Full Council report….Life of Brian

“What did the Roman’s Council do for us?”

I was minded of the scene from the Life Brian as councillors lined up to give their view on what Barnet Council does for Barnet residents. Barnet staff your ears should have been burning as councillor after councillor stepped to say what a fantastic job you do. The Leader stating we have the most efficient, low cost back office service (barring Bexley) in London.  

It struck me that I hope the Future Shape report going to Cabinet reflects not only the efficiency and expertise of the current council workforce but their ability to respond to ever changing face of local government.  

The usual banter between the parties ensued as ever, I wonder when we will start filming these meetings. It seems a natural progression. Technology is moving at a hermetic pace, to try and engage residents the council needs to look at the ways it consults.  

The Leader Cllr Mike Freer opened up with the proposed Budget followed by an alternative budget from Labour Group Leader Cllr Alison Moore, followed by Lib-Dem Leader Cllr Jack Cohen.  

Minutes from the meeting will be online but here are a few comments  

Cllr Freer “Year on year starved of funds. 5th lowest grant in London.  £272 per head, Islington £800. Most efficient back office cost in London only Bexley is cheaper.”

Cllr Moore:“In a time of recession Council Tax increase is unacceptable…other boroughs are going for a council tax freeze. Fees and Charges above inflation. This Budget is going to have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable, elderly and disabled.” 

Cllr Cohen:“Spoke about the Icelandic Bank which he felt had not been sufficiently explained. He believed there was a real possibility the tax payer will have to pay. He mentioned the purchase of Plasma TV screen, lap tops which were now hidden away as example of waste.”

He then thanked Barnet Bloggers

Roger T Barnet Eye http://barneteye.blogspot.com/

Don’t call me Dave http://www.notthebarnettimes.co.uk/

Statler and Waldorf  http://www.barnetcouncil.net/ 

From the reaction of the councillors, these BLOGS were well known. 

 

What about the Public?

 

The public gallery was full of angry residents, they were here about two issues in the budget. The deletion of the sheltered housing service and the withdrawal of funding for the Stable Project for adults with Learning difficulties.  

As they heard their issues being discussed you could not help but feel their anger & frustration about the lack of engagement and understanding of their concerns. Unfortunately for those unfamiliar with the current bureaucratic rules governing public involvement in local democracy these meetings will often be the first and last they will want to go to. If government really wants to reflect the views of communities it needs to seriously look at resident access to local politicians.

The decision about the Future of the Welfare Rights Unit and the Sheltered Housing Schemes will be made at a future Cabinet meeting.

 

Stop Press – Barnet Elect a New Mayor

 

There were two nominations this evening

Brian Coleman (Con) & Linda McFadyen(Lab)

 

Brian Coleman was elected Mayor 

 

 

 

Magnificant Seven Future Shape Groups -Phase Two

Barnet are launching Seven (‘Magnificent Seven’) Future Shape groups to look at Strategy, Access, Assessment, Property, Support, Transact, Vehicle

In terms of consultation with staff and trade unions things have slowed down. We have only had one meeting with the Future Shape team this year.  We are still waiting for details as to the membership of these groups, work plan, dates of meetings and which Barnet Public Sector employees (Mddx Uni, PCT, Barnet College, Met Police) will be taking part. The timeframe for the work is shrinking week by week as a report making recommendations needs to be ready for 8 June Cabinet Committee.

The Trade Unions are meeting with Councillors at our Corporate JNCC on Monday 23 March. Future shape update is on the Agenda.

Sheltered Housing Consultation

Today I attended one of the consultation meetings that LBB had set up in order to speak to residents about the possibility of removing Housing Officers from Sheltered Housing schemes.

Hanshaw Drive scheme houses 44 residents, some are housebound and so could not make the meeting, those attending included friends and relatives. 100% of those attending agreed that they wanted to keep their Sheltered Housing Officers.

One resident spoke of having epilepsy and having been found on the floor three times by the resident officer who then got medical help. One resident called it ‘abuse of the elderly’. Many had given up larger properties, three bedroom houses, in order to get the sheltered care that they needed. They now wondered why they hadn’t just stayed where they were –  ‘the council are breaking tenants expectations’, ‘they have a Duty of Care’

Many of these residents feared the future lack of security, they had been plaqued by anti-social behaviour, ‘without our resident officer, Patrick, we won’t be able to sleep at night.’’There is the social cost and the detriment to mental health.’

There was a consensus that any new scheme would ultimately cost more with greater involvement of social services and the PCT. Residents leaving hospital would have to spend time in a nursing home because there would be no-one on site to look in on them. At present residents discharged on a Friday are supported by the Resident Housing Officer who will get them their medication and food.

Residents have been sent a questionnaire to complete and an explanatory document, that are both hard to understand and extensive. What is clear is that the residents will not be accepting the removal of a service that is well established and based on need.

Anne Denison.

UNISON Convenor for Barnet Homes

23 February 2009

Adult Social Services Restructure

“To agree or not agree, that is the question…”

The bulk of the role profiles have been agreed. There are a couple of outstanding questions:

 

1)                 Should OTs (Occupational Therapists) accept that part of their role is to carry out some tasks completed by social workers?

 

2)                 Should social workers accept that part of their role is to carry out some tasks completed by OTs? Should we accept the notion of “trusted assessor” on our role profile?

 

I believe there is a consensus amongst most staff (if not all) and management we want residents in the Borough to have a service which causes the least headache for them in terms of waiting and jumping through hoops. I believe there is consensus amongst most staff and management we want service users to be safe in the delivery of that service and for staff to feel safe and confident in the assessments they have made. The question is about how to deliver on these positions. We will be having a meeting for those staff affected by the question of trusted assessor 10.2.09 10am-12pm in Barnet House to finalise our UNISON position.

 

3)                 Should Administrators accept onto their role profile they should take minutes of Adult Protection case conferences.

 

Our current administrators in Adult Social Services are paid low wages for an important job of keeping us from completely grinding to a halt with the volume of administration necessary to our roles. Adult Protection cases are notorious for producing rain forests of documentation. From a social worker point of view it would be fantastic if some of the burden of this administration could be done by someone else allowing the social worker to concentrate solely on the investigation. However, our UNISON members on the administration side of things have indicated they would not be happy to carry out this new task – with or without the training and the pay. An issue they find difficult to deal with is the emotional trauma of listening to the sometimes graphic detail divulged in some of these meetings. It’s a fair point. Management was going to consider this and propose a way forward. We believe the best way forward would be to have a dedicated team which would deal with this administration. We will keep our members updated on any developments.

 

Dignity at Work and the DDA

 

UNISON and management are working together on statements to encourage employees with a disability to come forward and inform the employer on the adjustments they need to continue carrying out their work. This is to make sure no one has to face any indignities for the lack of adequate planning following a move into a new structure. We will be putting out more info on this in due course.

 

Drive My Car?

 

Finally I have requested a statement from management/ HR regarding essential car user allowance. Some of you have pointed out this is missing from the new role profiles and are worried about what this means. I have been verbally reassured there is nothing sinister in this, although the car allowance for team managers is falling under intense scrutiny. I await the written response with bated breath.

Future Shape – Meeting the Leader

On Friday 30 January the Trade Unions had a meeting with Leader of the Council & Lead Cabinet member for Adult Social Services.

Background

On 16th January 2009 the Acting Chief Executive launched Phase Two of Future Shape programme (See the Barnet Intranet Future Shape website). The launch made a request for staff participation in the Future Shape Groups, high profile forums meant to meet monthly and report back to Members in June.  However it was the absence of any role for the Trade Unions in these Groups that left them no option but to seek a meeting with Councillors. The Trade Unions were also concerned that regular meetings with the Future Shape team were not taking place and that the formerly amicable relations were starting to break down

There has been a lot of information about Future Shape. There have been some allegations that the Trade Unions have been scaremongering about the dangers of mass privatisation (something we have always denied). However closer scrutiny of the last two Cabinet Reports and Future Shape Groups on the intranet quickly reveal good reasons why both staff and Trade Unions feel uneasy about the direction Future Shape is heading.

More recently it has been revealed the remit of the Barnet Transact Future Shape Group (see below) …

Barnet Transact aims to identify all of those services that are not the core business of the Council, or that are not part of the value chain of services that are, and seeks to find alternative ways to provide these services. On the basis that the Council should only do what it is obliged to do, this group will develop outline business cases for services where the quick wins can be generated.”

The Trade Unions and staff were interpreting this and other comments to mean that the Council was going to carry out a comprehensive review to identify what are the statutory services they have to provide (only do what it is obliged to do”) and everything else could be prepared for procurement ‘quick wins’.

The Joint Trade Unions view is that the majority of staff work in services that are not statutory hence our concern that there was going to be mass procurement/tendering of services/staff. That was until last Friday when we aired our concerns to the Leader. We had a frank exchange of views. It was in one of these exchanges when the Leader provided a comment on his and the Cabinet’s view of Future Shape so far.

He was unequivocal that no decision had been made, was proud of the excellent services being provided by the staff adding that Cabinet were still to be convinced of the merits of the model being proposed for Future Shape. We said that it would be good if staff could hear this statement themselves, so as promised, the Leader has provided the following statement:

“The staff work streams are focussing on the ‘how’ before we move onto the ‘who’. Once we get to look at the ‘who’ it may be that we partner with other organisations to provide a service in a different way.  Equally, it may be that we continue to provide a service because we are the only organisation that can achieve sufficiently high quality at sufficiently low cost.  This is an interpretation the Council does what only the Council can do. Clearly we have many excellent services and we would not embark on unnecessary disruption, but we would be in favour of change if we were confident it would bring significant improvements in quality and value for money”.

What followed was a discussion about where we were in the process. The Leader felt the Trade Unions had ‘jumped the gun’, we were told the Groups are brainstorming sessions looking at ‘How’ we could provide services in the future. Clearly the next stage would be looking at ‘Who’ could provide those services. This crucial distinction is important as the Trade Unions are concerned that possible “service delivery models” could be identified in June 09, with little time and resources available for work to be done on in house services. We asked that a detailed explanation on the timetable and key milestones on Future Shape be provided on the Councils intranet/website.

Finally we had discussions about possible working across public services in Barnet, the Group which will be looking at this is called:

Barnet Support incorporates the full range of ‘back office’ functions, HR, ICT, Legal, Finance, Audit, Procurement. Public private partnerships in this area are already reasonably commonplace. The focus for this group is to determine the future requirement for these services in the context of a Council that is externally focussed on the place rather than on itself as an organisation. Might there be, for example, a trading opportunity to sell a set of support services to Businesses in Barnet or to other London Boroughs?”

There is still quite a long way to go. Communication is clearly going to be important. The Trade Unions have had their proposal to sit on the Groups rejected so we will not be able to feedback on the progress of the Groups. We will be submitting comments to the Groups and will communicate our contributions to our members…….watch this space……………

Future Shape – Why we chose Dexter

In 2008 the Audit Commissions published their report “For better, for worse” (their title not mine!) , providing a national analysis on Strategic Service delivery Partnerships SSP’s)

Yes, more jargon. SSPs are long-term public private partnerships (PPPs) through which contractors deliver a service or range of services for councils

There are clear drawbacks for councils when SSPs do not succeed.”

  • Private sector experience suggests that 60 to 70 per cent of strategic partnership arrangements between companies fail, and few meet expectations.
  • Three of the earliest councils to adopt SSPs have terminated their agreements before their term, incurring additional costs.
  • Even in continuing SSPs, purported benefits from economies of scale and transferred learning between sites have been slow to emerge.
  • Some SSPs have proved inflexible, hindering councils’ ability to respond to changing external circumstances. (Audit Commission)

Of the many SSP’s we found there was one example of an in house bid being tabled. The in house bid was in Newcastle City Council.

Dexter Whitfield worked with the UNISON branch and the Council to prepare the in house bid.

The private contractor that tendered a bid was BT.

The in house bid won.

That is why we want Dexter to crucial support on the Future Shape consultation.

To view the details on Newcastle click here

 

UNISON response to Future Shape rally

400+

 

It was an incredible response from staff & Barnet residents on a bitter cold December evening……….hot drinks, mince pies and carol singing all helped fight off the cold.

So what happened in the meeting?

Well some of you may have seen or heard reports on the local TV & radio.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/tv/television/latest_stories/

And a link to photos taken at the rally – http://photos.snapsthoughts.com/p352281318

It appears from listening to the Leader both on the TV and in the Cabinet Committee that the Trade Unions have jumped the gun.

The new public service model which is described in the report is “NOT about mass privatisation of the Council!”

That is good news….but it really is not clear in the report….we are not the only ones to apparently misunderstand the report. A Barnet resident sent the Cabinet report to the Plain English Campaign and this is their response:

Plain English Campaign’s assessment of Future Shape report discussed at Cabinet 3 December 2008:

 “I think your suggestion that the council is planning to introduce outsourcing is correct although when they couch their plans in such gobbledygook, it is hard to be certain.

 “Paragraph 4.3 seems to suggest that they are thinking of using ‘organisations other than the Council’ while paragraph 5.3 suggests staff could be transferred to other employers. And, the Council also seems to have considered the legal implications of what it is doing.

“In answer to your question about whether it is in plain (enough) English to serve the public interest, the answer is definitely not. From a plain English point of view, it is an awful document. It is so full of jargon and management speak that the message is hard to find. It is quite possible to write complicated stuff like this in plain English – in fact, as everyone is entitled to receiving information in plain English, it should be common practice to write clearly.

“Whether the Council is writing in this style to try to disguise what it is considering, or whether it is just a case of not thinking about the residents of the borough I can’t say. What I would do however is ask for the information in an appropriate style so that you, and all the other residents of the borough, are aware of quite major changes that could affect the way your council is run. And, as there seem to be huge implications for staff, I am sure they particularly need to be kept notified of what is happening.”

Councillors reaction

Barnet residents & Trade Union members came up to me and complained that they felt the councillor’s comments were rude and playing to the gallery. I am afraid that this has been a feature of both local and national politics for a long time. It is not surprising that there is such poor responses to consultations with the communities.

Wednesday 3 December 400 people felt motivated to find time to come along and take part in something we call democracy. Democracy means the right for individuals and organisations to lobby and give their views. Just because you don’t like what you read is not grounds for disrespecting other people’s views. What we saw tonight was deliberate misrepresentation of the trade unions’ report.

Clearly there is a serious lack communication not just with the trade unions but with staff and most importantly residents, I hope that rather than retreating behind party political jibes we are able to sit down and play an active part in the Future Shape programme. I would ask ALL staff not to feel disheartened but to take up the challenge and request YOUR Future Shape meeting in your workplace. According to the time table we have just under 5 months for the Council to thoroughly assess what it is doing now and how it might change?

Staff, residents and the Trade Unions are waiting for the next phase of consultation to begin!

Community Care Officers: Highly valued – or simply highly exploited?

These are people who carry out the same tasks as social workers, in Adult Social Care. Without their input the service delivery in the Borough would collapse. They are mostly very experienced, highly thought of and respected within their teams and by their team managers. When they work with a member of the public they stay with that person to work through the issues (health, housing, care, working with family members and more) no matter how complex. The only difference is they would not investigate Adult Protection matters and they do not have a social work qualification. Their pay grade implies that where their work ends the social worker takes over and yet this is far from the practice and far from what is specified in their Role Profiles.

At a meeting with councillors on 7 October 2008, the unions were given to believe there would be movement in a further negotiation around acknowledging there needed to be an overlap in the grades. Regrettably at the negotiation there has been no movement. There is no acknowledgment there needs to be an overlap in grades. Our Community Care Officers have already indicated they are prepared to take industrial action if their pay is not increased in recognition of the complexity of the work they do.

They are far from being alone within Adult Social Services, as people who do complex work which is not recognised in pay. This is very demoralising for our members and all staff across Barnet Council in general.

This is all happening in context of the revolutionary changes to ALL of our jobs that is inherent in the Future Shape project.

 

 

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