Open All Hours

Like many of our loyal follower i took an hour of my busy day to go along to Streetwork Crisis Center  open day We thought that this would be an opportunity to see what changes or improvements the new boys on the block have initiated Superficially there seemed to be little change to the old building apart from the preponderance of pretty little girls in black tee shirts smiling like old fashioned bunny girls on our arrival All that was missing war the cocktails good to see that Tam “the heeds ” recruitment criteria still lives on

The highlight of the event was the spectacular gait-crash by Lewis The Book this well known Edinburgh worthy claiming to be a member of the public reg ailed us with his insight into homelessness  the irony being that if he was presenting on an ordinary day he would not have got past the front door with the new  door policy which now makes the center more exclusive than all the up market nightclubs in Edinburgh 

Also noted at this open day was the high number of council employees who seemed to have been sent along to the day to bolster the numbers  the we loud complaints when confronted by the buffet which was just a little disappointing we were promised better one council minion complained

No Room At The Inn

Many collegues  can be found these days in dark dingy bars discussing the up coming Homeless Accommodation Teneders  How do you think it will go? Will they make as big a balls up of this as they did the last lot?

Well it seems clear from the initial consultation meeting that the council have a clever plan no doubt constructed by Micheal “The Lame BrainThain” and his earnest sidekick “Big Bernie” as we all know this pair share a passion for simplifying complex issues into pound shilling and pence  and rationalising that we do not understand that they as the “chosen” have  direct access to the wisdom of the universe and only they can see the way forward ,of course this will require some ”sacrifice” from the voluntary sector but we will soon be back to the level of service we had in the 80s  

For those of us to Young to remember the 80s lets extrapolate from how things are now

Q. Can anyone tell me the name of an overstaffed hostel currently?

A. no

Q.Are there many hostels currently working with staffing levels which they would have considered unacceptable 1 year ago

A. yes many staff in hostels about the town are looking around for new jobs because they no longer feel safe and don’t feel that they are being supported by their management ,who to give them the benefit of the doubt have been put under considerable financial constraints by the councils most recent cuts

Q. Are any organisation providing hostels improving pay and conditions for their staff given the increased pressure on them

A. no in fact the opposite organisations are cutting pay and condition. For example Gowrie Care and Duneden have successful cut the pay and conditions of their staff ,can anyone guess what impact this is having on front line staff in hostels and the knock on effect on their work with client

Q. Are there any hostels who are actively taking on client with complex needs

A. No most hostels are now operating an unofficial embargo on individuals with complex needs this is as a direct result of the decline in staffing  levels

It does not take much to work out what the future holds for clients needing emergency acommodation .Hostel staff will continue to find reasons not to take clients, forcing them to be placed increasingly in b+b accommodation ,where the standard of support is poor or nonexistent The b+bs wont complain as they are commercial entities with profit as their only motivation

Capacity whats yours

Today’s word is ‘Capacity’.

 

1) The maximum amount that something can contain

2)   The ability or power to do, experience, or understand something

 

When Constable Broon fires back an email or returns a call to a referring agency with the simple statement ‘The Multiple Needs service at Gowrie Care lacks capacity at this present time’, to which definition of capacity do we think he is referring? Undoubtedly, he will be using it in the sense of def [1].

To our mind, his response, and the Gowrie Care position speaks more pertinently to a significant deficit of [2] .Out of the mouths of babes.

How can this be? Are Gowrie Care not leading the way for all providers with their seamless transition to the new service, exemplifying the bold assertions of Councilor ‘Everything’s Alright’ Edie of a robust and functional network of Homelessness Services. The bodies piled in the hostels, the complaints of accommodation based services [‘there’s nowhere for them to go!’] say otherwise. Constable Broon is certainly confused, and may need to be referred more frequently to his contemporaneous notes, or perhaps make them in the first place.

To recap: Gowrie provides a little over 500 hours of housing support. Up until the tendering, this was divided between two teams, one focussing on complex needs [around 200 hours given to a small number of clients], and the other offering in excess of 300 to around 50+ clients [low level visiting support], the bulk of which were on packages that sat below the threshold required for statutory approval by Supporting People panel.

Have 50+ people lost a service? Has Gowrie taken on 300 hours of work to replace them …. or has a deal been done with Uncle Bernie and Brother Michael.  What kind of deal, you ask … read on!

Just as Care Commission reports are no measure of quality [Brother Michael, at a Lothian Homelessness Forum presentation], it now appears that package size, according to the council, is no indicator of the level or complexity of an individual’s need [as stated in an email from the Commissioning Team]. What could possibly have lead the Council to abandon reason for this madness? Perhaps the lure of the filthy lucre – the mythical ‘efficiency’ savings that lies behind this sorry tendering exercise. TUPE, to steal Phil Larkins lines, fucks you up. It doesn’t mean to, but it does. Well, it does if you don’t cost accurately for it.

SAMH costed accurately for it, acknowledging both its relevance in law and utility in easing the trauma of transition for staff and therefore clients. The Edinburgh Homelink Partnership took a similarlly progressive and enlightened position. Where are these players now? Who is still on the stage? You got it; the Dundee Shamrock Bhoys and their Dapper Don whose TUPE position cycled through a short range of ‘it may not apply’, ‘it does not apply’, ‘it applies but only to tiny portion of Homelink’ and now the repeated triumphal line of ‘It never applied!’

So there you have it: Gowrie have the contract, which they are not fulfilling [they are not offering 700 hours of anything, and less than 50% of what they are offering is complex needs housing support], yet they are not being required to offer it by the CEC as thanks for their unyielding Fuck You Tupe position.

No Longer Cuddly

I am sure like many of you over the years  we thought that streetwork was a quite cuddly organisation.Under the benignn leadership of tam “The Heed” they went about their business doing no real harm spending their time and energy on public relation becoming the media whores  and rent a quotes for the sector .The biggest and most serious question asked about them was how they managed to get away with only recruiting Young blond and vacuous workers .Oh there were all those financial queries about double counting and inappropriate use of funds allegations brought by disaffected staff .But those were swept away 

However since the tender and the departure of Tam the organisation is not so sweet an organisation to work for.Over a coffee an insider ex planed that in order to win the tender Tam had put in such a low amount for the costings that it would be pretty impossible to deliver what they promised in the bid>The solution to this problem is to take the monetarist mismanagement approach Step 1 cosy up to the union as in Ian Mcdonald full time official with UNITE who is known far and wide as an employers wet dream for his ability to compromisese further than any employer would need to go  step 2  pretend all your existing staff are skilled and experienced and have not just recently been promoted to ensure that post T.U.P.E. they are ok this will make them feel valued and special oh and perhaps willing to work the outrages shift patterns you need them to do Step 3  initiate a campaing of bullying ,disinformation structural disinterest and division all carefully designed to undermine the ex foursquare staff and the ex hop staff in   the hope that they will vote with thier feet if that is not working then there is always the  fast track redundancy  threat Step 4 if none of the previoussteps have worked because the staff have spotted what you are doing or they have taken outside advice and sacked the arch betrayer Mcdonald .Well  you do now is tell everyone they misunderstood what was happening we really do value what you are doing but could maybe just not make it so expensive for us  our next plan to do you over will be much more subtle and once we have got rid of  you we can go back to being an ineffective yet cuddly media friendly organisation as long as you dont blame us for all those homeless people on the street We havent got a clue what to do with them

Luck O The Irish

The “dapper don” as the effete Irish director of Gowrie Care is known to his trusty confederates must be laughing up his well tailored sleeve .We think he managed to pull several strokes during the old tendering process but his luckiest one relates to a staffing problem that came to light during that difficult pre tendering period The story goes that a member of staff had been found to have been systematically relieving a vulnerable client of their money a full confession was obtained and information passed on to the  police .So far so good  most reasonable citizens would now think that immediate sacking would now take place but alas no the “Dapper Don” and his Edinburgh henchman “Constable Broon” conspired and intimidated to ensure that no information escaped until the tender had been won .It was only at this point was the member of staff dismissed. As an isolated incident this does not seem to be that bad however a similar incident where an assistant manager operating out of DrydenSreet again systematically robbed a vulnerable client again a conviction was achieved How is it that two similar types of incident can happen within an organisation working with vulnerable client and more energy is put into covering up the crime than putting in system to prevent them happening again As an aside the culprit in the Dyden Street incident known widely as Big Rab continues to ply his trade with vulnerable adults at the Leith CAB office  anyone passing should drop in and give him our regards As for “The Dapper Don” and “Constable Broon ” in the coming week we will be uncovering more tales of their daring do in the coming weeks

emperors new clothes

I have just caught sight of the council new flyer for their intensive support service that was the service formally run by HOMEINK but was taken away from the for being bad boy and girl and not going along with the council new comedy/horror script known as the homelessness tender.

For the discerning reader this will have taken you back 20 years, to how council services were delivered then the occasional smattering of words like person centered service and flexible services changes nothing it did not work back then so why would anyone expect it to work now Unless of course the belief is that the new inspirational leader of this service known to her intimates as the “sapphic slanderer“ will lead from the front provideing wisdom and knowledge relating to resettlement of individuals with complex needs .After all she is a fit manager aparently, she received this prestigious award for attending a robby willams concert  and saving up three crisp packets

It is a truely sad day that someone who is conciderd to be the court jester in her department is put in charge of services which are much needed and have an impact on real peoples  lives

drugs worker? what drugs worker

“They will never notice “replied Big  Bernie from the commissioning team replied when his colleague asked “what will happen when the hostels find out that the new tender did not include addictions workers to service the  residents with addiction problems ”. As we all know H.O.P. provided up to 40 places for client to be seen at the hostels before the tender, who is going to see them now? How much additional pressure will this put on hostel staff?Does anyone really think that placing someone in a tenancy without at least giveing them the chance to address their drug problem is going to allow them to sustain that tenancy.Iis this what is meant by prevention?

lions led by donkeys

it is fitting that the first target of our critical observations is the service that was once HOMELINK  which was taken in house by the council The big question at the time was why this happened when other services were given a 6 month extension Truth be told only a few individual within a small coucil cabal could claim to realy know however we have a clear understanding of the reasons They partly stem from HOMELINK staff refusing to kow tow to the council in regard to the T.U.P.E. rights of thier staff during the  transition period but pehaps more significantly they broke the golden rule of this council which is sumed up in this para prased in a quote from none other than uncle josef stalin himself “It is not only forbidden to criticize the council it is perhaps even moer forbidden to announce this very prohabition”

after the tenders over

Well the dust has settled the tendering proccess is over it must now be time for the successfull services to deliver.It will be the mission of this humble blog to keep a watching brief on what happening or more importantly what is not happening in these brave new days of targets without quality