Making Connections - Making A Difference

Double Victory!

Edinburgh - Following presentations from advocacy and service user groups, the council meeting today dropped all plans to tender the care and support services for 777 vulnerable adults and they also dropped plans to limit direct payments to £15.04. Instead the council will set up a “review group” to involve service users, advocacy groups, carers and providers to look at how to resolve outstanding issues about Direct Payment. A number of heartfelt apologies were made and this made a difference to the people who heard them. This is an excellent move towards negotiation and partnership working within the city. Council Leader, Jenny Dawe, exerted good leadership in delivering this deal and deserves to be congratulated for this. This can be the start of a new working arrangement in Scotland’s capital city.

Argyll & Bute - Two tremendous presentations were made from service users about the value of community based support services. Many were moved to tears as a result. After a long and thorough debate councillors reconsidered their decision to remove funding from learning disability services. Neighbourhood Networks will receive full funding for another year. Local Area Coordination will have its half of its funding retained. This retains the principle of local area coordination in the area and the exact details of how it will be delivered still need to be worked out. Important issues on Equality Impact Assessments were raised and we will report more on this later. Local councillors are to be congratulated for listening to the voices of people with disabilities and going against the advice of council officials.

Edinburgh Care And Support Tender Dropped

Council Convener should resign

The fight for a fair Direct Payment rate goes on

Today Edinburgh council dropped its plans to tender Care and Support services for almost 800 vulnerable people. A “confidential” report by legal firm, Deloitte found that “the execution in practice [of the tender award process] was not as sufficiently meticulous or as thorough as might have bee protest n expected.”

In other words council official interfered with the process to ensure that cheaper services were given preference in the tender process in such a way that Deloitte found that as a result of a controversial “quality assurance process, the ranking of bids did change.” LDAS was informed from sources within the council at the time [July 2009] that this meant that good quality voluntary organisation services were downgraded in favour of cheaper services.

Other concerns emerged over elements like the “confidence factor” applied to tenders. Council official weighed up the submissions from the tenders and then applied a “confidence factor” over whether they thought bidders could really deliver on their promises! No explanation has ever been forthcoming over what this is and what it means.

No Clean Bill of Health?

The Finance and Resources Committee meeting next week will NOT be hearing a report about the Care and Support Tendering. The Deloitte report is in but Tom Aitchison says it will take time to consider its implications, therefore they will not be discussing it next week. The adjourned meeting will go ahead but just a formality.

As a result, delegations should be withdrawn and there will be no event on Thursday at the City Chambers.

We still do not have any indication of the content of the report and will keep you up to date as more information becomes available. However a clean bill of health would have approved the council officials position and taken next to no time to consider. Given that there are implications to consider then it is likely that the concerns have been upheld.

The email below was sent out to councillors this morning.

Dear Councillor

I am not for sale pamphlet launched

LDAS is pleased to announce its new pictorial record of the campaign in Edinburgh to challenge competitive tendering of services for people with learning disabilities. It covers the story of the campaign so far and concludes with some important arguments and issues that still need to be resolved.

It features photographs of the events as they took place and has running commentary from the "Council Man"

You can download a copy of the pamphlet for free by clicking on the picture. Printed copies are being distributed among the LDAS membership this week.

angry man

If you would like a copy please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Copies are free to LDAS members and people with learning disabilities who took part in the campaign. A small charge per copy will apply to others.