I hear that after Xmas the services of Ashley House, will, after what must have been years of debate and meeting upon meeting be under the one hat of CRI. An all in one provider, taking the place of the existing agencies addaction, cdt so on and so forth.
Hooray everyone cheers, about time others moan, but hold on a minute everything is not really as it seems. What this means is not out with the old and in with the new, which, I believe, in a lot of peoples opinions is what it should be. It's more like changing the label and keeping the contents the same, in essence a mere marketing ploy.
There are some that will be screaming from their laptops as they read this, hold on, what are you trying say?
Well, it’s true that Ashley House has come a long way, and in striving to meet the requirements of the current drug policy actively encourages the likes of Abstinence Groups and Service User Involvement.
Changing the label and not the contents will not change the way an already, in my opinion, poor service runs. There is a distinct lack of any real management backbone which is further let down by staff with low levels of motivation.
In my experience the customary volunteering group is practically left unmanaged, to their own devices and certainly to the determent of any other service user (outside the clique 4).
For me, the one good thing that has come out of Ashley House in at least the last year has been TTP, that service should never have set foot inside Ashley House in the first place. The decision taken by the DAAT to award the contract in the first place was at the tax payers cost and also the cost of the service user. The repercussions are still reverberating around Ashley House now.
It does make me laugh out loud that the staff left from the debris of TTP leaving, I feel, now have to bite their lips and go against everything that tells them NA is the only way and have to promote other forms of recovery. The sooner that message gets out there the better. It is clearly a dangerous game to put such claims to such a vulnerable client base.
"Commissioning-changing the label will not change the contents"
About: Ashley House Ashley House Widnes WA8 7RP
Posted by n a noway (as ),
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