Making Connections - Making A Difference

Report from Edinburgh Council

On Tuesday 8^th June at 10am the Policy And Strategy Committee of Edinburgh City Council heard a number of reports on the Care and Support Tender.

The Lessons Learned report says that the council has made a number of mistakes in the tender and needs to improve a number of the things that it does in future.

The thrust of the report is to recognise that serious mistakes have been made in the council, that the council, its staff and its organisational structures should learn from these mistakes and then move on. This is an understandable response. No one wants to have to dig up and trawl through unpleasant processes and point the finger of blame.

Yet there is a concern among many of the people affected by the Care and Support tender that such an “internal” review will only produce surface changes within the authority. For example, apparently no official, elected or otherwise made a single mistake in this whole process. Errors just happened

Charity Champion Winner

Jimmy McIntosh

Congratulations are due to Scotland's new Charity Champion, Jimmy McIntosh. Jimmy beat off stiff competition to win the SCVO award on Thursday 10th June. Jimmy has been active with the Learning Disability Alliance Scotland for many years and has been central to what has now become a collective movement in Scotland for inclusion and the empowerment of disabled people.

Jimmy said after getting his award, "This feels really good. It has been a honour for me but many other people helped me on the way. I consider that this is an award for all of them. This will mean a lot to people with disabilities to be recognised like this. Local councils will have to sit up now and listen. We are not alone and have lots of support. Thanks to everyone who has helped campaign over the last year."

New Plans announced by UK govt.

The new Con-Lib coalition have published its preliminary plans for Social Care. More detail will follow but this indicates a fairly stable approach to existing policies.The existing White Paper on Social Care is effectively scrapped and a new review on long term care is planned. Personalisation and personal budgets look like remaining at the heart of national policy. Both of these will only apply in England but will give a guide for policy in Scotland. A helpful change to Access to Work will allow better planning for people seeking employment and will also apply in Scotland.

Extract from the "Programme for Government"

Social care and disability

The Government believes that people needing care deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. We understand the urgency of reforming the system of social care to provide much more control to individuals and their carers, and to ease the cost burden that they and their families face.

We will establish a commission on long-term care, to report within a year. The commission will consider a range of ideas, including both a voluntary insurance scheme to protect the assets of those who go into residential care, and a partnership scheme as proposed by Derek Wanless.
We will break down barriers between health and social care funding to incentivise preventative action.
We will extend the greater roll-out of personal budgets to give people and their carers more control and purchasing power.
We will use direct payments to carers and better community-based provision to improve access to respite care.
We will reform Access to Work, so disabled people can apply for jobs with funding already secured for any adaptations and equipment they will need.

Art Exhibition

the art exhibition On Tuesday night Cornerstone launched its new art exhibition at the Scottish Parliament - Changing Times Changing Attitudes looking back at 30 years of changing approaches to people with learning disabilities.

The exhibition consist of a range of media - printed banners, archival material and video displays. It will be on tour throughout June in Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow. More details from Cornerstone on 01224 256 000.

Lesson Learned or Lessons Still To Be Learned?

Edinburgh Council has published its "Lessons Learned" report is published this week for discussion at next Tuesday's Policy Committee meeting. It is a long and complicated document consisting of a summary and conclusions document followed by 3 annexes – one on internal communication, one on the technical tender process and one on service user communication.

The thrust of the report is to recognise that serious mistakes have been made in the council, they should learn from these mistakes and then move on. This is an understandable response no one wants to have to dig up and trawl through unpleasant processes and point the finger of blame.

Yet there is a concern that such an “internal” review as this Lesson Learned report will only produce surface changes within the authority. For example, no official, elected or otherwise made a single mistake in this whole process. In fact, the official whose actions led to the flawed re-evaluation is singled out for praise. The only council staff for whom a black mark is reserved are those whose courageous stand in providing information prevented a cover up and the forced transfer of 777 vulnerable adults to new service providers not of their own choosing. [They are to be subject to an investigation!]

LDAS welcomes all the suggestions for better training and better procedures. We welcome the decision to wait for new guidance from the Scottish Government before proceeding further even though we first told them about this in January 2009 and were told they did not need to delay as they had the best procedures in the country.

Learning Disability Alliance Scotland

Report from Edinburgh Council

Charity Champion Winner

New Plans announced by UK govt.

Art Exhibition

Lesson Learned or Lessons Still To Be Learned?

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