MSPs asked if ARC closure plan is an unintended consequence of Scottish Parliament plan now revealed by DGPPG research.

Our local MSPs and later Trish Godman, who is a member of the cross-party group for learning disability, were asked by DGPPG if the unintended consequence of a Scottish Parliament plan is to cause the closure of Dumfries and Galloway ARCs?

Dr Murray, Alex Fergusson, Alasdair Morgan, and Michael Russell.   This is a matter for MSPs.

This matter is not party political.  After the Castle Douglas meeting on 16-Dec , you have details of this or please see www.dumfries-galloway.org.uk since we have done some research of our own.  From what we find it seems that the underlying driving force of the ARC closures, that no one wants, is in fact the Scottish Government / Parliament.  Are we correct and did you understand this?  Is it yet another unintended consequence of well intentioned ideas from those who don’t actually understand the day to day reality of the lives of the learning disabled and those who care for them?

Someone in the Government / Parliament wants everyone with needs to have an individual budget.  So it’s now renamed “Personalisation and Self Directed Support”, more confusing jargon.  The definition in the master plan is:

“Personalisation describes a model of care that gives the person needing support the means to decide and purchase or secure it in a way that best meets the outcomes that they want for their lives.  It is about the people that need support defining, to an extent, the support that they want and about them being given an amount of resource that enables them to procure it”.

We understand that this drive to give people their own cash as a budget to spend is for a much wider population than just the learning disabled.  Of course it is much easier for the able minded to manage their affairs in this way and a ‘good thing’ for those who want it.  But it doesn’t need a huge pilot to establish that with ARC closures as a consequence.

But the experts want everyone to use it, perhaps it saves money?  We have discovered, because it seems to be kept secret from us, the “Personalisation Change Programme Board Programme” and the “Dumfries and Galloway Personalisation Project Plan January 2009”, which emanate from the Parliament.  The way we read it the intended ARC closures are explicit and embedded in this plan or programme, with “doubled up” cash provided by the tax payer to do it.  Are we correct because you cannot agree with or approve of this action having so rightly and vociferously opposed it over the last two months?

The Scottish Parliament master plan discloses funds to D&G to do this are:  2008/9 £170K;  2009/10 £510K and £510K for 2010/11.  We wish to know how these funds have been used this year and how they are be budgeted to used next year and have asked this in the 16-Nov meeting action points, to be confirmed under FoI.

Everyone agrees the ARCs do a great, essential and valuable job.  They are vital.  So no one could understand the plan to close 4 of them by 31^st March 2010.  Moreover it seemed to cost more.  But we didn’t know about the “doubled up” funding!  Do you and can you explain this?  We all feel it’s a gross waste of taxpayers’ cash at a time of acute shortages and front line cuts.

What is the Personalisation Change Programme Board? We have asked for immediate formal representation on this on behalf of more than 250 existing and potential Learning Disabled service users.

ARC “redesign and closure” is a vision explicitly stated in the Personalisation Change Programme Board Programme and the Dumfries and Galloway Personalisation Project Plan January 2009.   Not only does this Plan set out the funds detailed above, but it also lists “three themes”

The first is “Investing to save:  this theme will seek to double fund buildings based care to enable remodelling of the facilities while encouraging service users to adopt other forms of social care in the community using self directed support”.   This seems to explain the ARC closure plan.  Is this the blueprint and root of the plan?  If so then it really does come from the Scottish Parliament, who are giving our taxes to D&G Council to shut our ARCs against all our wishes, including yours as our MSPs.

We have asked if D&G Council Members understand any of this, but more importantly do you as our MSPs?

Do you have access to all these plans and papers, because we have asked for them?   Where all this is being planned, noting there are other related groups like the “Personalisation Executive Group”, which agreed to “go live with personalisation on 1 Nov 09, the date for new referrals”.  No wonder this new jolly is soaking up £1.2Million with new managers and expanding bureaucracy etc.  But look at the virulent criticism of the “shambles” in Wigtownshire and the request to stop the waste, see the DGPPG www site.

We all look forward to hearing from you on a cross party basis to make some sense of all this, because if it is how it seems then it is a hideous waste also creating great and needless upset, when there are real problems to fix, like getting transition right.  Talk to SWIA about that.

Thank you once again for looking into this and getting some answers.  We would like the wasteful pilot stopped, but if that’s not possible then take the ARCs out of the planned equation entirely and create a new but realistic ‘vision’.    DGPPG