Open discussion – Weds 16-Dec 11am Castle Douglas Community Centre Cotton St.

Questions as the Agenda for the Open Discussion re ARCs with DGPPG  Weds 16-Dec Castle Douglas.  The following questions were submitted to Mr John Alexander as agreed.  The full text of the email sent 17:27 on 15-Dec is reproduced after the list.

1. First we request an unreserved and genuine, humble public apology to everyone, including elected Members, for all the upset and distress caused since 20-Oct and an unequivocal assurance this will never be repeated.
2. To rebuild confidence and trust and avoid such repetition, we ask that you immediately restore ‘effective participation’ of families / carers / service users in all future strategic planning, as used to exist pre 2006 SWIA.  We first asked for this on 5-Nov, (see www site) but as yet there is no response or answer.  Please will you now confirm this will happen at the start of next year in a format that is acceptable to us?
3. Whatever happens re ‘personalisation’, please confirm that all service users shall have the choice by right in future to use their individual budget, if they desire to work that way or it is imposed, to purchase their existing service at their ARC?
4. How do both authors explain their closure plan was not achievable and do they agree with the sensitivity analysis, which confirms the plan was either deliberately misleading to Members or based on a fundamental lie by claiming there were no cuts in the service to be provided?  Why was this not understood and analysed by the authors before it was published?
5. Why did you ignore Regulation 113 of the ‘Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act’, which requires a min 3 months notice of service closure / cancellation, the fullest consultation and that alternatives have to be identified and in place?  Surely to fail to advise Members of that basic regulatory requirement and not include it in the plan ‘Risk Assessment’, is recklessly incompetent at best, given that you confirmed the plan would start 31^st March 2010 and save £660K for a full year?
6. Why are you mixing up and conflating the rhetoric of ‘personalisation’ with individual budgets / direct payments and closures & cuts?  Will these now be clearly separated in future to avoid creating needless confusion?  Please confirm ‘personalisation’ is not in fact ‘new’ in terms of person centred planning and needs assessment, which exists now at all ARCs?
7. How can £1.2 Million pounds being spent over 3 years on the Wigtown ‘personalisation pilot’ be justified now, when front line services are being cut.  This is still public money, even if coming from the Scottish Parliament.  It is creating even more ‘managers’, yet you wanted to sack 30 carers on 31-March 2010 and it contradicts the ‘austerity’ presentation by Gavin Stevenson at the budget consultation meetings.
8. Why is there no local Wigtown representation of any families, carers & service users amongst the 21 people listed as ‘running’ this pilot?  It looks like an ‘ivory tower’ exercise of those distant from the front line, just like ‘the plan’.
9. When will we receive full disclosure under the Freedom of Information requests of 16-Nov, now well outside the statutory 20 day limit for disclosure?  What are you hiding and why?  What is the Social Work Scrutiny Process apparently responsible for the plan?  What 4 ARCs were intended to close, or is that what is being hidden?  Did the plan simply arise out of thin air because apparently there are no back up papers in existence?  We do not believe that is actually the case.  Is it?
10. Do the authors fully understand the detail of all the work that the ARCs carry out, for much of which a secure ‘building base’ is essential?  As just two examples consider strategic transition work required by SWIA and mental health nurse training.
11. On what basis and why is Ms Proctor now saying the Castle Douglas Print Shop & Newton Stewart Merrick Café will not close, because they are ‘not buildings’, but clearly implying the ARCs, some purpose built, will close?  We wish such statements to be withdrawn or the underlying logic fully explained.
12. How many service users or carers or families have signalled to you by whatever means that they are on favour of and agree with any ARCs closing?  Will you actual listen to and act upon real consultation like this, especially if a majority reject your interpretation of ‘personalisation’?  What is happening about the existing waiting list for ARC places and the upcoming transition cohort, which further increases demand?  What is your “vision” and where is the underlying strategic planning?

If not present then Ms Judith Proctor as joint Head of Strategic Planning with partner NHS D&G, is understood to be fully bound to the answers given by John Alexander at this meeting.

15-Dec at 17:27  DGPPG wrote:   Dear Mr Alexander.

Numbers:  Annan ARC are holding their first ‘families group’ meeting this afternoon, so allowing for some representatives for tomorrow we estimate numbers to be at least ~20 or so.  Obviously there would be many more but for the very short notice of only 2 days, which is insufficient time for many carers, plus the limitation of the selected room, which we understand you told the BBC has space for 25 or thereabouts.  The BBC has announced the meeting four times today on the local news and hopefully again in the morning.  So more may decide to turn up, because this is a crucial matter for so many, whilst feelings are wholly justifiably running very high, with all the ongoing uncertainty.  So you may wish to arrange a larger room as a contingency?

Questions:  To ensure the discussion is productive the DGPPG said a list of questions would be submitted in advance, as below.  We request these be taken in this order as a structure to the meeting, which will be conducted with mutual respect, as requested.  However the group’s questions are of necessity ‘hard hitting’ because they have to be, given the unreasonable situation you and Ms Proctor have put us all in for nearly two months.  The Enable Scotland 30-Nov shambles inevitably compounded that upset and distress, as we said it would.  So simple straightforward and positive answers, that display a real reflective understanding of what damage has been done to the families, could start to rebuild confidence, now that all trust has been destroyed.  Because of 30-Nov you know we have already requested that your co-author of ‘the plan’ also attend the meeting.  If she, as joint Head of Strategic Planning including the partner NHS D&G, is not doing so alongside you, then we wish to clearly understand that what you say binds her as well and ask that you confirm this.   Please will you print say 30 spare copies of this list and bring these to the meeting.

As these 12 questions are worked through there may be other issues to add, along with points of detail.  You may wish to prepare simple but substantive written answers for the meeting, and then expand on these.  That would be helpful.  Are there any topics you wish to add after these 12 headings have been dealt with?

We note there is a Council “note taker”, so we too require an accurate record and shall digitally record the proceedings.  We state that Chatham House rules expressly do not apply and everything discussed is deemed to be on the public record.  Thank you.

DGPPG   www.dumfries-galloway.org.uk

Supplementary questions fro Newton Stewart ARC families.  8 will attend at Castle Douglas.  We want Mr Alexander and Ms Proctor to answer all these pots as well:

Specific questions & detail from Newton Stewart ARC families, as part of DGPPG

These questions and details illustrate just how far out of touch the ‘Strategic Planners’ are from front line reality.  Yet they produce and propose ‘plans’ that Members are expected to accept and approve, blindly trusting the Officers to be ‘expert’.

When will the Members take the blinkers off and really question these Officers, or let us advise them how do it properly?  They might just find those Officers are not so ‘expert’ after all!

Why do you JA propose closing the ARCs? In October it seemed the reason was to save £660,000 from the budget in the biggest Social Work saving ‘option’.  That much was clear to everyone; it was purely on the grounds of saving money, with no cut in service.  But now and suddenly the reason is changing, rather like going to war.  Now it seems it’s to move away from “a building based” care system to fit in with “personalisation”, whatever that really means.  What does it mean?
On Sun 13-Dec at 17:42  Council Leader Ivor Hyslop told us that: “when this was first before me as a member I thought it was on the back of the Wigtownshire pilot. When I questioned this I found out that the pilot hadn’t started. I also said I would be keen to see how this pilot went as I had heard it was working in other areas, but, the other areas seem to be urban compared to our mainly rural. I would like to have the information from the pilot to help me make a decision. I would also confirm that when I asked Mr Alexander he does see personalisation as the way forward, how that translates on the ground is yet to be decided.  I hope this clarifies my views.  IH”

Cllr Hyslop clearly understands and confirms what John Alexander has intimated to others,  including we understand Russell  Brown MP.  That he, as Social Work Director, sees ‘personalisation’ as the way forward or his ‘vision’.  What exactly does all this mean and what has ‘personalisation’ got to do with closing buildings, other than to crudely save money?

Let’s examine the facts from the ‘front line’.  Do Mr Alexander & Ms Proctor in their insulated world not understand that all the food for the Merrick Café is totally prepared at Newton Stewart ARC?  The supervisory staff also come from Newton Stewart ARC.  So you don’t have to have a degree to understand that if the ARC goes then so does the Café and all it stands for after more than 5 years.   We don’t hear his department boasting about that ‘personalisation’ while revelling in the praise, which he gratefully held up as a shinning example of what can be achieved by ARC’s just a short time ago.  See the correctly very positive press reports and our Care Commission Inspection compliments.

Will JA therefore explain what alternative there will be to the ARC in Newton Stewart that is not “buildings based”? Because there is absolutely nothing here that the users, who are only capable of using a building based system, could use.

The human story of social or communal life.  Do JA or JP know that we have lost two of our ARC users in very tragic circumstances in the last few weeks?  Were either of them concerned enough to have been around the ARC to see just how that centre helped the members to come to terms with the tragic deaths of two of their close friends.  They should have been before publishing such nonsense!  So should elected Members, before they make life changing decisions.  This again proves just what ARCs are about, because without the help of the ARC staff we hate to think what torment those very vulnerable people would have had to endure on their own. To us who see it and live it everyday, this proves how vital the ARC is as a centre, it is THE BUILDING, where users can seek help and reassurance from caring staff who they know and trust.  In no other establishment would you find people with the time and sincere conviction of caring for their members.

£1.2 Million for a ‘pilot’.  Considering all the money and importance being placed by JA on ‘personalisation’, please will he explain to us all why his number one person – another new manager appointed for the implementation of ‘personalisation in the Wigtownshire  pilot, is working from her dining room table at home, she has no office.  How are we to take things seriously and believe in his “vision”, whatever that is, when things like this are happening.  We see it as just a joke and a farce.  But it’s good they are saving some of the £1.2 Million, whilst cutting front line services, like crucial buses that vulnerable people rely on.  It just shows the complete incompetency of the way they are running things such that we all seriously wonder if they are really on the same planet as us.  What is their response to all this?