Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Mental Health And The Third Sector Extinction Event ?



A firm RAPIDATASERVICES tracking direct debit cancellation for charities and the growing Third Sector (Community Interest Companies) and the like, which New Labour wants to enhance, so the State no longer carries direct service delivery responsibilities has registered a pattern of cancellations of direct debits to charities .

Third Sector UK say :

The Charity Direct Debit Tracking Report 2009, published today, shows an increase in cancellations of direct debits to charities in December 2008 of 67 per cent on the average December figure since 2003. In July last year there was a 54 per cent increase on the average July level for the same five-year period. The figures contrast with a steady decline in cancellations of charity direct debits between April 2003 and July 2007. Scott Gray, managing director of Rapidata, said the decline stopped abruptly after the collapse of Northern Rock.

"Cancellations skyrocketed last summer," he said.

RecessionWatch.blogspot.com shows more information on the percentages :


The monthly cancellations rate is the percentage of live direct debits that are cancelled each month. Average monthly cancellations rates for each year are:

2003/04 3.54%

2004/05 3.45%

2005/06 3.18%

2006/07 3.05%

2007/08 3.32%

2008/09 4.64%

For the first time, the financial year 2008/09 saw monthly cancellations rates exceed five per cent, on four separate occasions – July, September, October and January.

UserWatch knows locally Third Sectorlings (migrating often from the NHS) in mental health are buffered for a time because the state has shrunk and contracts are forward planned .

The local mental health trust has 200k for a few years (maybe 4 ) to give away and play with from its own charity too .

So in Birmingham there are some buffers and ofcourse we have the "surplus" creating " Trust with their new regimes of lean management shaving savings off from what we would argue is a disappeared never-evolved-culture of Patient Choices with purchasing power.

The State appear to have defined what's left of "Patient Choice" in terms of its feeding of the Third Sector so if its does not grow through poor receipts will supply sides of "mentors" or "support workers" etc dry up

The wasted chances though in mental health to create a growing culture of patient-experience of recoveries they choose (beyond crisis) is down to Labour's distortions of the "Patient Voice" - which has been compromised by corporate State service supply, creations of uneccessary bureacracy like NIMHE and CSIP (costing 140 Milllion 2004 - 2010) and managment performance pressure to conform to a NHS false partnership between Users and Services that sees some of the Users paid off in jobs in safely tick-boxed bubble-groups which serves to further divert from the growth of an independent culture of Patient Choice ..

Labour, and in fairness the Tories too, have wanted more of a charity State service delivery for all types of social care and health .. But who picks up people on the edges when the receipts it prospers from dry up ?

And do we really need corporatised charity service delivery moved in on by corporate business classes ? Why ? What about local market supplies competing with each other and the competition purse hand being patients and local doctors with volunteer lay inspection (and plenty of it ) ? You see under Labour they have favourably stacked the odds with the Third Sector... Its the next form of internal colonialism of people lives if we are not careful , its not freedom to choose . Its freedom in service-chains...

The 1990's - 2008 oasis built on unsustainable debt and froth services and corporate dizzy-visions is going dry.. But watch what happens in Health and Social Care .. Its the next UK gold rush.


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