VB reader Adam Spencer got in touch with us last week to share his concern about the way that Isle of Wight council Director of Corporate Governance, Davina Fiore, had responded to a request for information by a national care organisation.
United Kingdom Home Care Association (UKHCA) are the overseeing organisation for Domiciliary Care in the UK. They represents thousands of care providers and are called upon to assist in government proposals, contribute to legislation and much more.
Letter sent UK-wide
Back in November 2011, UKHCA wrote to every Council in England with a number of questions (see their letter – embedded below for your convenience) in relation to potential legal challenges to statutory commissioning of homecare.
The organisation’s intention was to gather the relevant responses to share with their members and they gave a deadline to councils of 9th December 2011.
Adam advised that most, but not all, of the councils responded to the request for information and he was interested to see what sort of response the Isle of Wight council gave and how that compared with the other authorities.
Comparison against three other authorities
He chose three random responses received by UKHCA from various councils with the aim of “comparing the type of response, the content and the spirit and ethos of those charged with managing Social Care provision”.
As you’ll be able to see, responses from Hampshire, Dudley and Liverpool (embedded below for your convenience) were all of a similar nature and content. They were detailed, polite and informative.
What about the Isle of Wight response?
So, you might now be wondering how the Isle of Wight response compared.
Adam told us that he felt the response of Davina Fiore was ‘terse, offhanded and supercilious’.
In response to the pertinent questions from this social care provider association, Ms Fiore just replied,
“Thank you very much for your letter dated 17 November 2011, the contents of which are noted.”
No details. Nothing more.
How long before another legal challenge?
Adam says, “The refusal to engage or provide information is, perhaps, more telling in what they do not say compared to what they do say (which is very little anyway).
“One wonders if elected representatives, in general, are aware of the way the Council are dealing with these matters and in light of the lost Judicial review case might have concerns that their policy and strategy is actually ‘lawful’ and legal.”
He finishes by asking, “One wonders how long Domiciliary Care providers will wait before challenging the actions of this Council once again in the Courts?”
Re-request finally leading to some action
Surprised at the brevity of the response, we wrote to the council towards the end of this week to ask whether they had sent a follow-up letter.
From their reply (which finally arrived at 4:30pm on Friday, 4th May 2012), it appears that as the council didn’t provide the information, UKHCA were forced to write to them again on 18 April to try and extract the information, to which the council told us they are “currently gathering information” and “will be responding as soon as we are able.”
Original request for response
Response from Liverpool
Response from Dudley
Response from Hampshire
Response from the Isle of Wight
Image: Nomadic Lass under CC BY 2.0
