hide..all the more reason to see it.
Mandy
Forgive the delay in replying, I'm a bit puzzled by MCCH's response re. photos and captions because unless they delete the photos on their blog they can simply be linked to anyway and the captions simply ask questions that - given context of this campaign - are fair comment.
To be honest, I think MCCH Society Ltd has more reason to complain about the quality of the photographs of its directors and managers as the pics are pretty distressing in their own right.
As for inaccuracies on this blog, most would have been caused by SABP and bidders for the Old Moat Centre witholding information from services users , members of the public and the people involved with the campaign.
If however the MCCH wishes to meet with people, including the service users and carers directly affected by the campaign issues , to discuss its own intentions re. operating the garden centre and the national minimum wage , that gets my vote.
Getting to grips with MCCH now - I'd never heard of them before. But I haven't understood when the change came about from the Richmond Fellowship to MCCH.
MCCH is based in Maidenhead, Kent. That apparently is where the initials come from. They have been going for 19 years or so and were originally called something like "Maidstone Community Care Housing".
A google on MCCH Ltd has brought up information about a 10-year contract being awarded to them by Bexley Council in 2002 for Bexley's accommodation and day services for the learning disabled. Two Newsletters - November 2002 and February 2003, as well as a great deal of other detail, can be found on this link
http://www.bexley.gov.uk/service/social/serviceslearning.html.
It does appear that all the NHS Trusts are selling off their provider roles to various outside businesses. And the move to Foundation status of these Trusts will presumably lead them to be purchasers and controllers rather than the providers they currently are. At present (I think) Surrey & Borders gets its funds from the Primary Care Trusts.
Rosemary in Surrey
Rosemary I did put a comment on this blog ages ago from an SABP report I found which stated the garden centre would be going to MCCH Ltd who came second in the tender process. But then I got distracted by some comments by Peter Kinsey about the Richmond Fellowship not being able to pay wages because they are a Trust and that being a reason they stopped the £3 a day payments. Even now I am very concerned about the other projects going to the Richmond Fellowship as I do not think this will protect the disabled workers rights and opportunities at all.
Anyway it is only recently I linked MCCH Ltd to Helen Lockett the project manager from Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health as MCCH published the report she edited.
It seems to me that dispite our many freedom of information act questions we have still not been given any clear information from SABP about what the tender process entailed and how it was decided who would get which contracts. We also do not know the terms of the contracts. How much money is going to be changing hands and will SABP still be paying to place service users in the projects? If so how much will this cost compared to running the service themselves? I know it is government policy to farm out these services now but surely we as service users need much more information about and say in the whos and hows and how much of this provision. I also feel that in every tender process there should be a way of offering the same terms of the contracts to service users themselves so that we have the chance of running our own services maybe in the form of workers coops or some other arrangement which puts service users much more in control of policies. Service Users should be actively helped to do this by the Trusts before they are allowed to grant these contracts to outside agencies.
If the contracts do go to outside agencies then built into the contracts should be strict criteria concerning service users getting a lot of control in how the projects are developed and run.
The report 'Paying a Real Wage in Work Projects' published by MCCH was written for managers of work projects and tells them how to legally get around the Minimum Wage legislation by using a lot of volunteer labour. But a few service users are given real jobs that do pay the minimum wage. For this they pat themselves on the back as though they are being really progressive and good to the disabled people in their care. I do not get any sense from it that it is a basic right for disabled workers to get the minimum wage same as any other workers.
As Mandy commented a lot of these decisions are made behind closed doors and I do not feel even now after months on this campaign that we have access to any open and accountable information concerning the project contracts, the funding and the costings or the plans which seem to be being made for the disabled workers and not in consultation with them or with anyone else affected. I feel we are still being kept very much in the dark. Perhaps a meeting with MCCH Ltd will go some way to opening up information and consultation but I have not yet heard back from Karen Wooding about whether or not they will agree to have such a meeting taped and up on this site and she has not written with details of the inaccuracies she claims are on this site. We are still as much in the dark about their plans for the disabled workers at the garden centre as we were before I wrote to MCCH Ltd.
Jill,
I remember you posting that the contract had gone to another bidder during a time when SABP were wildly ducking and weaving and giving out as little information as they could. Indeed Fiona Edwards and the entire Board kept schtum about MCCH when I asked at the 28th September meeting how SABP were going to ensure that the Richmond Fellowship would be accountable once it took over operational control of the garden centre.
Fiona didnt provide an answer claiming that this information was covered by commercial confidentiality.
So, unless Fiona Edwards kept MCCH in the dark about this campaign as well the good folk of MCCH Society Ltd have been aware of and benefitting from the inaccuracies on this blog for months without objection.
Perhaps Karen Wooding would like to explain when and how MCCH first heard about this campaign and why it took so long for MCCH to realise it needed to better explain its plans for the garden centre to service users.
In fact, why did MCCH get awarded the contract Karen?
Jill,
I dont have any magic powers at all but the site monitoring function - see counter at bottom - picks up visitors IP's , where they are , what browser /OS they are using , referrer, entry and exit pages and how long they stay on the blog .
It'll also detect and display what browsers and OS's people are using , even what screen resolution and if someone searches for the blog through a major search engine like Google the search terms will show up in the visitors referral details.
We know who hosts MCCH's website so it wasnt exactly rocket science figuring out that Ms Wooding and Co systematically browsed the site shortly after Sandy received your e-mail. We even know how long they spent doing that.
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