Back in 2011, a Needs Assessment report was commissioned by the ADP [Argyll and Bute Alcohol and Drugs Partnership] from Professor Neil McKeganey, head of Glasgow University’s Misuse of Drugs Centre.
Professor McKeganey was in the spotlight yesterday in a piece he wrote to accompany an investigation of the use of ‘legal high’ drugs in Scotland, ‘A scourge that could grow to replace heroin’. He revealed in this the shocking reality that Scotland has a major problem with heroin abuse – at ‘twice the rate of the same issue in England and one of the highest recorded anywhere in Europe.
This underlines the the imperative of effective and focused addiction recovery services.
The McKeganey team’s Needs Analysis for ADP was carried out in circumstances persistently undermined by its then Chair, Cleland Sneddon, the council’s Executive Director of Community Services. Some staff refused point blank to speak to Professor McKeganey – and were allowed to do so. Mr Sneddon himself challenged the findings in the draft report because it did not say what he wanted it to say. He insisted on revisions to remove inconvenient material.
In the final report for ADP in 2011, Professor McKeganey said, in the introduction to his findings:
‘The needs assessment project that we have undertaken had the many difficult challenges to partnership working that are evident within Argyll and Bute.
‘There will inevitably be those who say that we have given too great a prominence to these problems in the report that we have produced.
‘However, within the last few months agencies within Argyll and Bute have written to the Scottish Government civil servants seeking their intervention to resolve what they see as difficulties and inequities in how services are funded and managed.
‘They have also written to Audit Scotland seeking their intervention to review the funding process, they have asked for a meeting with the relevant government minister responsible for drug services, and they have contacted the chair of the Drug Strategy Delivery Commission.
‘So far these appeals have led to little other than the advice from those whose assistance has been sought that it is the responsibility of local organisations to resolve their own difficulties. Of all the needs that we have identified there are fewer, if any, greater than the need for services within Argyll and Bute to find some way of working more closely together.’
This highlights two major issues
Firstly, ADP and the Chair, Mr Sneddon, who continued in that position until the summer of 2014, had those evidenced findings between three and four years ago. Nothing was done to address the central issues of dysfunctionality identified in the report – which also said that Argyll and Bute’s ADP, unlike others in Scotland, had not gathered data to allow it to measure the extent of the addiction problems in the region.
Any responsible learning organisation would have taken cognisance of such measured conclusions as Professor McKeganey’s, an impeccable and demonstrably independent authority – and worked to address the measures he identified. Under Mr Sneddon, Argyll’s ADP did not do that. The McKeganey report had clearly been commissioned with the fond notion that it would inevitably support ADP’s own sense of itself. When the outcome differed from those expectations, it was dismissed.
Secondly, in these remarks Professor McKeganey reports on the extensive efforts made back in 2011 by ‘agencies within Argyll & Bute’ to seek responsible external intervention in what was clearly then – over three years ago – a seriously dysfunctional outfit.
He records, above, that ‘these appeals have led to little other than the advice from those whose assistance has been sought that it is the responsibility of local organisations to resolve their own difficulties’.
We beg to differ and the evidence is on our side. It is the responsibility of government to govern; and it is the responsibility of the Audit Commission to audit.
As a result of these failures to engage with a failing and renegade organisation the government is funding at £1.2 million a year from public money, the situation staggered on as before.
It is impossible to imagine that, against this background of demonstrable bad practice, alienation, dissent and warring factions, the services which the organisation exists to deliver can possibly have been provided to the needy as effectively as they ought.
At the heart of this situation are people whose needs are not being met.
And here we are again, in 2015.
In 2014, again, ‘agencies within Argyll and Bute’ wrote to the same external authorities, enlisting the support of local MSPs, Jackie Baillie and Michael Russel – who reported it to the responsible Minister, Roseanna Cunningham; and, again now, in this third round of efforts to achieve redress, to the now responsible Minister Paul Wheelhouse.
The responses were exactly the same as those recorded by Professor McKeganey in 2011.
What we are looking at here is an overall regime of governance characterised by an inability and an unwillingness to act – even when the evidence is there to highlight the imperative for action.
Audit Scotland, at the request of the two local MSPs, is now to investigate ADP – but has chosen to do so within very narrow parameters which can only keep it well away from serious matters that require to be examined.
On all fronts, these serial demonstrations of weakness and lack of motivation to do the job appointed, may well see this diseased culture in Argyll and Bute carry on, centrally uninterrupted. This is a betrayal of public trust and of the electorate.
It must change.
Professor McKeganey’s 2011 departure
The person whose integrity remained shiningly intact throughout has been Professor McKeganey, the only consultant in our entire experience who refused to do as he was told by his paymaster and presented a draft report that described an analysed the situation he had found – and who, rather than impugn his professional probity, retired the project and refused the money.
As we reported in our first scene setting article on the abusive situation in ADP, he wrote to Cleland Sneddon, then Chair of ADP, saying in a revelatory conclusion:
‘We are concerned, on the basis of your letter, that the integrity of the audit findings is in danger of being compromised by pre-judgement even in advance of the findings being analysed and written up.
‘In the light of these difficulties, and the atmosphere of suspicion that has dogged this work from its inception, we consider that we have little option now other than to withdraw from the needs assessment project.
‘We remain committed to providing the ADP with a report of the needs assessment work undertaken to date and to submitting that report to the ADP in November.
‘With regard to the funding for the needs assessment I should be grateful for your guidance as to how this may be returned to the ADP or to NHS Highland. There will be no further claim for financial support for this project from ourselves.
‘I regret that it has not been possible to complete the needs assessment work in the way that was intended and if you feel that it would be helpful to discuss these matters further I should be happy to travel to Lochgilphead to meet with yourself.’
