www.publicinvolvement.org.uk

Since our announcement last month, M-A-C has been busy working with the Wandsworth Care Alliance to launch Wandsworth LINk. The website www.wandsworthlink.org.uk went 'live' this morning.

We do not get many comments on the blog so we were delighted when Michelle Valentine, the author of the piece that follows, was sufficiently interested by an entry that Andrew Craig wrote in March on complying with Section 242 to note in our comment box "This new duty could be quite a powerful lever for disabled people, and it will be interesting to see how this duty will be implemented alongside the duties imposed by the DDA 2005 to involve disabled people. I would welcome a discussion about this." This was rather unwise of Michelle because of course we immediately invited her to kick off such a discussion. Her article follows.

Post continues: Section 242 and the Disability Equality Duty - Making a Happy Marriage

Read the April newsletter here.

Post continues: We have caught our first LINks - the Wandsworth Care Alliance and the Partnership are chosen to be the LINks Host in Wandsworth

The Public Administration Select Committee are in the news for advocating a single entry point for public services complaints.

Para 42. "We agree with Sir David Varney and the National Audit Office that the Government should explore the scope for a common access point nationwide for all non-emergency public services. This would provide a single point of contact for impartial information on where to make a complaint or seek redress. We restate our predecessor Committee's recommendation in favour of just such a service-'Public Services Direct'-which would offer an easy access, one-stop-shop approach to a complex web of public services. Public Services Direct should be both a gateway to government organisations and services, and a source of basic advice to public service users. It would act as the starting point for people unsure of how or where to lodge their initial complaint, and would provide them with the appropriate information and guidance." When Citizens Complain, Fifth Report

In the terms we use about complaint handling, the above is a referral site. What the public want is a problem-resolution site. Most people build complaint handling processes offering an initial point of contact and then a second one if the problem does not get sorted there. Where the complainant wants to see Houses of Correction, the public service build great Palaces of Escalation. For resolution, read referral.

Post continues: When Citizens Complain – what should happen?

In a personal piece reflecting on his own healthcare needs, Andrew challenges current thinking on 'topping up' and consults the welfare state's urtext.

I have been back to the source for all things enlightened about the British welfare state - Sir William Beveridge's magisterial and visionary 1942 report - produced in the darkest days of the second world war - entitled Social Insurance and Allied Services. I wanted to check on what he had said about people topping up their NHS care by paying a little bit extra on top of the what you get from the state as their entitlement. Did he predict that this would introduce the danger of a 'two tier' health service? Would Sir William agree with the modern day guardians of the NHS that "topping up" and "two-tierism" were heinous crimes to be discouraged at all costs? Far from it. The proponent of our universal and comprehensive welfare system did not say it had to be "all or nothing." Quite the contrary. In fact what he did say on the subject sounds like it I could have heard it on Radio 4 only yesterday.

Post continues: Andrew Craig Gets Back to Basics and asks 'What would William Beveridge say about topping up NHS care?'

As I filled in my petition to keep the Gipsy Hill Post Office open, I fell to wondering what post offices are for anymore? Are they amongst the things that we do not use or indeed value until they are threatened with closure? We spend a lot of time agonising over how we can get the citizenry to join in and take an interest in consultation. The cynic would say that the infallible way to do it is to threaten to close something that few use but everyone values.

Add to this an improved facility somewhere else and you have the makings of a monster row. Post offices, hospitals it is the same - the actual function of the shop or healthcare unit is forgotten and it becomes an abstract symbol of the collapse of life as we know it. The challenge to those of us who believe in consulting people is to guard against it being an exercise that institutionalises nostalgia and turns its back on the future.

I did some consumer representative training some time ago with the newly established Postwatch and have some sympathy with the bind that closures put consumer 'watchdogs' in. They want to maintain some flexibility and not get frozen in a posture of nay-saying. While it would be easy enough to declare that further post office closure (or indeed railway services withdrawn) will only take place over our dead bodies, the results sadly are usually more closures and yes, a consumer body dead in the water because nobody takes it seriously any more. Always saying NO and always being igNOred.

Hospitals attract a similar set of emotional responses - nothing gets the elders on the streets faster than a whiff of service withdrawal. They are often disappointed because in a sense, the emotion and the outrage come too late in the process. Consultation is a conversation that has to be continuous and take in both the genesis of a project as well as its outcome. There must be an element of leadership in explaining why the future can in some cases actually be better than the past we know and are comfortable with.

The - rather undervalued - resource that is there and can perhaps monitor a developing situation in a way that a single person or group cannot is the local councillor. Our guess is that local government is going to become if not fashionable then better regarded in future. This will be one of the factors that will make LINks a success. If these new networks are heard by local politicians as well as health and social care commissioners and service deliverers, then they have a chance to drive change and create improvement.

We invite you to enjoy the alliterative feast of plosives - past postings on parks and parents (£38,000 down the slide) as well as our announcement about getting involved in a tender to work with a LINks host and a briefing from Andrew Craig about Section 242.

STOP PRESS: Just after writing this, I heard that in Essex, the local government is trying to buy post offices and re-open them promising lots of innovative service ideas - will they become consultation waystations where citizens make their views known?