Users of addiction services in Argyll and Bute have been distressed by the chaotic and unmanaged fast tracking of a profound change to the delivery of these services, due to take place on 1st January 2015 but with no cover except NHS 24 between then and 5th January.
This was another wart on a system that all objective observers at all levels agree is patently nowhere near ready to start on 1st January.
The manic and, at best, incoherent process has been the work of Argyll and Bute’s Alcohol and Drugs Partnership [ADP] whose parent bodies are Argyll and Bute Council and NHS Highland.
Yesterday, 19th December, the ADP Chair informed the two local MSPs, some councillors and the local service providers whose contracts are being terminated on 1st January – that, in a belated consideration of the needs of service users, the contracts of the 3rd Sector local groups are to be extended until 31st January 2015.
Local MSP, Jackie Baillie, has followed up her earlier email to Community Safety Minister, Paul Wheelhouse MSP, in which she supported the contact made with him by her fellow local MSP, Michael Russell. Both MSPs are working together to redress the situation at ADP and MR Russell has previously supported MS Baiilie request to Audit Scotland to conduct a review of the ADP tendering process.
In response to an email on the situation to her from the Minister this morning , 20th December, Ms Baillie has suggested that a three month, not a one month, transition to having these services provided by a single company new to Argyll and across mainland and islands would be a more appropriate reassurance to service users.
After issues around this accelerated change of delivery, some yet to be unravelled, no one has any confidence in the ADP’s ability to manage and deliver an assured and smooth transition between very different models of service provision.
The Minister is clearly engaged in the matter and supportive of the needs of the service users for which the Scottish Government provides funding to ADPs.
However, from his email to Jackie Baillie this morning, Mr Wheelhouse seems, in some key aspects of the situation, to have been deliberately misinformed to influence his judgment.
Below are the emails they exchanged this morning and below that are the queries we would raise from the text of the Minister’s email to Jackie Baillie on the obvious misrepresentation of facts to him by senior ADP and Council officials. The specific fingerprints on the misrepresentational briefing to Mr Wheelhouse are immediately recogisable to those who have seen this operator at work before.
Email from Community Safety Minister to Jackie Baillie MSP
On 20 Dec 2014, at 10:42, Minister for Community Safety and LegalAffairs wrote:
‘Ms Baillie
Please see message from Mr Wheelhouse below.
Elinor [Ed: we do not understand 'Elinor' either]
I would like to thank you for your involvement in this issue, and take this opportunity to reassure you that I share your concerns around the operation of Argyll and Bute ADP and the impact on service users. I know that you and Mr Russell had worked closely with my predecessor to try and rectify this issue and again I would like to assure you that I will be doing everything I can to resolve it.
I would like to specifically address the issue of the handover of services to Addaction, and ensuring that this is done without disruption to the service users. Officials have yesterday morning (19 December) been in touch with the Argyll and Bute ADP Coordinator, and I can confirm that the ADP and Argyll and Bute Council have agreed to extend existing local service contracts by one month to 31st January 2015, to allow for a smoother transition from one contract to another with Addaction, thus enabling service users to be referred over safely. Written confirmation from the ADP is expected to come to the Scottish Government later on this, and I believe local services have been informed about the extension of the contracts.
Addaction’s contract will still begin on 1st January, and posters are being circulated in the area with emergency telephone numbers for Addaction and NHS 24. Due to some of the existing service providers continuing to use their premises without ADP funding, it has meant that Addaction have been unable to take up residence and base themselves there, however, they will be using Kaleidoscope’s premises in Dunoon, and elsewhere will use local Social Work offices and GP Practices whilst securing more suitable premises.
With regards the other issues you raise around the transfer of service users contact details, and the TUPE process for the transfer of staff members, negotiations are continuing between the ADP, the Council and the employees to try and move things forward. However, I think you’ll agree with me that the most important thing at this time is ensuring that service users will continue to receive the same level of care over the Christmas and New Year period until this transition takes place.
Paul Wheelhouse’
Reply from Jackie Baillie MSP to Mr Wheelhouse
From: “Baillie J (Jackie), MSP” <Jackie.Baillie.msp@scottish.parliament.uk>
Date: 20 December 2014 10:58:57 GMT
To: Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs, “Russell MW (Michael), MSP” <Michael.Russell.MSP@scottish.parliament.uk> [and more]
Subject: Re: Argyll & Bute ADP – URGENT
‘Dear Paul
Many thanks for taking swift action to ensure that the interests of service users are protected over the Christmas and New Year period. This will be a relief to many service users who were concerned about the prospect of having unfamiliar and potentially less support over a difficult period.
A number of the third sector providers are suggesting that a three month hand over period would be better in ensuring a smooth transition for service users.
For many service users, and certainly for those from my area, there has been no consultation at all by the council. Their views, that should be at the centre of shaping the change, have essentially been ignored. I had hoped that the basic principle of being ‘done with’ rather than ‘done to’ would have been understood across all levels of government. It is in my view an important means of securing the best possible result for users and the agencies providing a service.
On the basis of a smooth transition and enabling consultation to secure ownership of the outcome, I would be most grateful if you would consider encouraging the ADP to have a three month transition period.
Best wishes
Jackie’
Has the Minister been correctly informed by ADP and Council officials?
When it comes to information provided by senior officers of Argyll and Bute Council and ADP on troubled issues, there is – On documented form – every reason to take it with the contents of a few salt pans.
A new Minister who may not have had experience of dealing with these bodies before may be prone to take at face value assurances and information provided by high ranking executives.
In this case, such innocent trust would be – has been – profoundly misplaced.
There is evidence in Mr Wheelhouse’s email above to Ms Baillie, that the understanding he has been given on some key matters is askew of the facts and has been consciously presented to influence his perceptions of how the land lies in this awful mess.
We cite below two major instances of clear misrepresentation to the Minister.
The first instance of misinformation
The first instance of our concern here is where the Minister says: ‘Due to some of the existing service providers continuing to use their premises without ADP funding, it has meant that Addaction have been unable to take up residence and base themselves there’.
This is arrant nonsense.
The obvious implication here is that Addaction’s access to premises they have every right to inhabit is being wrongly obstructed by ‘some’ local providers’ refusal to move out.
In every way this is mischievous misrepresentation.
Firstly, with the exception of Kaleidoscope in Cowal [which owns its premises], all of the 3rd Sector local service providers lease their own.
The ADP does not provide premises for any of the local service providers; and it has no right to predicate any single thing on the expectation that any of the 3rd sector groups would or should vacate their premises.
Secondly, it deceives the Minister to suggest that each group’s occupation of its premises is contingent upon ADP funding.
The 3rd Sector groups have always had to seek funding from other sources, like major charitable foundations, because the ADP funding provided is inadequate, based on out of date calibrations they have been unable to explain or defend in the face of repeated requests from local providers. The funding contributed by Argyll and Bute Council was also cut by 10% a few years ago and has never been restored.
These groups have even had to fight for their funding every year, with their services inexplicably classed as ‘non-recurring’ – yet they are as necessary and they recur as regularly as have the statutory services.
The fact is they have to and do raise funds for the work they do beyond ADP; they lease their own premises in their own names – and how they pay for them is their own business.
A single and unpleasantly telling insight into the relationship between the ADP, the 3rd Sector groups and their other funders comes from an occasion where an ADP manager employed by Argyll and Bute Council, discovered that a member of one 3rd Sector local service provider had been diagnosed with a long term illness and would require gruelling treatment. Without discussing the detail of this with the person involved, she is said to have taken it upon herself to inform a third party funding body that, on these grounds, they ought not to fund this group. The funding was withdrawn.
In fact, the group member concerned may have been ill but never stopped working, even from home, on the single occasion she was off work – for two weeks.
There was nothing to justify this proactive intervention by a council employee with a third party funding body for a 3rd Sector group. In contemporary parlance, this action was pretty evil.
The episode of course demonstrates the actuality that these groups seek funding from several bodies; but as an example of the working ethos of at least one senior staffer in ADP, it also illuminates the reason for the endemic distrust of the ADP by the 3rd Sector groups.
If the ADP was seriously configuring a new distanced mode of service delivery on the assumption that the 3rd Sector groups would naturally move out of their own premises and hand them over at once to an incoming contractor, it can only emphasise the incompetence of the ADP’s management.
The second instance of misrepresentation
Our second issue of concern is in the same paragraph of the Minister’s email to Ms Baillie as the matter described above.
In a follow-on from the sentence quoted above, he says: ‘ .. however, they [Ed: Addaction] will be using Kaleidoscope’s premises in Dunoon, and elsewhere will use local Social Work offices and GP Practices whilst securing more suitable premises.’
As we have already published earlier, Kaleidoscope, the 3rd Sector provider for Cowal - is closing down, may already have closed down – and is merging with Addaction – and may already have done so. They are to transfer their assets and liabilities to Addaction – with those assets including their owned premises at Dunoon’s historic Ballochyle House.
In these circumstances it is disingenuous for anyone to have informed the Minister that ‘Addaction will be using Kaleidoscope’s premises in Dunoon’ – and to do so in a way that makes him see Kaleidoscope as having been uniquely cooperative in facilitating the change to service delivery where the other local service providers have not.
The bottom line here is that it is profoundly unsafe for anyone at any level to accept as reliable a single piece of information offered as briefing or explanation or excuse by any of the senior ADP or Council officials.
The Community Safety Minister is also Minister for Legal Affairs and will be aware of the legal force of precedent. Here there is the precedent of documented and multiple form in deliberate deception, long before and in this briefing to the Minister.
