'Whitewash' row after apology for care bungle

Published on Wednesday 2 June 2010 10:00

CITY leaders today apologised over the botched re-tendering of care services in the Capital as a report into the fiasco was branded a "whitewash".

Controversial plans to contract out the care of nearly 800 of Edinburgh's most vulnerable people were dramatically halted six months ago after concerns were raised about the tendering process.

City council chief executive Tom Aitchison today published a damning 53-page report that admitted to 27 separate errors in the process.

He also apologised for the distress caused to service users, who include people with learning or physical disabilities and mental health issues.

Council leader Jenny Dawe admitted that the consultation into the plans was not good enough and promised improvements in future.

However, opposition councillors said that there was no sign of anyone being held to account for actions that cost the council money and caused serious distress to people concerned about losing their carers.

Councillor Lesley Hinds, the city's Labour health spokeswoman, said: "It seems that this report is a bit of a whitewash. It says that mistakes costing thousands of pounds have been made and that these have caused unrest to service users yet no action seems to be being taken.

"We have to question, given the upset that has been caused, whether individuals have to be held to account.

"They say that the procurement process was flawed, so who is responsible? It has to be the chief executive of the council and the convener.

"Is anybody going to be held responsible and displaced? If the process was flawed, is that corrupt? The report doesn't say. I have genuine questions about what action the chief executive has taken and, from this report, it seems that no action has been taken."

When the process was halted, an independent review by private consultants Deloitte was ordered. It found flaws in the tender process, including that it was "not as meticulous" as it could have been.

Today's report by Mr Aitchison admitted that the amount of information passed from council officials to councillors "could have been improved".

He said there were shortcomings on project management, with too many people working on the project and too many changes to the team involved.

He also admitted that consultation with the service users and their representatives was flawed, and

that a commissioning strategy should have been in place for officials to follow.

The report also highlights the current lack of guidance from the Scottish Government, which is in the process of drawing up guidelines.

Following publication of his report, Mr Aitchison said: "I am quite happy to say on behalf of the council management that I am sorry.

"I have got to acknowledge that there were shortcomings here and it did cause distress to a very vulnerable group, and that is a matter of regret to me and the management team.

"We should not have found ourselves in this position. I think the council rationale was sound in reviewing care provision but clearly in the execution of it there have been some serious shortcomings."

He added: "We nearly got there but that's not good enough. After all, we were dealing with real people here, not buying baked beans or tyres from Kwik Fit."

A separate review by Alastair Maclean, the council's head of legal and administrative services, also found a series of failings, including the teams that mark a tender for quality being given information about price, which he said was a "fundamental flaw in the process".

He also criticised information "leaks" from within the team to other parts of the council on at least two occasions, which ultimately led to the project being halted in what he said was "a hugely damaging way".

Ian Hood, chief executive of The Learning Disability Alliance Scotland, welcomed the report's admission of mistakes but said there was no "black mark" against any council staff who had made mistakes.

He added: "They have learned some lessons, although not all of them. This was an incredibly complex process and they found at least 27 different flaws.

"When it is a bad process, every flaw counts. In a good process, when people are properly consulted, one or two mistakes don't matter too much. But when it is a bad process every mistake counts.

"This had a big impact on everyone involved. Even those who didn't have mental health issues were stressed, anxious and losing sleep."

Cllr Dawe also pledged today that the council would improve the way it consults with people. She said: "We now know that, although we thought we were having adequate consultation, it was not perceived as such by the people we were consulting.

"Consultation is important to me; it was something that I thought the previous administration did not get right and I wanted to ensure we got it right.

"But it was clear that we did not present it that way. Some of the language used in letters that went out was not right and some people weren't consulted that should have been."

She said that the blame for the errors lay with council officials and defended her administration, including health leader Cllr Paul Edie, who has been widely criticised for his own role.

"I really do not think there was anything he could have known," she said. "This was an intricate operational matter and, as councillors, we leave officers to deal with operational matters.

"It is pretty clear that people had a negative perception of Paul. I think they perhaps misjudged him and felt he was giving glib answers. I can understand why some of what he said may have been perceived as being a bit inhumane but I know that is not what he intended."

The council doesn't understand disability

EVERY time David Clemenson heard the doorbell ring, he thought it was someone coming to take him away.

The 22-year-old, who suffers from severe learning disabilities, was just one of the human victims of the uncertainty over the city's care shake-up.

His mother Lesley said that in the four years since he moved into serviced accommodation at Slateford Green, David's health and lifestyle improved markedly. He had grown in confidence, talked more and was able to go out more. But his family feared that he would be set back years if he was forced to get a new carer, as he would have been under the re-tendering plans.

"It was a very difficult time for David," said Lesley.

"Every time he heard the doorbell he thought that someone was coming to take him away.

"It was a stress response to the situation and he was always crying and always upset. We teach him not to go near strangers and he was worried that a stranger was coming to take him away."

Although the threat of a change of carer remains, Ms Clemenson said that council bosses need to understand the impact that changes will have on service users.

"He would go backwards years if something changed," she said.

"I just wonder how the council will ever bring about cultural change when they just don't understand people with mental health issues or learning disabilities."

SO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

THE controversial care shake-up led to a storm of protest in Edinburgh – but the plan has not gone away.

Council bosses have pledged to ensure they do not repeat the same mistakes again but that does not mean the plan has been dumped.

A new comprehensive commissioning strategy is being drawn up that will provide a framework for all tendering of adult social care contracts.

It will include new project boards and project teams to work on the tender exercise.

A communication plan is also to be drawn up to ensure better consultation in future.

However, exactly what happens next in the care and support re-tendering project is not yet known. Ongoing tender activity is currently being reviewed by council officials.

Meanwhile, applications for "direct payments", where the council pays the service user to employ their own carer, are still being processed, meaning that the number of service users that will be affected by any future tender will be greatly reduced.