Care Commission Inspection Reports 2009

See what the Care Commission thinks of your excellent ARC services.  Read reports of their Inspections in April and May this year.  Note the very positive comments about the innovative and caring staff constantly striving to create ever more imaginative activities, both within the ARC building and outwith wherever possible.

Some ARC service users with profound and complex disabilities require the safety and security of familiar and calming surroundings.  Note however that already in early 2009 there is evidence of incremental stealth cuts with negative comments about staffing ratios, with basic repairs, decorating and maintenance not done.  It has been noticed that job ads are often “temporary”, indicating the long standing planned intention to close ARCs and sack 30 dedicated, thoughtful and very professional front line staff.

The ARCs are crucial for transition planning, which SWIA said in their damning 2006 report was one of the many D&G Social Work strategic failures.  The Castle Douglas ARC has been praised by an external expert on autism  for successfully implementing an original ground breaking programme that was “the best in Scotland and should be a model for the whole country”.  The family involved have been invited to submit a more detailed report concerning the excellent work that was done.  This has improved the quality of life for their daughter immensely, for which they are very grateful.  So they would like the the general public and the elected Councillors to know this and understand the work and results that the ARCs achieve.

Look at the 4 Star Visit Scotland award earned by the Merrick Café at Newton Stewart as reported on 04-Dec, a project which started around five years ago and would not exist but for the imagination of the ARC staff and the existence of the ARC itself.  Note the reports highlights that it still relies on the support of the “Activity and Resource Centre (ARC) as the training and catering base” now being independently described by inspectors as “a truly excellent feature with very good range of high quality produce”.  The Café  is a partnership project between Dumfries and Galloway Council’s social work services and leisure and sport, and training is provided through Dumfries and Galloway College.  So if the Head of Strategic Planning and the Social Work Director are allowed to implement their badly flawed and fallacious ideas then none of this would exist.  How can that possibly be accurately described as ’Strategic Planning and Leadership’, the competences and capability that SWIA so heavily criticised for their absence in 2006.  Has anything changed you may ask, despite the obvious lessons of Dunmuir Park described in earlier 2006 posts on this site’?

As another example of what would be lost under the Alexander/Proctor closure plan, consider the mental health nurse training that is carried out within the ARCs in collaboration with local colleges.  Presumably that too is not a ’strategic activity’ and can somehow be performed in a local street cafe or swimming pool?

Please note that all the Care Commission Inspection Reports for the six Dumfries & Galloway ARCs are available as pdf files on the Care Commission www site.  Direct links to the latest six 2009 pdf reports are below, these links will open in a new window and require Adobe PDF Reader:

• Annan ARC (DG12 6EF) Report – 28 April 2009
• Castle Douglas ARC (DG7 1TH) Report – 13 May 2009
• Dumfries ARC (DG1 2PS) Report – 07 May 2009
• Kirkconnel ARC (DG4 6NE) Report – 15 May 2009
• Newton Stewart ARC (DG8 6DQ) Report – 01 May 2009
• Stranraer ARC (DG9 7JJ) Report – 20 May 2009

Read these independent reports by strict Inspectors and judge for yourself the quality and range of the activities being supplied and ask why would anyone suggest they be closed down, when there are no available alternatives.  Closure is a cut, nothing more and nothing less.  Not only that, but posted within this site is the financial evidence that not only would there be no saving of £660,000 with the closures if the service was not reduced, as the plan falsely claims, but an additional net cost or budget increase of around £1.2Million.  That’s after the £660,000 ’saving’ from sacking 30 front line staff  is netted off.  This is the main reason why the plan was struck down, it failed the necessary test of achievability.  That it fell to a member of the public to produce the elementary financial sensitivity analysis to discover and demonstrate this, surely begs the question why we all foot the large salary bill for managers apparently incapable of doing their job.   Is this something your local councillor should be asking, because these managers are only accountable to the elected Members?