Argyll and Bute’s Alcohol and Drugs Partnership [ADP] is trying to force the pace to install in six weeks the single contractor they have appointed in a controversial process to deliver all addiction services across Argyll and the Isles. These were formerly provided locally by 3rd sector groups affiliated to the respected Argyll Voluntary Action.
A letter [linked below] was emailed yesterday, 17th December, by the new Chair of ADP to each of these local service providers, commanding them to hand over to Argyll and Bute Council the personal details of the service users supported by their groups – and to do so by close of play today, 18th December.
The purpose of these commands is described as gathering ‘Information required to facilitate a smooth transition for service users’.
The problem here is the confidentiality of the relationship between the service provider and the service user. The current upheavals have seen the service users given neither voice nor choice in the decision taking to change the way the specialist support services they need are provided to them in Argyll and Bute.
Handing over their personal details without their consent is no less than a process of commodification. Those who need these services and who are attempting to bring their addictions under control are being seen as items on a client list to be automatically transferred to a single new contractor whose proposed mode of service delivery is as yet not even known.
The local service providers are horrified at the betrayal of trust involved in what they are being ordered to do.
They have reassured those they support that they will do everything they can to ensure that rights to confidentiality are upheld.
They dispute the legality of the command as a breach of the intention of the Data Protection Act.
They cannot explain to the users of their services how, where or by whom support will be delivered to them in the very near future – from 1st January.
These 3rd Sector groups’ repeated requests to ADP for information about how Addaction, the incoming contractor appointed, will operate, have been ignored. They remain in the dark. This is aggravated by well found concerns about how it will even be possible for Addaction to deliver all of these services across this large and complex territory with the slender staffing establishment they are proposing.
It is easy to understand how the innate integrity of these 3rd Sector groups and their care for the people they support makes them resistant to handing over these personal details. The fact that the groups themselves are unable to describe to their service users what exactly will be the support they can expect to receive, makes what they are being ordered to do all the more problematic.
This proper recoil from what appears to be an increasingly scrambled and widely abusive process, means that no ‘seamless transition’ is likely to happen. But the service level agreements through which the local 3rd Sector groups support those using their services are being terminated by ADP on 1st January. What will happen then?
A number of service users are said to be becoming anxious and alarmed about continuity of support – with reports that some are saying that ADP is even more addled than their own addictions make themselves.
Some of the locally based 3rd Sector service providers feel that they are being threatened in the letter they have been sent. They feel it implies that if they do not hand over the personal details of the users of their services as ordered, they themselves will be held to be responsible for creating uncertainty amongst groups of vulnerable people. This implication is dishonourable and abusive.
The situation today has to be seen in the context of the needs analysis carried out for the ADP by a high powered team under Professor Neil McKegeney, submitted in late 2011. Amongst much of concern in a careful systemic analysis of the ADP [draft report linked below], Professor McKegeney notes:
‘The lack of data on the prevalence of problem alcohol use is identified. Information on the prevalence of problem drug use in Scotland and in Argyll and Bute is drawn upon to assess the level of penetration of treatment services into their target population. It is shown that drug and alcohol services within Argyll and Bute are in contact with a smaller proportion of their target population (in relation to problematic drug use) than most other council areas in Scotland. On the basis of this analysis there is some concern that services within Argyll and Bute may be less accessible to those with a drug problem than elsewhere in Scotland.’
The report’s conclusions go on to say: ‘The elephant in the room in Argyll and Bute addiction services is the unequal competition for resources [ED: a matter to which we will return] and the consequent pitting of one sector against another, which is compounded by the efforts to create a service hierarchy defining the third sector as subordinate to that of the statutory.’
The situation today, with no clarity as to how these support services are to be delivered in Argyll and Bute [from 1st January] is even more worrying than the one described above by Neil McKegeney as apparently the worst in Scotland.
Local MSP Jackie Baillie has called upon Audit Scotland to review fully the ADP’s tendering process. The current local service providers are telling the ADP that, in the interests of trust and support to the current service users, the rushed implementation of a disputed tendering process must be stopped, pending an external investigation and review.
The new Minister for Community Empowerment, Paul Wheelhouse, has ducked the issue. Appearing to have no grasp of how serious this matter is, he replied dismissively to a powerful document [linked below] he and other Ministers were recently sent by one of the 3rd Sector service providers.
This situation has been so manipulated and mishandled that it is unravelling by the hour – and no one seems able to identify the specific authority required to stop it in its tracks and call time out.
Note: the documents referred to above are linked below – and all reward reading.
- The letter of 17th December from the ADP Chair to the local service providers: Let__to_Service_Providers-17-12-14
- Draft ADP Needs Analysis Report from Professor Neil McKegeney and team: Confidential Draft for Factual Error Checking5
- Document recently sent to Minister for Community Empowerment by a 3rd Sector group – and dismissed: ADP LETTER
