I finally got myself to report on this.. I received the final report ages ago.. to be precise on 30th January of this year. I had to chase them up however.. It had been more than a year.. So I reminded them (although it states that they will not give you an interim report & not to ask..!) on 3rd January 2023:
Dear Sir/Madam,
It has been over a year now since I received the response below..
You stated: "We want to concentrate on progressing this work and therefore will not respond to requests for updates, but please be assured we will contact you if we require further information from you. Our work can take some time to complete, but we will write to you summarising the outcome.”
So.. Does this mean you are just ignoring this and let me wait .. for.. ever??? Some idea would be appreciated..
With kind regards,
Philip Vervaeke
They are supposed to respond to any correspondence within 15 working days. Three weeks later they had not even responded to me asking if they were still investigating after a year! So on 27th January I reminded them yet again & stated that they keep making promises but not acting on them.. :
Dear Sir/Madam,
As far as I can count it has been more than 15 working days since 3th January 2023.
I would appreciate a response. You keep making promises but don’t seem to act upon them?
With respect,
Philip Vervaeke
Then three days later I received the final verdict.. Final, because thanks to their own rules there is no appeal process and their verdict is final & you cannot do anything about it (you can't even reply to their email). What IS a joke is their report and the length of it (remember, it took them over a year to produce this..), here it is..:
Dear Mr Vervaeke,
Cerebral Palsy Scotland SC022695 MI/INQ/21-0067
Thank you for your email of 27th Jan 2023 and previous email of 03 Jan 2023. I apologise for the delay in responding.
We have fully considered the information you have provided to us, along with other information we hold about the charity.
When we receive a concern about a charity, we assess it in line with our Concerns and Inquiries guidance, a copy of which is attached. The guidance sets out the matters that OSCR can and can’t deal with and explains how we assess concerns to decide if we can take them forward. When we are able to take matters forward, we do so in the public interest, that means we don’t act on behalf of an individual to try and resolve their individual concern.
It is important to understand that charities are independent legal organisations. It is the charity trustees who are legally responsible for how the charity is run and the decisions taken. OSCR’s role is to make sure that charities comply with the requirements of Scottish charity law, and that charity trustees run charities in line with their legal duties.
We have taken the following action:
Made contact with the charity trustees to seek clarification from them on certain matters.
We have requested and received a number of documents relating to the governance of the charity.
After reviewing all the relevant information, we consider the actions of the charity trustees to be consistent with the general duties that they are subject to under the 2005 Act. We have not identified any matters of a regulatory nature that warrant any further action by us at this time and therefore do not consider it is proportionate or in the public interest for us to make further inquiries and we are closing our file.
In asking us to consider your concern, you accept the way in which we work and our authority to come to a final decision in the matter. You do not have a right of appeal under charity law about our decision.
Kind Regards
OSCR Regulation and Improvement Team
This email is sent from an account which is not monitored, any response to this email will be automatically deleted.
So basically it boils down to seven (7) lines! And in summary, they made contact with the charity trustees to seek clarification on certain matters.. ??? Which matters exactly?? And who did you actually speak to?? Not the chairman I hope, Mr Ian Johnstone, and/or the CEO, Stephanie Fraser??
And they requested and received a number of documents. Which documents? How do I know that these had any relevance to the issues that I raised?
And thus the verdict is: There is nothing to see here.. You raised a concern about the health & safety of children, yes. And were subsequently suspended by this charity, your place of work, even though your employer in your appeal agreed with you & states in writing that this should not have happened. Your regulatory body (HCPC) quickly agreed as well (within 3 weeks) that you were allowed to work & had done nothing wrong despite them keeping you off work for over 9 weeks before you decided to resign on ethical grounds. But really there is nothing to worry about, we spoke with the trustees of the charity & requested some documents and regulation-wise everything is all hunky-dory! And even though you blew the whistle in the public interest, really we have decided and our judgement is that it is not in the public interest for us to spend any time on this..
Of course, this is as expected. And yet again it confirms the corruption throughout. Nevertheless, seven lines??? No detail.. So one of the reasons that it took me three months to share this, is that I had fully planned to follow this up.. But how exactly? I considered it several times. But we all know that if I don't get anywhere officially, there is no chance I will get anywhere unofficially with them (OSCR).. So in the end I decided not to put any more of my energy and time in this.. I have more important matters to attend to.. (see my next Blog entry). Case closed. Moving forward & up.