New Year's Resolution

We are well into the New Year now but all the holidaying and partying at the taxpayers expense appears to have taken its toll on the Chief Executive , Directors and managers of the Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS MH Trust as none of them seem able to provide any meaningful information about the future of the old moat garden centre and its workers.

MCCH Ltd must have been invited to all the same parties as well as they were due to complete a report on the old moat garden centre in mid December but I suppose all those mince pies and thoughts of expensive gifts from their loved ones, commissioning bodies and contractual partners must have been a bit distracting.....

So what is the future for the old moat garden centre and its workers in 2007?

Is the Trust going to bother to let anybody know?

We'd certainly like Surrey & Borders, MCCH Ltd and all those involved in the commissioning of the so called ' modernisation' of the Trust's work services to start meaningfully sharing information with its workers, their carers and families and other patients and members of the public who have expressed concern about what is going on.

The Trust has now had over 6 months to come clean and it is both tragic and annoying that for the majority of that time Trust Chief Executive Fiona Edwards , her managers and the movers and shakers behind MCCH Ltd and the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health have sought to conceal information from members of the public , information such as who got paid to do what, how much they got paid, what they actually did for that money and why if this public expenditure was fully justified and for a deserving and necessary end, an additional project , paid for by the public again of course, had to be setup after widespread condemnation of the outcome of modernisation on the garden centre and other disabled people involved with the Trust's work services.

To recap on that widespread condemnation in case the bureaucrats are still hungover from all their partying, a Surrey MP and local newspapers joined with service users and members of the public to condemn the decision to impoverish the garden centre workers in the name of modernisation as cruel and mean.


Since then the Trust has been asked to explain what guarantees are going to be in place to ensure that those people who are working at the garden centre receive the national minimum wage. The Trust has not answered this question.

The Trust has been asked to provide a viable business plan for the garden centre. It has declined to share its plans for the centre with us.

We have also asked what guarantees are in place to ensure that modernisation will not simply result in the Trust palming its work services off to charities like MCCH Ltd and the Richmond Fellowship which have a history of having disabled people work for nothing. The Trust has not answered this question.

Because of the involvment of Helen Lockett and Dr Bob Groves from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health we have also asked what guarantees will be in place to ensure that modernisation doesnt simply result in service users being targetted to get them off benefits to hit Government targets

The Trust has not answered this question either.

We have also asked, just as importantly , what non-work related services are going to be kept in place for service users whose MH problems or learning difficulties rule out regular mainstream work ? The Trust has not answered this question.

There are many other questions that the Trust has ducked and weaved to avoid answering over the last six months.

We'd like to see the Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS MH Trust turn over a new leaf this year and introduce a culture of sharing information and putting the needs of its service users first. Is this too much to hope for?