The Crisis Centre’s last day?

Today the Leeds Crisis Centre closes its doors forever, after more than 20 years of instant access support to thousands of Leeds’ most vulnerable people. We will never know how many lives it has saved, but we can be sure that there will from now on be desperate people spending weeks on waiting lists for the very limited support offered by other services.
We should all thank the Crisis Centre’s many dedicated staff for all their work. The council showed them little gratitude but they will know the difference they made.
Look below for plans for a new crisis counselling service for Leeds. If you can help, for instance, by letting Jeremy and his colleagues know about the impact of losing the Centre, please do!
We wish all of the Crisis Centre staff all the best for the future.

A new beginning?

 

We’ve received the following message from Crisis Centre founder, Jeremy Pritlove, who has been working quietly to attempt to restore the Crisis Centre for the people of Leeds. Please support him and tell your friends.

WORKING TO RESTORE THE CRISIS CENTRE’S SERVICE FOR LEEDS: 

PLEASE JOIN US 

Leeds Crisis Centre will shortly be closed. This decision by Leeds City Council was strenuously opposed by many Leeds people who had used the Centre and knew how valuable its service has been.

A group of people has now come together to work to re-create the Crisis Centre’s service for Leeds. The aim is to run the service, probably on a smaller scale than previously, as an independent voluntary body or a social enterprise.

To date, considerable progress has been made. The group has met with a councillor, with managers of voluntary sector agencies, and with advisers about social enterprise.

The first key aim is to persuade the Council to transfer the Crisis Centre building to the community as an asset to be used for a continuing crisis service. Linked with this is the need to set up a steering group to look at how the service would work, and to begin applying for funding.

The group would very much welcome people who value the Crisis Centre’s work to join it, either by simply expressing their support, or by helping with the work to be done.

If you are interested, please contact Jeremy Pritlove at jpritlove@aol.com

An alternative budget

We’ve tried to keep out of party politics. We feel that all three major parties plus the Greens share responsibility for the public services mess in Leeds, because the cuts were set nationally by the Conservatives and Lib Dems, but in Leeds, Labour, with their Green sidekicks, implemented cuts incompetently, increasing the damage.

So this piece in the Yorkshire Post by Tory councillor Alan Lamb doesn’t have much to say about the national policy of huge cuts, but does set out some very sensible suggestions about how money could have been saved without wrecking quite so many valuable services: http://bit.ly/eAbZvl.

Goodbye for now

Sadly, we thought it was time to say goodbye from the blog, at least for now.

We have exhausted every democratic process, not that they turned out to be very democratic. Perhaps, like us, you feel let down by the councillors we elected to take us through these difficult times. Our demands were never that there should be no cuts. They were that the council should do its job competently and with integrity, consulting people about difficult decisions rather than trying to hush them up and thinking through all the options rather than choosing whatever looks simplest and then sticking to it come what may.

Unison are still talking about a legal challenge and the Scrutiny Board will have its inquiry. We’ll keep you posted on those as and when anything interesting happens. If you have reflections on the campaign or something about the Crisis Centre you’d like to share, drop us an email or post a comment and we will post them.

We’d like to say thank you to everyone who has contributed to this campaign. All we have done is to make a space for people to have their say, the rest has been down to all the service users, professionals and one or two politicians who have sent their messages in. You have written, tweeted and emailed in huge numbers and protested in person. A couple of brave former service users have even been interviewed on TV. We’re especially grateful to the supporters who started the petitions and received more attention than they were bargaining for from the council.

Most of all, our hats go off to the Crisis Centre staff who have provided a crucial service to some of Leeds’ most vulnerable people for more than twenty years. That wasn’t worth nothing, despite this batch of officials and elected members doing their best to pretend it could be trashed without consequence.

5 a side tournament in aid of the Samaritans

A group of post graduate students at Leeds Trinity University College are organising an event to raise awareness about the issues touched on with the campaign and also to raise funds which will be given to the Samaritans, who spoke out in defence of the Crisis Centre on several occasions.

The event is a 5-a-side football will take place 10am – 2pm at Goals (Kirkstall Road) on Sunday 21st March. There will be 8 teams, each captained by one ex pro footballer – to be fully revealed shortly. We have one Samaritans team. There are a few spaces left for players (£10 to play, will go to Leeds Samaritans) and the organisers would like to invite people involved in Leeds Crisis Centre or supporters of the campaign to come and play. They hope to attract as many spectators as possible and will be collecting for Leeds Samaritans on the day too. There will be a Samaritans information stand and guest speaker.

If you are interested in taking part please email Lucinda: lucindacatherineday@googlemail.com

All in this together?

One of the campaign’s supporters sends us her reflections on the recent board meeting and last week’s Scrutiny Meeting at which supposedly independent board rubber stamped the closure decision, apparently voting on purely party political lines:

I am apalled about the outcome of the scrutiny meeting, a board that agrees the process of consulation was inadequate but which voted with Labour regardless? What a mockery of the system!
 
I went to the budget meeting (couldn’t make the scrutiny meeting), and realised this is not about saving or cutting services: it is about point scoring and Labour versus the Cons and Lib Dems.

I was very sad to witness this first hand at the budget meeting. Following a huge demonstration, the meeting was delayed and I had to fight to get a place in the public gallery, and judging by all the Leeds city council badges on view, I think myself and one or two others were the only real public in there!
 
After a long meeting and a vote, it was all over. Excellent arguments had been put across for the non-closure of the crisis centre, but to no avail.
 
I was deflated. As I was leaving the gallery, I passed Cllr Lucinda Yeadon [lead councillor for adults' services - see her pledges to protect front line services on her website]. She was making her way to Sandie Keane [Director of Adult Services, paid huge amounts of taxpayers' money to serve our most vulnerable people]. They do not know me, but I know them.
 
Sandie Keane was smiling and said ‘well done’ to Lucinda, she’d won!
So this is not about saving lives, proper and legal consultation, it is about getting one over the opposition, and the glee on these two women’s faces and the comments made proves it. Clearly they did not know a member of the public was beside them, probably assuming none got into the chamber. But never mind, it seems to have improved her career path, and that seems to be all that counts nowadays.

I feel very let down by my council, and hope we have raised lots of awareness of major flaws in the system. Think carefully before you vote and elect people who will go back on their pledges, put their interest and careers first. They do not seem to want to serve their citizens just benefit themselves. I hope they feel some shame.

The next step begins.
 
A very unhappy Leeds tax-payer and voter.

‘Independent’ scrutiny brought into disrepute

Jeremy Pritlove, a founder of the Crisis Centre more than 20 years ago, spoke in favour of the Centre.  As his devastating assessment of what passes for independent scrutiny illustrates,  the meeting on Friday reflects badly on the Labour and Morley ‘Independent’ councillors who, we had presumably been told which way to vote ahead of the committee and did as they were told regardless of the evidence and arguments.

Jeremy says:

• There were three presentations arguing for the closure decision to be reconsidered: one by Councillor Latty (one of the councillors who had asked for the decision to be “calld in”), one by Paul Truswell (on behalf of the NHS LINk committee which provides an independent voice for the community on NHS decisions), and one by me.
• There was then a response from Sandie Keene (Director of Adult Services), Phil Corrigan (PCT), John Lennon (Senior official in the council), and Cllr Yeadon (lead councillor for adults’ services). John Lennon spoke longest – a misleading array of dubious statistics.
• The debate between Scrutiny Board members was totally in favour of the Centre’s being kept open. No Board member spoke in favour of its closure.
• Cllr Latty, Paul Truswell and I then responded to the debate and to what John Lennon and his colleagues had said.
• A vote was then called, with a majority in favour of “releasing” the decision to close the Centre. Councillor Hanley (Chair) said that the Scrutiny Board would conduct an “Enquiry” into the process of the closure decision.
• There could be no doubt in anyone’s mind that we won the debate. There were many very strong points made in favour of the Council’s reconsidering its decision. John Lennon and colleagues admitted that the Centre’s services were not duplicated, that it provides a very good service, and that alternatives cannot fully replace it.
• In view the fact that no Board member spoke in favour of closing the Centre, the vote to do so was hard to explain, to put it mildly.  I personally feel that the councillors who voted this way but did not take the trouble to explain to the public and the Campaign why they did so have some duty as elected representatives to do so.
• Many people who spoke said that the consultation about the closure had been completely inadequate. Sandie Keene herself said that “consultation can be done better”. One of the strong points made by Cllr Latty and others was that no opportunity had been given in the consultation to look at alternatives to closure such as a reduced service on another site. Sandie Keene herself said that she welcomed “a debate” about the entre’s future. Yet the Board totally failed to draw the obvious conclusion, that a period of proper consultation (as we and others requested) be made available.
• What we are left with is the “Inquiry”. Cllr Hanley offered to involve us in this, and to send us the terms of reference for it. Of course, the Enquiry should look at the consultation process and (presumably) recommend a better process in future, but it seems unlikely that this would affect the Centre’s planned closure.

So everyone,  even Sandie Keene and colleagues have agreed that the consultation was seriously flawed and the council has failed to look at real alterrnatives to full closure. And yet, throughout this process, our elected councillors and the public servants we pay for from our taxes have put face-saving ahead of doing the right thing every time.