Letter sent for local press publication re Enable Scotland ‘conference’ 30-Nov

Sir:
The Enable-sponsored meeting held on Monday 30-Nov in conjunction with Dumfries & Galloway Council, supposedly to inform and involve learning disabled people and their families and carers about a new initiative towards personalisation, was a hypocritical dog-and-pony show, which left many attendees feeling patronised, insulted and frustrated. After two hours of presentation ringing with morally and politically correct reassurances that the council’s proposed personalisation programme is all about consultation and putting the learning disabled person “at the centre” of the support, Enable did not allow a single question from the floor, despite very polite requests. Judith Proctor, Head of Strategic Planning, Commissioning and Performance for the council, spoke at length and in detail about the new initiative without once mentioning the proposed closure of four ARCs, in which she is a key player. We still have many unanswered questions. Why do so many families have similar stories of neglect, indifference, poor communication, inadequate monitoring and ineffective support from the council? Why is the council reducing funding for learning disabled and other disabled people when it proposes increasing funding for its own administration? Why are the ARCs threatened for closure when they represent for many learning disabled people their best – often their only – support programme? Why has the senior management of the council not addressed the weaknesses in its social support programmes? Perhaps the most puzzling question is why did Enable and the council collude in wasting time, energy and taxpayers’ money in putting on this hypocritical and deeply insulting caricature of a consultation exercise?
Yowann Byghan

Letter for publication 27-Nov because Enable Scotland misleads & upsets ARC users

Sir.  The lies of ‘personalisation’ and ARC closures.  Disability issues are complex and emotional, sometimes hard to appreciate by those not directly affected.  A very grave disservice to everyone has been done by D&G Council, seemingly in covert collusion with Enable Scotland, by conflating ‘personalisation’ with ARC closures.  They jointly plan and suddenly announce radical changes and “cutbacks”, all promoted in highly misleading and upsetting publications that are simply untrue. 

With the required advance planning to book Easterbrook Hall and print flyers, it is now clear that Enable must have been informed of these planned changes, including the ARC closure ‘option’, long before elected Members, let alone the superbly dedicated front line D&G staff, service users, families and carers.  Because of this and the steadfast refusal of the SW Director and Enable Scotland to answer our simple questions, we are forced to issue a public correction, to be handed out on Monday 30^th at the hall.  Vulnerable service users are being misled.  What is being presented as innovative new ideas are not new at all.  The real facts are as follows:

• Personalisation is not a new idea or policy and ARCs have used personalisation for the past 15 years.
• Nothing has suddenly changed this year and all ARC Clients have Individual Personal Plans today.
• Direct Payments are not the same thing as ‘Personalisation’.
• There are no ‘Changes’ or ‘Cutbacks’ and there is NO ‘Brave New World for Social Care’.
• Direct Payments do benefit some people, but may not be an advantage for others.
• Service users already have choice and  control to decide whether they wish to keep and use their ARCs.
• If D&G Council and Enable Scotland, Chair Alex Russell of Castle Douglas, get their wish to close ARCs to save money, there will be many fewer choices and options, not more as John Alexander, Judith Proctor and Enable so misleadingly suggest.  

We can only urge everyone to ignore untrue, meaningless scaremongering hype and then question why such important strategic decisions are being announced so cynically via Enable Scotland, a national charity that should support the learning disabled.  We must make clear that criticism does not apply to the autonomous local Enable Branches, like Castle Douglas and Wigtown.  These are wholly separate registered charities with OSCR, they raise their own funds locally and do excellent front line ‘hands on’ voluntary work to support individual learning disabled people.  This is in stark contrast with the national ‘campaigning’ charity, which has an income in excess of £26 Million a year, yet as we now see supports cuts in local services, just as Enable has supported other closures in the past.  We have asked the Social Work Director to explain all this and dissociate the Council from this highly unsatisfactory situation.  He has not done so and so we are forced to draw our own conclusions.  From:  Concerned carers and parents in defence of Dumfries and Galloway ARCs and their clients.

Ill informed opinions expressed from ignorance of the ARCs by a supposed spokesman for “disabled people”

Email sent on Weds 25-Nov to:  Mr John Dowson as  Regional Co-ordinator with Dumfries and Galloway Coalition of Disabled People

Dear Mr Dowson.  Chris Green and Mark White met you with Ursula Corker and others at the Equality and Human Rights Commission Scotland session on Monday 23/11.  Ursula asked you for your views on the ARC redesign closure ‘option’, which you freely expounded, indicating you were in favour of closing the ARCs, saying they are outdated and Victorian, indeed institutions, a very loaded and pejorative term in this context.  As a spokesperson for ‘disabled people’ we found those opinions and descriptions at best very disappointing, as they are seemingly expressed from ignorance of the facts.  You indicated that you knew little about the work of the ARCs and had not visited them.

Chris said he would send you the six very informative Care Commission Inspection Reports on the D&G ARCs.  These are attached being public documents freely available on the www.  Yet you said you had not read these nor the D&G www site description of it’s service.  See link as follows:

There are six Activity and Resource Centres (ARC) throughout Dumfries and Galloway providing a day service base for Adults with learning disabilities. Some of the services provided are:

• Recreation and social activity
• Employment and job skills
• Development and educational service for people with learning disabilities
• Help support them in living as independently and dignified a life as possible

We also aim to meet family and personal support needs.  We strive to meet the recommendations in the “The Same as You” report offering support to users to access the wide range of facilities provided in Dumfries and Galloway. Encouraging the people we support to become integrated members of their community.

A wide range of activities are devised and implemented by a trained staff team, in consultation with service users and carers. In planning these activities we take into consideration both, individual needs and group dynamics. These staff members work closely together, with the member, to ensure that we provide the best possible service for each person.

Each service user will have the support of his or her own key and link worker. People using the service will have their individual needs assessed and reviewed regularly, thus ensuring that we continue to meet their personal development needs.

We provide services to individuals who are in receipt of Direct Payments, and accept Self-referrals from these people.

We invite you to consider that description, which is ‘personalisation’ and the Care Commission independent and critical observations of an excellent service operating in 6 centres.  Please would you compare and contrast that to the closure Report of 12^th Oct and, given your role as Regional Coordinator express your opinions after visiting the centres and engaging in an informed debate based on facts with a cross section of users and carers.

You might also care to obtain the glowing and positive D&G press release from around 7/11 about the Merrick Café & Newton Stewart ARC.  It was reporting a tourist an award for the café praising what it does and how it is all supported “from the Newton Stewart ARC buildings base”.

Talk to Isabel Millar about the ringing endorsement of a national expert on autism who praised the innovative work of the Castle Douglas ARC in working with ‘children’ (teens under 18) and developing the most personalised individual plans for transition to adult services, seen by SWIA in 2006 as a strategic failure.  That expert said D&G was leading Scotland in this work for the most profoundly disabled.  “Outdated”, “Victorian”, “Institutions”?   Please may we invite you to check the facts before expressing what many who do know may perceive as ill informed opinions, which also wrongly confuse and conflate ‘personalisation’ with direct payments and self directed support.  With which we are wholly in favour, where appropriate, but one size does not fit all.  Are we correct to believe that your perspective may be more influenced by greater experience with the physically disabled who enjoy full mental capacity and are thus able to fully plan and manage their own affairs?

You also seemed in doubt about why the ARC closure option was unanimously rejected, saying it was a weak reaction to an emotional outburst of those who refuse to join the “Brave New World”, implying that all in the community who protested were somehow in the dark ages.  Well it wasn’t weakness of councillors running away from unpopular decisions, another ill informed opinion.  It was because all savings proposals had to pass a test of “achievability & sustainability”.  If you had been in the chamber during the marathon 6 hour session, as Chris was, you would know that fact.  You will see from the attached spreadsheet analysis first published to elected members on Weds 28^th October, 4 weeks ago, that ‘plan’ is not achievable.  It does not result in a saving, but to maintain the same service with a direct payment of only £10 per hour it would cost an extra £1.22 Million, that is after offsetting the £660K saving by closing 4 unidentified buildings in only 4 months by 1^st April 2010.

After four weeks none of the figures, calculations and assumptions in that elementary analysis, which accords with common sense to anyone with any real experience of learning disabled people, have been challenged in any way by any Officer or Member.  On Monday afternoon the Chief Executive confirmed that analysis was the key reason why that option had to be withdrawn.  It was flawed in every way.  Ask Cllr Davidson, who was present at that meeting, if you do not believe this.  On 3/11 he said immediately after the Corporate Committee decision that it was the “sensitivity analysis that swung it”.

There was a huge disservice done to the learning disabled by that badly written and flawed closure ‘option’ paper.  The greatest flaw is the conflation of ARC closure with ‘personalisation’ by the authors.  This is creating great and needless confusion, needless controversy and upset, which it is hoped was not the deliberate intention.  But your contribution and that of Enable with a false prospectus of “cost cuts” and change is also not helping those you purport to represent and protect their “rights”.         

You, along with the authors of that ‘option’ use the term ‘personalisation’ as a synonym for direct payment and self directed support, which they are not.  It exemplifies the sort of ignorance that we note among many, including some elected members.  There is nothing whatsoever wrong with direct payment, if there are suitable services available to be purchased, which meet the users’ needs.  This is often easier to realise with the physically disabled, the population we assume that you may well be more familiar with?  Is that a correct assumption?  There is simply no community based capacity of suitable varied safe and secure activities or public places available or planned to replace 6½hrs activity per day for 2 days, let alone 4 or even 5 days a week in Dumfries, let alone Annan or CD or Kirkconnel etc.  Unless there are such facilities then there is nothing to ‘purchase’ with a direct payment.  We do not know anyone who does not know of ‘direct payments’ being available to them.  That they choose not to take them up speaks volumes.   

Note that John Alexander has not yet replied to our simple questions as attached nor the simple FoI requests.  As Regional Coordinator please will you urge him to do so?  Ditto Mr Dunning at Enable Scotland, a charity that strayed far from the ‘hands on’ roots of its founders.  But that is still exemplified by the local branches like Castle Douglas and Newton Stewart, that are autonomous raise their own local funds and have a separate OSCR registration.  They do good valuable work for individual disabled people.  We see little of that from the increasingly bureaucratic and expanding administration of Enable Scotland ever more ‘managers’ to manage what many ask?  ‘Life long carers’?  A fraction of the ~£26 Million annual income spent on the front line, like ARCs, would work wonders, but may not bring much by way of “praise and honours”.   

Learning disability is a complex area, with much understandable ignorance unless personally involved.  We, that is families, service users and carers, are most concerned about the future, not the past.  The future requires real effective strategic planning.  There are obviously cost pressures and choices to be made.  The most successful outcomes will only be achieved with dialogue, which means active front line participation and involvement.  That has not been happening in all cases, hence the recent debacle.

Because it is very complex and poorly understood area, with a lot of ill defined ideologically loaded ‘jargon’, we have suggested it may be useful for all Members to hear directly from families/carers/service users and ask them questions in some form of briefing or seminar?  All the families want is to be positive and achieve the best possible outcomes within whatever reasonable constraints we all understand must apply.  But that requires early up front input and Members’ decisions that are well informed.  We assert that recent events have evidenced that it cannot be left to the ‘experts’, since that route has clearly failed.  

What is your strategic vision of the Learning Disability service in D&G?  Surely not what we have just witnessed and what you are contributing to?  Is there anything in this that may not be placed on the public record?  We look forward to your comments after reading the attached and considering the arguments advanced herein and on Monday.

Thank you.  CJ & J Green and as appointed welfare attorneys for a vulnerable adult.

Email reply from John Dowson Thurs 26-Nov

Kirkconnel ARC Andrea Thomson’s 2351 signature petition

Cumnock Chronicle:  Published: Wednesday, 11th November, 2009 2:59pm

Kirkconnel ARC won’t be lost.  A Sanquhar mum says her world was turned upside down during the battle to save her son’s local Activity and Resource Centre ARC.

Staff and service users breathed a sigh of relief last Tuesday when Dumfries and Galloway Council dropped their controversial plans to cut ARCs across the region.  Mum, Andrea Thomson from Forsyth Avenue gathered 2,351 signatures of support to save son Lynsey’s local ARC in Kirkconnel.  She said: “We’re absolutely delighted at the outcome.”.

But it’s only postponed for a year.  tHe fight must go on