Save Our Kwids In Coventry

In a similar theme as the Surrey & Borders Partnerships Mental Health Trust Campaign to reinstate Learning Disability Service Users £3 a day pay , Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health UserWatch notes that in nearby Coventry recently according to Coventry Telegraph reporter Dayle Crutchlow the Council Social Care Services there have cut £3 a day to service users with learning disability who are working at a paper recycling charity enterprise ..

The charity is called CROW and the Director there is Barbara Cowling.

UserWatch has learned from Jeremy Bryce of UkSurvivor's post there that concerned Service Users are already looking deeper into this situation and are asking whether or not Coventry Service Users are being sufficiently consulted before changes and alterations are made to their service delivery levels

UserWatch is aware of a developing theme across the UK and in Birmingham in which services are changing themselves without appropriate and recorded input by Service Users themselves . They appear to be sliding around in an unjoined up arena of little protection for Service Users consultation rights. There appears to be little check and balance on this practice evidenced by a lack of independent Service Users organisations doing some stronger representation on these matters . PPI forums are increasingly weakened too by a limited life and a poor political will to have made them stronger in mental health since "reform" is prized more greatly by Government even though it creates distress amongst some Service Users .

Local passification and compromise of what groups of Service Users get exactly what resources from Trusts appears to be one weakening factor for Independence but the same could be said for any statutory service and Social Care Services too that have the controlling purse strings over Service Users and any of their groups. Its clear Service Users must become more financially independent and less controlled by services to fully have their own voices .

Joan Mulcaster of the Croydon Advertiser first alerted the public to the Surrey situation of Epsom Garden Centre run by the SAPB Trust who took away the £3 a day from those Service Users. It appears we have some patch repetition in Coventry . Will a wider outbreak happen ? Has anyone got any more stories like this ?

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