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Is Audit Scotland taking the low road on investigating Argyll’s ADP?

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Taking the line of least resistance, Audit Scotland simultaneously gives hope and takes it from many of those local service providers abused and the vulnerable service users under-served by Argyll and Bute’s Alcohol and Drugs Partnership [ADP].

The ADP is funded by the Scottish Government to the tune of £1.2 million a year to fulfil its task of delivering addiction recovery services here.

Investigations by ourselves and others – with the involvement of both of Argyll and Bute’s local MSPs, Michael Russell, whose geographical responsibilities are greatest; and Jackie Baillie who covers Helensburgh and Lomond which are within her Dumbarton constituency.

As we published earlier, Audit Scotland has today informed the MSP’s concerned that  it has decided to conduct an investigation and that it is now scoping the framework for that investigation.

In his letter to Mr Russell and Ms Baillie, Fraser McKinlay, Controlller of Audit at the national commission, says:

‘I can confirm that we will undertake a specific piece of work to review the recent commissioning process undertaken by the ADP. This review will take into account the concerns raised locally by you and others, and it will also consider the findings from any review work undertaken by the council. We are currently scoping the work.’

This section of Mr McKinlay’s short communication led us to experience the twitching nerve ends that so familiarly signal a strategic swerve.

He refers to ‘a specific piece of work’ – which, decoded, means work having narrowly defined and rigid boundaries – and possibly surrounding shallow territory, beyond which and deeper than which the commission will not go.

He goes on then to specify that what is to be investigated is ‘the recent commissioning process undertaken by the ADP’.

We have published information that came to us via unhappy council staff, saying that the Council has been and is in deep preparation for potential investigation – and that Jim Robb, a council officer, feels badly let down by ADP since his team did ‘the technical commissioning’ and were dumped on by ADP.

ADP’s parents are Argyll and Bute Council and NHS Highland. ADP has no procurement team of its own and so Argyll and Bute Counckl provides that service.

If in investigating the specific area of the recent commissioning undertaken by ADP, Audit Scotland limits that to investigating the ‘technical commissioning’  – and its ‘process’ – which would be little more than checking the answers to a series of ‘Yes/No’ procedural question – the outcome would almost certainly be be a clean bill of health for an outfit whose abusive culture could hardly be more evident.

This sort of conclusion would leave an already limp Audit Scotland reputationally lamed in terms of lost trust from those whom its responsibilities to scrutinise exist to protect.

Any serviceable investigation of Argyll & Bute’s ADP must be both wider and deeper than the one that is cire lty being scoped – and it must write in ‘right to roam’ should it find the need to do so.

It could not be more soundly in the wider interests than that this investigation is seen to direct – but not to limit – the work it will do.

Our parallel concern with Audit Scotland’s intention is Mr McKinlay says here that in its investigation, Audit Scotland: ‘will also consider the findings from any review work undertaken by the council’.

We have two caveats here:

  • with the weight the commissioners might attach to the council’s self-investigation;
  • and with what Audit Scotland might include under the terms of ‘any review work undertaken by the council’.

If it were not to limit itself to commissioning and if it were to include the findings of external studies commissioned, this might be a workable compromise for the commission – provided they had private access to the authors of the various studies at issue – such as:

  • both the draft and final reports from the eminent Professor Neal McKegeney and his team;
  • the recently submitted and markedly discreet report by Catalyst Consultants – which is nevertheless useful in the light it casts on the management of ADP; and
  • a report from Bill Breckenridge on internal relations, due to be completed shortly.

On  Audit Scotland’s planned investigation of ‘commissioning’

We note that Fraser McKinlay’s email to the two MSPs assigns ‘ADP’  – and not ‘Argyll and Bute Council’ to the commissioning process it will investigate. This broader organisational responsibility would allow it to get at some of the anomalies we have reported [summarised below] – but only Audit Scotland will know whether the resulting reach would be broad or narrow.

The ongoings around the writing of the service specification for the tender and around the period of time including that exercise to the final award of the contract on 4th November 2014 have cast doubt on the integrity of the award of the contract.The contract winner an incoming company to Argyll, arranged or was invited to work in conjunction with one of the 3rd Sector groups which have traditionally service provided local services across Argyll & Bute. This group was Dunoon and Cowal’s Kaleidoscope, wnose manager is Agnes Harvey, Chair of ADP’s Delivery Group and the person who wrote the part of the service specification central to the actual work contracted, edited the less relevant section and put the lot into some sort of coherent form.

Immediately upon the award of the contract, Ms Harvey wrote to all of Kaleidoscope’s supporters and told them that Kaleidoscope were ‘delighted’ with the contract award and that the winner, Addaction, had been working closely with Kaleidoscope ‘for the last nine months’; and that Kaleidscope was merging with Addaction.

It was also said from an informed source that, in this merger, Kaleidoscope was transferring to Addaction their liabilities and assets. including their premises, Dunoon’s historic Ballochyle House.

At the same time as being of very substantial assistance to the Addaction bid in familiarising them intimately with the ADP operation on the ground in Argyll and Bute, Ms Harvey actively and flatly refused to offer simple background information asked for by competing external bidders – as they were entitled to request and she was obliged to provide.

It emerged later that staff from Kaleidoscope were assured of their jobs in merging with Addaction, transferring to Addaction under TUPE [Transfer under Protection of Employment] rules. One member of Kaleidoscope staff told a meeting of 3rd sector colleagues, some weeks after the award of the contract, that Kaleidoscope staff had ‘known for months’ that they were TUPEing to Addaction: ‘months’ being well prior to the award of the contract.

At a very recent Delivery Group meeting, it emerged that Addaction had not yet registered with the Care Commission to provide the spectrum of services it is required to provide across Argyll and Bute. The company won the contract on 4th November 2014 and formally took over service delivery on 1st January. It has had the back up of the established 3rd sector groups or January only, Unless this support is continued [as it must be and which both local MSPs will argue to ensure], for at least another two months, it is probable that on 1st February, Addaction will be continuing to deliver unregistered addiction recovery services in Argyll and Bute on its own. Is this acceptable professional practice?

For Argyll will be publishing tonight on a matter – and the responses to it – which together underline sharply the crisis in the culture at ADP – a culture Audit Scotland must responsibly confront.

There are also two separate funding concerns which we are currently investigating and which, if they take us where they may, must be  of concern to Audit Scotland. We will report on these when our work is concluded. One of these matters impacts directly on the commissioning.

Those concerned for the integrity around the public sector, public services and public servants can only put their faith in the persistence and insistence of Michael Russell and Jackie Baillie that Audit Scotland conduct an investigation which is focused but not restricted- to the point where no one will be left dissatisfied with the acceptability of its findings.

In fairness, that has to include officers of Argyll and Bute Council and of NHS Highland as well as the voluntary service providers across the territory and the users of their services, both of whom who are the least protected and the most at risk in the sort of cultural abuse. In fairness to all concerned, the weight given to the case for each set of interests must be even.


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