SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR YOUR CHILDREN’S CENTRE No doubt many of you will have heard of the latest concerns regarding the Isle of Man Government and a much loved local Charity, The Children’s Centre. What’s it got to do with you? Maybe nothing or maybe everything if you or your family one day end up needing their services, or are concerned about how your tax payers money is being utilized by government, or whether our government is engaged in fair and transparent business - or not! As you are no doubt aware, the government contract out many of their services. In respect of Children’s services every five years these contracts are put to tender. Recently there was an open tender, which was advertised in the media, to supply the Isle of Man Government with a number of residential care, leaving care and allied support services under four different contracts. The Children’s Centre, as current holders of two of these contracts, reapplied. St Christopher’s tendered for three of the contracts and another charity from the UK for the fourth. The Children’s Centre failed to secure ANY of these contracts. An Appeal was immediately lodged and was unsuccessful. Concerns have been raised and submitted in a nine page letter of appeal to Neil Davidson, Head of Procurement Services. To date, The Children’s Centre has not had a full reply, but only a brief response. The Department of Health and Social Care is claiming that “big” savings are being made by awarding these contracts to the other charities. The Children’s Centre however, has been told by the Procurements’ Department that their financial proposal ‘came in’ at less than the other charities. The big saving claim is not coming from the fact that the awarding charity can operate their services for less money, but that most of the residential homes will be closed and only 5 residential homes for children will operate in future, far less than are now operational. While one can argue that this is business I would like you, the public, to be fully aware of the actual trail of events and apparent lack of transparency in the procurement process that has happened in regard to these tenders. TRANSPARENCY AND HONESTY IN GOVERNMENT FIRSTLY, There is a gentleman employed by the Department of Health and Social Care (whose name I will not disclose in this article) who as part of his job, is allowed access to, and monitors, the different organisations holding contracts. He had full access to sensitive information relating to the work of The Children’s Centre including all proposed contract renewal areas. The government department know who he is, as do the MHKs looking into this matter, but as this is about principle and not personalities we will stick to that. The Children’s Centre operated, as usual, in an open and transparent manner throughout. The fact now appears that up and until the 29th of July, 2014 this gentleman was a Director of the aforementioned UK charity, one of the charities applying for one of the contracts. During the procurement procedure, any conflict of interest has to be declared along with the appropriate paperwork. From this, vital questions need to be asked of our Government and IMMEDIATE action taken: 1. Had this gentleman completed the conflict of interest certificate as part of the Procurement Process? 2. If so, why was he allowed to continue with the Procurement? 3. Where is the paperwork which has been requested and not acknowledged? 4. Has the Procurement Process undertaken by the DHSC for Children and Families been removed in its entirety and re-scheduled? There will need to be much discussion politically around these simple questions and I would ask you to take action with me now and sign the on line petition to support The Children’s Centres (failed) Appeal to have this looked into by a new body of people. All the Children Centre requested was for this to be done fairly. Can you imagine bidding for a tender only to find that a representative of one of your competitors was intimately involved with the Manx Government and a rival bidder! This gentleman actually had access to all your information? We surely have checks and measures for this and it is reasonable to ask the question of why, in this case, this appears to have been allowed to happen. Over to you MHK’s! FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ISLE OF MAN You will hear all sorts of arguments as to the financial costs and savings. The Department’s Minister, Howard Quayle, has stated that there is going to be a big saving of £1.4 million, by awarding the contracts in the way it had. This sadly is not the case. It is understood that the Children’s Centre’s tenders were less that those submitted by the other charities. Information communicated to The Children’s Centre by the procurement department informed them that their bid was £100,000 a year cheaper! Overall that would be a saving of another £500,000 meaning a total saving of £1.9 million. The money is due to be saved by reducing the current number of children’s residential homes to 5 – this is where the main savings are. This would be the same whoever was running the service. People may suggest that The Children’s Centre is big enough, currently they employ 172 staff and including Foster Carers, 220. It has been suggested that St. Christopher’s will absorb the possible redundancies of the 61 people affected, when in reality it will be no way near that figure. All the money that is paid to the Children’s Centre for its services are put back into expanding its services. All the tax paid remains on the Isle of Man. This will not necessarily be the case of the contracts as currently awarded are allowed to go ahead. After deducting expenses, the balance of funds may well leave the Island. £2.3 million has indeed already been remitted off island by way of a loan from the St Christopher’s Manx charity to its parent charity in the UK which is disclosed in their public accounts. What will happen to the Manx arm of the charity if this loan cannot be repaid? Are we really happy to leave our most vulnerable children of the Isle of Man with no truly Manx Charity to look after our own? MANX TRADITION OF PROVIDING QUALITY CARE TO OUR MOST VULNERABLE CITIZENS How will ALL this affect our most vulnerable families around the island? I would like to take this opportunity to share with you the diverse ways in the Children’s Centre quietly help our Island Community. They run many schemes for children including Play schools, the ‘Out to Play Scheme’; Action Songs and Rhymes for our younger citizens and their parents. They also help to support our most vulnerable families with a variety of services, offered robustly but discretely. Other services include, Community Farm, Outdoor Education Project, the Islands Fostering and Adoption service; a Contact Centre where separated or divorced families can have assistance in allowing children to continue to have relationships with both parents; an Outreach Service to provide advice and support to older children and their families experiencing difficulties; Family Centres helping people develop the skills they need to provide safe and appropriate parenting for their children and residential care for children unable to live within their own families. The extent of are these services are currently under threat but are essential to our Island’s community and this is what I am certainly most concerned about. I worked at The Children’s Centre several years ago, and became aware that the Children’s Centre has a small team that sits every Monday to discuss individual crisis situations that had occurred and developing ways to assist. These crises varied from a family with small children not having enough for heating to replacing badly soiled mattresses or for much needed food and clothes. When I was there these funds were used to replace doors in a home where the children mother had been victims of domestic violence. The home was left with holes in every door and the council wouldn’t replace them because “the family” had caused the damage. The DHSS wouldn’t supply the funds to replace the doors for the same reasons. With the abuser gone, the doors were a constant reminder of the abuse, not to mention a source of embarrassment and shame for the wife and children. This is where the Children’s Centre stepped in. They not only replaced all the doors, they sent staff to fit the doors and a team to help the family get back on their feet. Do you think that this will now be picked up by the Government departments? Do you think that the other charities will go this extra mile or just fulfil their contract? This is why it is crucial that we all take action now, and make the Government take a step back and look at the bigger picture when they revise all of these contracts. The three stated aims of this Government are balancing the books, growing the economy and protecting the vulnerable. Their actions towards the Children’s Centre do not comply with any of these aims. If the Government want their books to balance then they should go with the most competitive tender - the Children’s Centre tender meets this criteria. To grow the economy money made on the Isle of Man should stay on the Isle of Man. This would happen if The Children’s Centre were awarded the contracts. Protection of the Islands most vulnerable citizens should not of course be totally a matter of cost cutting and the quality of the service is important. As I understand it there has been no criticism or complaint or investigation into the services provided by the Children’s Centre. Indeed they are the proud recipients of many an accolade. So if they provide a competitive, excellent service AND can keep it Manx, why would the contracts be withdrawn? By allowing funds to be remitted off Island it is not helping to grow the economy or to balance the books! So in conclusion I would urge you sign this petition to the Isle of Man Government and all MHKs: TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. WE MUST ASK THE MHK’s TO ACT NOW. Full and transparent investigation and response is required BEFORE the contracts are signed which I believe is within the next week. We must urge the MHK’s to ACT immediately AND not wait until these contracts are signed and then say “oops we did it again”! So what can we, the public and voters, do? Firstly, please sign the petition at the bottom of this article. I know that there has been a petition carried out by the Children’s Centre Staff but, when I contacted an MHK for help, I was advised that the Government would want to see a public response…..so let them see it people. Secondly, contact your MHK and let them know how you feel about this. Pick up the phone and talk to them, write them a letter or email them. Let them know what you want them to do and that you will be watching their actions. This money must stay on the Island. If the contracts are signed over to the other bodies, it MUST be written into those contracts that ALL funds issued STAY ON THE ISLAND PERMANENTLY. THE CONSEQUENCES IF WE DO NOTHING If we do nothing and all these contracts are signed with funds leaving the Island, you will see the consequences over a long period of time. The changes may seem small at first but the ripples out into the community will be felt. The consequence for the most vulnerable of our community is the real issue for me. When the contracts are awarded with the ‘large figures’ that we are hearing about, how will the funds be managed? The unseen work the Children’s Centre do WILL be negatively impacted and may have to cease altogether. Is this what we want for our Island? Would you want somewhere to turn to if your circumstances changed through no fault of your own? Please share this information with as many people as you can. This is URGENT. There is little time left to make our voices heard so please act IMMEDIATELY. Thank you so very much for taking the time to read this. Together we will make a difference. Diane Parker
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 11:55:51 +0000
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