What is the Role of Service Users in MCCH's projects?

From Jill Goble,

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 co-ops 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.