About

Dumfries and Galloway Public Protest Group:  Simply seeking honesty, transparency and real participation for the learning disabled and their carers and to challenge the reduction in front line services, like the intended closure of our Activity Resource Centres (ARCs)

This website and information evolved from the earlier Dunmuir Park Protest Group (DPPG) site in 2006.  The DGPPG site was created in October 2009 by concerned carers and families in defence of front line services, particularly the six excellent Dumfries & Galloway ARCs and their users.  As with Dunmuir Park, the 2009 ARC closure plan was defeated.  It is unfortunately necessary to continue the fight into 2010 because the senior Dumfries and Galloway Council and NHS Dumfries & Galloway managers remain determined to close our ARC facilities, notwithstanding the instruction to delay for one year by Elected Members.  It is now closure by stealth, all in the false name of ‘Personalisation’, no doubt with reduced maintenance and other small incremental cuts they hope we will not notice.  So be alert and very careful.  There are still no answers to our simple questions from managers or senior elected Members.  Some interesting documents have been revealed under Freedom of Information requests, but this is partial and incomplete.  There is obsessive secrecy and a determination to deny real participation and consultation.  The various articles and comments are presented in date order and are updated as new information emerges.  Of current interest is the large ‘Personalisation Board’ spending £1.2Million on the Wigtown pilot, with no effective representation of the Learning Disabled.

We are asking for transparency and honesty, behaviour not so far shown by this Council.  Indeed you will see that Social Work Director John Alexander has unilaterally reneged on agreements made at a public meeting on 16-Dec 2009 and is now refusing to meet or communicate with this group of carers, despite his statutory obligation to consult with us.  Our opposition is obviously being too effective and he has no answers to the questions raised.  This will be the subject of formal complaint to the Chief Executive, when he returns to work.  The situation is a repeat of 2006 and decisions that senior managers were then forced to reverse.  We are again dealing some of the very same officers repeating what they did in 2006, when many families had to take the same sort of group action, and succeeded against the odds.   On this site you can review some of this history and see how certain officers then behaved  by reading the entries for 2006 as listed by month on the right.  Because of this history we need to question everything they say and do.   You can report it on this www site.  Make comments.  Disagree.  Ask questions.  Use this site to tell others what’s going on in your ARC and area.  Remember people in Annan or Kirkconnel may not know what’s happening in Stranraer or Castle Douglas, let alone Dumfries or Newton Stewart.

There is a waiting list for ARC places, so one way for managers to ‘cut costs’ is to freeze out new users, perhaps your friends?  Or get you to cut your hours, or perhaps pressure you to come a day or two less?  Or pressure you into unwanted Direct Payments, so you are forced to fend for yourself.   Remember that if you accept a Direct Payment there is no guarantee it will increase year by year in line with the inevitable inflation inthe cost of the service you could purchase at the outset.  Setting aside the administration burden of direct payments, the ability for you to choose is no different to a general benefit like a pension.  And look how pensions have fallen behind prices and wages.  Is that one way in which the “budgets will go further” by withering in value in real terms?

Remember that if D&G Council and NHS Dumfries and Galloway do close your ARC, in collusion with Enable Scotland as the Personalisation Board minutes now reveal, then you and potential service users will have very many fewer options, not more.  Your care hours will be cut, that is an inevitable consequence of this privatisation agenda.  It is all really intended to reduce budgets and front line care.

Don’t be fooled by the wonderful words like, “Brave New World” or the other fancy words and jargon management speak like ‘personalisation’.  They are mixing this up with closures to hide what they are doing and confuse you.  Direct payments, which exist now, are not the same thing as personalisation and do benefit some people, but may not be an advantage for everyone.  One size does not fit all.  Do not believe the meaningless scaremongering hype wrongly promoted by Enable Scotland, as well as Dumfries and Galloway Council.

Do you want your ARC?  You Decide.  Don’t be misled.  What may sound like innovative ideas are not new at all.  ‘Modernisation’, ‘Redesign’ and ’21st Century’, actually mean cost cutting and closure, with much reduced front line services to users and their families.

‘Personalisation’ is not a new idea or a new policy.  Your ARCs have used person centred planning for the last 10 or more years.  Nothing has suddenly changed except the wish to promote direct payments or “self directed support”.   All ARC clients, and there are around 250 in the 6 centres, have the most personal and individualised care plans today.  Personalisation in this Council means direct payments and no ARC, once they are closed where will you go and what will you do for the same time?

Director Alexander claims, we say falsely, that the ARCs are “not cost effective”, but will not provide his evidence.  He intends that they are to be closed, because that is his ‘vision’.  He wants change and cutbacks to save money.  Despite the scaremongering and falsely misleading literature you were given by Enable Scotland last year, there is no “Brave New World of Social Care”, just a reduced service and closure with this national charity helping the Council.  That very misleading headline from Enable Scotland is not helping you, but instead is creating uncertainty and upset.  You may wish to ask why this national charity is soliciting donations supposedly to help the learning disabled, but  is actually working with the Council against your interests and covertly supporting closure of your ARCs?  Our complaints to Enable Scotland Council have been ignored, such is their arrogance.

This site is your ‘notice board’.  Please feel free to use it to have your say.  It’s very easy and simple to write and ‘post’ your comments, feedback, querstions, disagreement, challenges etc. etc.  You can also inform others.