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The real ‘relationship difficulties’ at the heart of Argyll’s dysfunctional Alcohol and Drugs Partnership

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At every point where anyone has raised the issue of the continuing dysfunctionality of Argyll and Bute’s Alcohol and Drugs Partnership [ADP], funded by the Scottish Government to the tune of £1.2 million per annum, one fat decoy duck has been successfully sent out to draw attention away from where it requires to be paid.

There have been internal inquiries into this well known dysfunctionality and there is a current, externally commissioned one in progress, conducted by Jeremy Scuse of Catalyst Mediation.

‘Relationship problems’

These various inquiries have been misdirected – as very recently has a Scottish Government Minister, by being officially directed to ‘relationship problems’ as the heart of the matter. The nudge is that that there is no need to look at anything other than this issue; and the source of these ‘relationship problems’ is identifiably pointed to the ADP’s 3rd Sector partners – with ‘discreet’ or bald pointing to specific members of these groups.

The reality is that ‘relationship problems’ are indeed the cause of the long dysfunctionality of the ADP.

These relationship problems do involve 3rd Sector partners – but that is not the same thing as those partner groups or any members of them being responsible for the ‘relationship problems’.

They have no power in the management structure to be the generative source of ‘relationship problems’. That source lies beyond them entirely, where the real authority lies in the partnership; and in the culture of disguised abuse and pejorative attitudes to the 3rd Sector partners who contribute the work on the ground in their localities with those addicted to alcohol and drugs.

The highly unwieldy ADP is ‘structured’ in such a way as to be heavy on the number and volume of 3rd sector and community members attached to it – while being very light and very selective about where the real authority lies. This tokenist flak jacket is evidenced in the structure of the meetings which lead to the taking of executive decisions – upon which the 3rd sector and wider communities have little leverage.

The Executive Group [formerly the Leading Officers' Group, or LOG], meets and takes decisions every four weeks – underinformed by perspectives from the Delivery Group, which meets every six weeks; and largely uninformed by the 7 local Forums across Argyll & Bute, which meet every 12 weeks.  Yet all of these are supposed to be able to input into decision taking.

At the heart of this abusive mess is a collision of very different cultures.

One majors on appearances and one has to engage daily with reality.

One is schooled in the jargon of the public sector, in its practised manipulations and peopled by those whose rank alone, regardless of merit or integrity, commands subordination. The other is every bit as intelligent, more straightforward, versed in and clear sighted on the practicalities, less articulate, less confident and less formally assertive, frequently overborn in meetings, often deliberately, by procedural formalities and by forms of bullying, like dismissiveness and ridicule.

This is the ‘relationship problem’  – a cultural one mobilised from the top – that leaves the Argyll and Bute ADP perpetually dysfunctional; but this is not the ‘relationship problem’ that any inquiry has yet addressed.

The pathology of this dysfunctional relationship

Where queries, issues and challenges cannot be raised or properly addressed in formal meetings, they will of course be discussed afterwards by those who tried and failed to have them dealt with at a meeting. This consolidates the original anxieties and the frustrations at power used manipulatively to block proper and serious questions.

This cements the division at the heart of the dysfunctionality of Argyll and Buts Alcohol and Drugs Partnership – and plays into the hands of a clear  ‘divide and rule’ strategy. But there is nowhere else for the concerned to go but to each other and nothing else for them to do but raise the troubled issues when and where they can.

Where questions are serious and involve, for example, instances of unacceptable practice and concerns about procedural integrity and are not addressed as they should be; and where information, including minutes, requested to clarify concerns, is simply not given, courageous and concerned individuals will not – nor should they – let such matters go.

They are then regarded by those who generate the obstructions as ‘the awkward squad’ – and that is fully what they are forced by this situation to become.

Then you have an inquiry into the partnership’s dysfunctionality. Internal or external, those conducting the inquiry are pointed to ‘relationship difficulties’ and at ‘the awkward squad’ as the source of them.

Interviews with ‘the awkward squad’ will – of course – encounter complaint, grievance and the accumulated welter of evidence of wrongdoing which has long been suppressed by the senior authorities in the partnership. Such encounters can easily seem to validate the received picture of such interviewees the investigator has already been given by the commissioners of the inquiry, whose interests are best served by saying as little as possible, looking pained and shrugging wearily.

It is alarmingly easy for the macchiavell to demonise, isolate and diminish honest people whose concerns and well found; and in so doing, prevent those core concerns from being addressed by those who might objectively find them equally worrying.

Those commissioning internal or external inquiries are those with the authority to do so, not those who bear the concerns and suffer the mistreatment. The commissioners – who are also the paymasters – are the point of reference for the investigators who will consult and report to them.

At every point, in cases where the genuine source of problems is the authority itself, that source is in a position to control and effectively direct any inquiry into the problems, even requesting editing of inquiry reports. This is the least virtuous circle imaginable; and it is one that can only add to the denigration and increase the frustrations of those trying to open up serious but uncomfortable issues.

We live in a society where, almost on a weekly basis, there are questions being asked about cover-ups, saying ‘How did they get away with that?’ ‘Did no one raise the matter?’ ‘Why were the whistleblowers ignored and silenced?’

This sort of thing does not just happen ‘elsewhere’. It happens regularly in the affairs of Argyll and Bute Council and it has been happening in Argyll and Bute’s ADP.

We are aware that at least one elected member has been present in another capacity at an ADP ‘consultation’ meeting, witnessing at first hand that it was no such thing, that it was a matter of handing down decisions already taken; and that that councillor served notice at that meeting that that he would be pursuing his concerns.

Is that Councillor too to be perceived as part of the ‘relationship problem’ experienced by ADP?

So is there no objective cause for concern?

In our two previous articles on this partnership, we published and analysed more than enough documented matters to establish that there are very serious instances of poor practice and lack of procedural integrity which are virtually the order of the day in the management of the ADP.

None of the matters we highlighted were generated by the 3rd Sector partners and their ‘awkward squad’, who do not have the managing authority to create any of them.

Ought ‘the awkward squad’ not to have been concerned at the arguable and uinvestigated misapplication of government funding to address addiction to alcohol and drugs?

Our first article made public the fact that the then Chair of ADP, Argyll and Bute Council’s Exeutive Director for Community Services annually ‘topsliced’ the Scottish Government funding of £1.2 million by £800,000, arguably to shore up the budgets of the two authorities involved, NHS Highland and Argyll & Bute Council.

Interestingly, since then there has been a meeting where the named author of a financial report tried to replace the word ‘topslicing’ – a word and a procedure that had for around two years raised no concerns whatsoever.

Ought ‘the awkward squad’ not to have been concerned at the less than proper tendering and procurement procedures of two key contracts, in both of which instances our articles have identified specific serious concerns that any organisation with procedural integrity at its heart would wish to investigate at once?

Ought ‘the awkward squad’ not to have been concerned at processes where the scoring of bids for ‘young people’s money’ was apparently overtly and publicly manipulated by a council employee being allowed to consider her scores once she had heard everyone else’s?

This is a matter currently under investigation – only because ‘the awkward squad’ persisted in raising it.

Ought ‘the awkward squad’ not to have been concerned at a situation where there was active resistance to involving service users in the development of the services designed to support addicts into rehabilitation?

Those who do not work with such people tend to regard them as subhuman in some way, regardless of the fact that addiction is not troubled by class. Yet these are the people who know from first hand experience – and the resourcefulness of the addict – what works and does not work, what they can fool and what they cannot.

An example here comes from one 3rd Sector group with a history of the respectful involvement of its service users in fine tuning the services provided by the partnership.

The service users advised strongly that the ‘pish test’ used by the Nurse Prescribing Service to monitor any drug use while under methadone replacement therapy, should  be abandoned. They said that they come in with a sample bottle of ‘clean’ urine from someone else, tucked into their armpits to keep warm. Then, when they are conducted to a lavatory cubicle with a sample dish to fill and the door closes to give them privacy, they simply fish out the bottle under their arm and pour it into the dish. And there it is, as warm as it would be expected to be. This test does not check the DNA of the sample so the lack of ‘ownership’ is never identified.

The service users recommended instead that the ‘oral swab’  – used under legal Drug Treatment and Testing Orders [DTTOs], where they are required to be tested weekly to prove that they are staying ‘clean’ – was the best test to use. Their argument is that no one involved on ether side of this test can influence the outcome. They see it as a respectful process, where the swab is taken from the subject in person by the tester, witnessed by both to be put into a container, sealed and signed by both parties in each other’s presence. Service users recommended that the Nurse Prescription Service use the oral swab test but this was rejected – we do not know on what grounds.

Who could argue with the wisdom of either of these recommendations? Who could imagine that this level of experience – available only to those suffering from addictions and in treatment – should not enthusiastically be tapped in the interests of improving the efficacy of the services offered?

It is worth noting that in 2010 one 3rd sector group ran a conference on substance misuse attended by Government Minister, Fergus Ewing and involving service users – with whose contributions the Minister and his team were very impressed. The consequence of this was the formation of a local working group pioneering consideration of the relative value of Opioid Replacement Therapy [ORT - methadone].

This group has since been usurped by a newly formed ADP group on Opioid Replacement Therapy – which has never met but with the originating 3rd sector and community group disbanded by the ADP Executive Group – by what authority we are unable to determine but do not understand. This action looks like having all the motivation of a dog competitively pissing on lamposts to remove the traces of those who have gone before.

On what grounds can any of the concerns of ‘the awkward squad’ of 3rd sector workers be dismissed as being due to ‘relationship problems;’ – unless that ‘relationship problem’ is recognised as being a collision between a culture of concern for good practice and the delivery of effective services to the known needy in the communities; and a culture of manipulative pragmatism, focused on protecting its own budgets and having its own way, with no care as to whether the means employed are proper or improper, procedurally or morally.

The Minister for Community Empowerment

One of ‘the awkward squad’ recently wrote to the new Minister for Community Empowerment, Paul Wheelhouse, in a last ditch effort to get someone with the authority to act to take seriously what is going on in Argyll and Bute’s ADP.

The Minister naturally consulted the ADP authorities, letting them see the letter and receiving in return a briefing on the points raised. This briefing was as deceptive as its obvious author has been publicly proven to be in the past, in the deliberate deceptions of  elected members over school closure proposals; and in written ‘evidence’ submitted to a Scottish parliamentary committee looking at this matter ['evidence' whose misrepresentations the author had subsequently to explain].

Does known ‘form’ count for nothing in at least cautious reception of assurances from particular sources – and a recognised need for objective third party verification? Argyll and Bute Council, as a body and in its most senior elected members and officers, has been proven – across a variety of matters, to be serially ‘economical with the truth’.

The briefing to the Minister was, of course, a smoothly deceptive account presented as from someone wearily well used to outrage and misconceptions from a nutty and obsessive fringe. It was accepted without question by the Minister for Community Empowerment – and the writer of the original letter received a reply described by a colleague as the ‘get back in your box’ response. [The texts of this episode will be the subject of the next article in this series, which will follow soon.]

But what about this additional problem with the attitudes of the Minister for Community Empowerment?

‘Empowering communities’ first means believing that the perspectives, understanding and intelligence  of those outside ‘the officer class’ are of serious value. ‘Empowering communities’ then means listening to community members; being open to what they have to say; as with all concerns, identifying the matters of serious substance in what they put forward; being prepared to give such concerns the weight they deserve; giving them equal value to the perspectives of ‘the officer class’; and addressing them fully and respectfully.

If this cannot or will not be the default modus operandi, then the notion of ‘empowering communities’ is a hollow fraud.

Here is a community of 3rd Sector groups working on the ground on problems and with behaviours others disdain – because they care about humanity. This is a community requiring to be empowered – but what is happening is that this community has been abused by dismissal and is effectively in the process of being destroyed.

Its members have just been in receipt of machine-culture letters making them redundant – letters issued by the single contractor brought in through challengeable tender and procurement procedures to take over the service delivery across Argyll and the Isles.

This process derives from TUPE arrangements of staff transfer to an incoming contractor which, in this sort of situation, seems little more than the transfer of slaves to an employer who may dismiss them with impunity.

The 3rd Sector groups providing local services to local addicts across Argyll and the Isles are having their service level agreements with the council unilaterally terminated on 1st January.

They have been unilaterally replaced by the ADP’s block commissioning of all such services to be provided across Argyll and the Isles by a single incoming company, Addaction [which is now making the majority of their members redundant]. Addaction will not have the constant physical presence in the communities that is currently the case; and its proposals will leave service users without recourse to help at key critical periods. This includes no provision for out-of hours crisis response. Moreover, services between Christmas and Hogmanay – a known peak period for despair and alienation amongst the troubled – are to be delivered as usual by the existing 3rd Sector groups – useful still, if not respected as they ought.

This contract was awarded in circumstances whose procedural integrity we have shown in our last article raises serious concerns.

We would want to say that we are not questioning Addaction’s integrity or professional competence. Apart from the tendering and procurement issues previously raised, procedurally there was no adequate discussion or consultation on the best way to deliver such specific services to members of communities dispersed so widely across such a large and physically complex territory. There is therefore no evidence that the block commissioning of Addaction to deliver the lot will see the right horse for this course.

The turnaround period for this contract is unusually and dangerously precipitate: six weeks from contract award to start of delivery – from scratch, for the whole of Argyll and Bute.

The 3rd Sector groups will most probably have to close down – two have already decided to do this, with the others still hoping to find funding from somewhere to carry on.

The philosophy of the best and most effective delivery of these services in communities across Argyll has not been openly and open-mindedly discussed.

A decision on this important social and health issue was taken without anything resembling due consultation and is being railroaded through in short order at the fag end of the year when no one wants to pay any attention to anything. This could be seen to be a classic example of how to bury bad habits.

If this important partnership is to be made functional, trusted and effective in doing what it exists to do, the block service provision contract, awarded in questionable circumstances and the termination of the 3rd sector groups service level agreements should all be mothballed, pending review; with the range of service provided as they currently are, while an independent authority objectively investigates the conduct of this ADP.

There is a great deal more to investigate. Our series of investigative and revelatory articles will continue until effective action is taken – and what is in the pipeline is as serious as anything yet published.

Note 1: Local MSP, Michael Russell, known to be concerned about this situation, is meeting in Oban tomorrow, 12th December, with members of 3rd Sector Groups who, until 1st January 2015, still deliver services under Service Level Agreements with the ADP.

Note 2: For Argyll’s two previous articles.both recent, on Argyll and Bute’s Alcohol and Drugs Partnership are below, in order of publication:

Note 3: Below is one of the templated redundancy letters Addaction have sent to 3rd Sector group staff. We have sen several of them and have removed the name and group of the individual to whom this specific one was sent.

addaction notice

addaction letter text P1addaction letter text P2

 


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