Sep 152011
 

The curtain falls on the sixth and final act of Jonathan Russell’s assessment of the tragi-comedy that is services for the disabled in Aberdeen – but what will be the last word? Is there a way forward for services for people with Disabilities in Aberdeen?

We are now faced as a city with considerable challenges due to both the wider financial and economic situation in the UK and the bleak financial situation that Aberdeen City Council has got itself into.
The situation with the SNP refusing to let councils increase the community tax has to be challenged and this is particularly relevant to oil rich Aberdeen where the majority of people could afford an increase.

Other possibilities would be to re introduce the SNP’S idea of taxing large retailers but it would have to be clear were the money collected was going. The Oil related companies have given very little back to Aberdeen or the wider Scottish/UK despite their huge profits.

ACVO  (Aberdeen Council  of Voluntary Organisations) have been working hard to get the private sector more involved in supporting the struggling voluntary sector and this should be encouraged. We have to make decisions on how best in difficult circumstances money is to be spent. We also have to make sure that the money spent is at best value for the needs of its citizens and end the prevailing culture of waste.

As a city we have to make bleak choices as to what is important to us as citizens.

Do we want to support the more vulnerable in our city including the disabled, the elderly, vulnerable children and the homeless or are our priorities more about grand projects like the replacement of Union Terrace Gardens, the Bridge over the Don crossing, the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, money once more to bail out the Aberdeen Exhibition Centre or a new Olympic Swimming Pool?

All these projects have to be paid for and as with most capital projects, costs are likely to escalate and eat into other budgets.  At present it is the vulnerable people in our communities who are taking the biggest hit.

Is this what the citizens of Aberdeen really want?

As well as making these decisions we have to make sure that we are spending our money to its best effect. This means putting a priority on cutting management costs and the inappropriate cost of consultants and not on the cutting of front line services. Over the last year £29,500 was spent on an outside grouping ‘Moveable Feast’ finding out what services people with learning disabilities want. This is a scandal when the resources to actually run services are so low.

My experiences of management in Aberdeen City Council left me with major concerns about the organisation. At present there is a rift between frontline staff and management. The roles of both managers/strategists and councilors need to be urgently reviewed.

encouragement and support of front line staff has to take priority if we are not to have an increasingly failing organisation

In particular councilors and managers have to become much more visible and supportive to front line staff. Strategists have to engage with the front line and get away from their ivory towers and be expected to carry out work themselves rather than relying on consultants. The ethos has to be one of Public Service and not one of career moves and covering ones back which is sadly the prevailing culture.

The encouragement and support of front line staff has to take priority if we are not to have an increasingly failing organisation with an increasingly demoralised staff group. Finance and how to provide the optimum amount of service to the public needs to be at the centre of any service delivery.

The ideas in the disability area presently being mooted is the idea of providing individual budgets. The idea of individual clients having their own budgets to purchase services has been on and off the agenda for several years. Individual budgets have the potential to empower individuals to get the types of services that they themselves want.

However, from the experience of Direct Payments, a similar scheme that has operated for at least eight years, it is only families who are more able who have been interested in being involved.

For many the whole process just brings more stress onto already overburdened families. One of he main problems with the idea is that at present there is little choice as to what to purchase and to complement this people will only get services if they are seen as fitting the Eligibility Criteria as agreed by management.

This has led unsurprisingly to the unit costs of services going up. So that the cuts in services are greater than the money that is being saved.

Care Management is the process which operates across the UK in the management, finance and support of care packages. The original idea of Care Management was two-fold, firstly to co-ordinate individual packages, but secondly to develop needs led services at less cost.

What has happened in reality, in Aberdeen at least, to my knowledge is that no needs led services have ever been set up but what we have in its place is a highly bureaucratic system with much of the same information going onto different forms that is only about the seeking of funding for individual clients to go to already existing services.

One of the crazy things that happened was Single Status

As stated earlier this stops them thinking of services such as those at Aberdeen College that do not cost the council money being used. We have moved into a highly bureaucratic and risk adverse culture where the emphasis is on covering back rather than service delivery.

The danger is that the new system of individual payments ends up going down the same route as care management and direct payments with individuals spending their money on individual support workers  rather than sharing resources with others which would be more cost effective. This will prove expensive and restrict support to fewer individuals also with further cuts coming down the line resources are going to become increasingly short.

The days of Thatcherite individualism are surely over, even David Cameron has moved on to ideas about the Big Society.

The other process that is happening is in the name of saving costs and getting better outcomes services are being re-provisioned away from the statutory sector to the voluntary and private sectors.

One of the crazy things that happened was Single Status (which was meant to be about equal opportunities and more equality). Salaries did go up for most levels and some went down. Many of those that went down re – did their job descriptions and their salaries went back up.

The low paid  staff  in many services had their salaries increased. The services they worked for like Home Care, Home Support and the Community Placement Team were then closed down and/or some form of re-provision took place. Of course the managers and strategists at the top have not been re-provisioned. They still have their increased high salaries.

public services that could be flexible to individual need and crises have been replaced by rigid contracts in the private sector for individual users

It is only staff on the front line and the services that have been primarily affected. Further in the 2009 round of Aberdeen City Council Social Work and Wellbeing cuts it was agreed to cut management and Strategic posts to be seen as being more balanced. Yet many of these posts were in reality never cut as this would affect the amount of work being undertaken by ‘low paid’!? management.

Whether putting services out to the voluntary and private sector leads to better outcomes is debatable and needs to be monitored. No doubt at times it does and at others it does not.  What we do not know is whether costs have really been saved, as the costs of commissioning, pensions and redundancy payments are part of the costs of this process.

Also, many experienced and committed staff are no longer involved in the process of providing services.

What we also know is that public services that could be flexible to individual need and crises have been replaced by rigid contracts in the private sector for individual users. This means that in situations when clients need less or more of a service; they still get the same service. This stops the empowerment of clients when they could be doing more on their own, and also restricts services from providing more support when it is needed rather than having to go through the whole process of re-assessment.

We need to provide services that are good value both in terms of cost and in terms of providing the optimum service provision within the limited resources that we have. The Community Placement Team was a good example of this, actually bringing in resources and working effectively — it was closed.

Create,  Inspire ‘s Local area co-ordination and Hub, Reach Out,  Access to Training and Employment and Cornerstone employment service have the potential to start building up of services but my concern is that Aberdeen City Council will continue to waste money rather than putting emphasis on the delivery of services.

The main end point of the Community Placement Team was to get people with Disabilities into some form of work. As well as giving to individuals concerned the opportunity of having what most other people experience in being able to work this form of support is cost effective as most of the support is provided by employers.

Cornerstone Community Care have continued to continue to provide an employment service and this should be supported and encouraged.

We need to be doing the following to make the most of the resources we have.

  • Get back to partnership working and making use of resources which are of minimal cost to Aberdeen Council.
    This would mean more joined up working between and with Schools,AberdeenCollegeand resources like the Workers Educational Associations ‘Reach Out’ Project
  • Work more effectively with carers, clients and their friends
  • Start working more again with employers to provide work opportunities
  • Get back to thinking in relation to groups rather than individuals and integrate these groups as much as possible into the wider community. What most people with learning disabilities want is social contact
  • Concentrate resources on service provision such as that provided by Create, Inspire, Cornerstone, Reach Out and Access to Training and Employment with an emphasis on Best Value
  • Focus management on supporting front line services
  • Have clearer roles and expectations of both management and frontline staff and concentrate on improving morale of all staff in Aberdeen City Council
  • Cut back on Strategists (many who were appointed in a spending frenzy around 2007) and spending on outside bodies such as Movable feast and other Consultants.
  • Start thinking about how to bring money in by working more closely with the private sector and investigate and go for any potential funding streams. This should be the responsibility of management/ strategy. An excellent example of where this has been done is Aberdeen Foyer.

 As a city we also have to decide how we spend what will be increasingly limited resources following the impact of national cutbacks.  I would suggest that people with disabilities should be a priority and to do otherwise would be a sign of a city that has forgotten to care.

Sep 082011
 

Aberdeen Voice presents the fifth installment of a six-part tragedy by Jonathan Russell describing the shocking process of service closure for disabled people in Aberdeen – and asks what we can do to reverse the destruction.

A Comedy of Errors Meets MacBeth: Act III

The next stage of the Community Placement Team fiasco was in November 2009 when we learnt firstly that as a team we were going to be stopped supporting staff at Glencraft ( just when Glencraft was in crises and potentially closing down ) and then the news came, not from our management but by someone leaving the information in a photocopier, that the whole team was to be closed.

This led to an outburst of public concern. Parents e-mailed councillors and officials, a highly successful public meeting took place which, despite high snow falls, was so well attended that not everyone could get in to the venue at the Belmont cinema. Council officials refused to attend.

The Director of Social Work put out an e-mail to Councillors telling them not to attend the meeting. This was a total affront to democracy and is an example of how the administration councilors have often lost control of our council. 

At the public meeting which was highly supportive of the need to keep the Team operating there was an apology for attendance from the SNP Convener of the Social Work Committee who was on holiday but only Labour Councillors actually attended the meeting. Concerns were raised in the media and STV news ran several news items, one being shown on the national news. 

Despite this public protest the council administration backed the recommendation to council by the officials. 

The Councillors had been told again that employment services would be re-provisioned but no services to date have been established though some clients have been supported by the Cornerstone Employment Team. This means that many people with disabilities have been left in employment with no back up support to employers or for themselves and the opportunity to run a modern cost effective service lost.

In 2009 there was a temporary consultant employed to be the lead officer in Social Work Services.

Once more scarce public money was being wasted

One of his colleagues also a consultant ran some excellent workshops, which were organized to run, following concerns from parents about the proposed closure of Learning Disability Day Centres.

Sadly parents of clients already receiving services in the community were not asked to be involved. A number of actions and targets were set. However following the workshops none of the actions were acted upon. The Head of Service at the time refused to meet with me concerning an action we were expected to work on together in relation to employing more people with disabilities in the council. Once more scarce public money was being wasted.

What did happen however was that one of the Team Managers, who did have considerable interest and commitment in the disability field, was given the responsibility and unrealistic targets of putting together a number of proposals for future day services.

Along with a number of agencies I had been working on a proposal called Aberdeen Inclusive Horticulture our aim had been to bring in lottery funding to support the horticultural projects we had been running and extend this to an allotment in Garthdee.

My team at that point thought the world had gone mad and, of course, it had

This proposal was then taken over by management in the council and rather than looking into getting extra funding, the emphasis went onto paying a consultant to carry out a feasibility study. Of course nothing  materialised out of this exercise and yet more public money was wasted.

With other agencies, I was also looking into funding opportunities to finance a pilot with the hospitality industry. Again this was taken over and lots of agencies were invited to meetings with the aim of them taking on the employment work that had been carried out by the Community Placement Team.

Again, nothing came out of these meetings other than more time and money wasted.

Even more bizarrely,  in 2008 due to new criteria that were introduced, we had  to cut all our leisure services. Yet suddenly in 2010 there was a Principal Planner getting involved in  organizing taster leisure events. This was crazy on two levels, firstly that while cutting low paid staff who had been running leisure groups, we now had a Principal Planner on a high salary organising such activities surely not part of their job remit, and doing work that should not have been happening if the eligibility criteria was being followed.

There was also failure to understand that it took time and at least a period of support for people with people with learning disabilities until they were able to attend events independently and those with a more profound disability need continued support. My team at that point thought the world had gone mad and, of course, it had.

There was also a proposal to develop the Skyline Café which was to be above the Bon Accord Centre. This was often heralded as the solution that would handle all the needs of people with learning disabilities. With a café and lots of activities it was also meant to have taken over Inclusion for All – coordinating classes in community centres.

In the end, The Skyline failed to materialise.

More recently Inspire funded by the council and put together by their excellent Development Manager and other staff has opened up what is called a Hub in Aberdeen market which is a very similar project. This project needs to be supported and hopefully it can lead to more opportunities for people with disabilities in the city. 

In reality however they filled the Seniors post which of course cost more money

Access to Training and Employment did carry on with ‘Inclusion for All’ until December 2010 but did this on a voluntary basis as a half promised payment was never received from Aberdeen City Council.  

Inclusion for All has never been picked up and, with the present proposals to cut Community Learning and cuts at Aberdeen College, will have less opportunity to do so in the future.

One very positive development is that three staff who had been employed in the day centres one of which Burnside has been closed have formed themselves into a voluntary organisation Create and have been providing good creative services this has included taking on the Va-va-voom theatre group. Individuals attending pay for their attendance and money has been raised from trusts etc.

The question has to be raised however as to whether such developments will be sustainable in the long term given that individuals have to make their own payment to attend and their savings could eventually run dry.

As part of the cuts there was going to be savings made by the Senior of the Learning Disability Team taking early retirement.  In reality however they filled the Seniors post which of course cost more money and was not a saving as said to the Social Work and Wellbeing Committee, but an extra cost to the Council.

In fieldwork, we had moved from two seniors with twenty one staff to two seniors and eleven staff.

Also as part of the cuts that were passed by Aberdeen City Council in 2009, four strategy posts were to go. To my knowledge all these posts are still in place.

The whole process has been strategically and managerially floored and has led to a significant loss of services that were being provided at best value, and instead money was wasted on consultants, extra management and strategist’s time.

  • In the final installment, Jonathan Russell concludes this six part tragedy and examines whether  there is a way forward for services for people with Disabilities in Aberdeen? Read his conclusions in Aberdeen Voice next week. 
Sep 012011
 

Aberdeen Voice presents the fourth of a six-part tragedy by Jonathan Russell describing the shocking process of service closure for disabled people in Aberdeen – and asks what we can do to reverse the destruction.

A Comedy of Errors Meets MacBeth: Act II 

At the end of 2009 the axe fell on the Community Placement Team in two ways.

Firstly, a report had gone to Council, which agreed to the cutting of five staff from our team. (If you remember from the first article – the Social Work Inspection Report – the team actually had much better outcomes than the norm in Scotland in relation to employment). Yet the report said they would re-provision services for better outcomes.

Our concerns were not only about the actual cuts, but also about how management implemented the cuts. There were no attempts to help us through this process and (as touched upon in the Social Work Inspection report) the perceived culture was ‘macho’, ‘punitive’, ‘autocratic’ and ‘hectoring’. This culture created low morale and a feeling of hopelessness.

What followed was a series of meetings with the voluntary sector with the aim of setting up this ‘high outcome service’. However nothing came out of this process except wasted time and money, with the net result of no new services being developed or delivered as agreed by Council.

Once more public money was being wasted, and no new services – as were promised to the Council and by officials – were actually created. So rather than better outcomes, no outcomes were achieved at all. Time and money was wasted and this further demoralized staff on the front line. We also lost good committed staff through this process.

What should be of concern to the public is that the Council failed to hold the officials to account for their failures, which evidences an administration which can often be out of touch with what actually goes on at service level.

This resource was providing services at very little cost to the council

Secondly, the decision was made to move the Community Placement Team away from the Choices building. The Choices building had been especially built for disabled people and was a venue that people with disabilities saw as their own.

The other service that had been based in the Choices building was the Choices Respite Service; and clients became involved in a high profile campaign to re-instate the centre.

Management was not happy with being questioned in this way and wanted the whole disability service based in the building closed down.

Along with partners in the voluntary sector, we had put a proposal together which would have more than covered the costs of keeping Choices open. Higher management refused to discuss this, and the proposal was turned down.

These services could also have been used by the Physical Disability clients who had already lost services due to the closure of Choices Day Service: also for the Learning Disability clients who were going to lose their service through the closure of Burnside Day Centre.

As has often been the case, no logical thinking by officials within Aberdeen City Council was in evidence. The administration appeared out of contact and led by the officials.

The team was moved into an anonymous open plan office in the centre of town. This had major ramifications for the services we had developed with Access to Training and Employment, because we lost our especially adapted garden, which included especially designed and created raised beds and poly-tunnels.

The cost of the parking permits itself would have covered the cost of keeping Choices open.

Much of the work done in creating this horticultural complex was on a voluntary basis.  Over £100,000 worth of resources from oil firms and trusts was gathered at no cost to Social Work Services within Aberdeen City Council in the building of this gardening complex.

We had also planned to base Crafty Things at Choices, following the loss of premises due to the re-development of Beechwood School. This resource was providing services at very little cost to the council. But rather than saving money, the council was intent in purchasing more expensive services by spot purchasing service from the voluntary and private sectors.

As stated previously the Community Placement Team was moved into Kirkgate House – a large anonymous open plan office, which had restricted access for clients. Precious time and money was wasted, with staff having to go back and forward to car parks.  The cost of the parking permits itself would have covered the cost of keeping Choices open.

To deal with concerns raised in the Social Work inspectorate report a new Transitions team was set up.

This entailed taking on an extra Senior Social Worker. As well as the Senior, the team consisted of four social workers – only two of whom actually carried out work with transitions. The other two staff were involved in carrying out service reviews. In reality half the transitions work was still being carried out by the Community Placement Team.

To try and compensate for this we set up joint meetings between transitions staff in both teams. There was no interest in this from management; probably because they knew what was going to happen next.

  • Read what happened  next in the fifth part of this 6 part tragedy,  subtitled ‘A Comedy Of Errors Meets MacBeth: ActIII’ in Aberdeen Voice next week.