More “uncaring and untrustworthy” hypocrisy from Dumfries & Galloway Council who have no concept of Strategic Planning

See Dumfries & Galloway Standard Frid 26th and the story of a £2,500 cut to RDA (Riding for the Disabled) at Barend and Nithsdale.  This is part of the insidious ARC closure cuts.

For this latest and new cut of £2500 directly affects the intended ARC closure plan.  What the public may not appreciate is that the RDA now provide one of the very few “non buildings based” facilities “in the community” for ARC service users as well.  At Barend there is a weekly session for learning disabled adults, a group regularly travel out from the Castle Douglas ARC on a Wednesday and pay a nominal amount per session from their Income Support.  Without the RDA volunteer charity support this much loved and very beneficial facility would not exist.  Note that the RDA is a ‘real’ charity of volunteers getting their hands dirty.  It is not a ‘pseudo charity’ like UCI where the Council & NHS are content to spend £50,000 of your money to employ unaccountable ‘managers’ replicating work that is very effectively carried out by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers.   Yet £2,500 can be cut from the RDA, who provide a real front line service for the disabled.

Consider that on the one hand the Alexander/Proctor ARC closure plan states that there must be more activity “in the community” in the name of Personalisation and Choice, whilst on the other the same Council cuts £2,500 from an existing key and much loved facility offered by the RDA.  You could not make this up!

But whilst doing this they are also wasting £1.2 Million on a trial pilot in Wigtownshire and appointing a £36.5K pa Manager for Evaluation & Development and running a 22 person ‘Personalisation Board’, on which UCI sit, but not representing  the learning disabled.  What sort of strategic thinking and planning is this?  But as the headline in the Galloway News 25 Feb said , the Social Work Director J Alexander is “uncaring and untrustworthy”.  This is more evidence he and other Council managers are also incompetent and are simply following short term short sighted budget cuts wherever there are seemingly ’soft’ targets.  Just like the maintenance shambles and the current Care Commission complaint detailed on this site, amongst much else.  Look at the waste whilst the vulnerable suffer cuts.  Who is investigating this?  What are our senior and very well paid Elected Members doing?

Please would they post a comment on this site, if they are concerned?