-----
Original Message -----
From: dave.mortimer@tiscali.co.uk
To: Michael.HOWARD@dfes.gsi.gov.uk
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 3:55 PM
Subject: Family Law: DfES efforts to deceive the public are no
basis for national policy
Dear
Mr Howard,
Thank
you for your email of 2 March signed by Jennifer Robson. Many
of the assertions the Department makes are:
-
blatant untruths
- gross distortions
- overt contradictions
Efforts
to deceive the public are no basis for national policy.
The
departmental failure to introduce Early Interventions after its
DCA approval has wasted something like £500 million a year
- backdated to October 2003. This was when a Mr Bruce Clark -
without telling anyone - first decided to discard EI and embark
on a jaunt of his own.
We
have here, embodied in your email, an attempt at a cover-up; which
involves the Department in further deceptions, compounding those
recently exposed in the Guardian. I paste below a sample of corroborative
corresopondence indicating the problem's gravity.
What
formal channels are open to the public to lodge a complaint against
individual civil servants on points of mendacity and mismanagement?
I
set out some considerations below, and look forward to your reply.
Yours
sincerely,
Dave
Mortimer
The
'Misconduct and Mismanagement' Issue
The
attachment you supply contradicts the email which you say it supports.
The
text of the email asserts - quite falsely - "In no sense
has there been any abandonment of the Early Interventions initiative
as proposed by NATC"; the attachment confirms, in a long
list, the Department's outright abandonment of EI.
In
a further twist, this attachment (like the main text itself )
is vitiated by confusions and distortions.
Both
the email text and the attachment incorporate demonstrable factual
errors.
Many
seem deliberate.
Redress:
the Appropriate Procedure?
Presumably
the reality is that you personally are not the source of these
and other lies. So there is no point in lodging a complaint against
you. It would have to go higher.
Here's
the way I understand things.
The
source of these misrepresentations could be Bruce Clark himself.
This would tally with his initial unauthorised hi-jacking of the
Early Interventions programme - see bleow - coupled with his consistent
pretence thereafter (since EI was the approved project) that he
was still implementing the programme he had in fact decided to
kill.
As
noted in the recent ConAffCom report, this course of dealing has
undercut the Green Paper.
There
is no point in complaining about Bruce Clark to Bruce Clark. And,
on the basis of the correspondence below, presumably Athea Efunshile
(who I believe to be Bruce Clark's boss) would have to protect
Mr Clark; otherwise, she puts herself on the spot for failing
to control a subordinate. The same might apply to Ms Efunshile's
superior.
How
high must we go in order to open this up? Is the place to start
the Permament Secretary, who I understand to be Normington Clark?
You will see from the copy letter below that serious issues are
involved.
Althea
Efunshile and Bruce Clark
Safeguarding Children & Supporting Families
Department
for Education and Skills
Caxton
House
Tothill
Street SW1H 9NA
REGISTERED
DELIVERY
17
June 2004
Dear
Althea and Bruce,
EARLY
INTERVENTIONS: Replacing an Agreed Project with its Opposite
I
refer to my letters of 12 April, 19 April, 5 May, 14 May and 3
June 2004 to which a substantive reply is awaited. Might I summarise
the position?
There
are widespread concerns, within the professions, public and media,
that you have replaced a professionally approved-and-designed
project with its opposite.
That
is, on 8 October 2003 the DCA received a detailed proposal for
the NATC Early Interventions Pilot Project - which has the written
support of the DCA Minister, the President of the Family Division,
the High Court Judiciary, the Family Law Bar Association, the
03/04 Chair of the SFLA and the Coalition for Equal Parenting;
and strong support from leading child development psychiatrists.
Instead
of implementing this finished project, you took it as an invitation
to start on design afresh with “no in-built assumption in
favour of an already existing model”. This backwards step,
dismantling nine years’ development work, has to date yielded
no more than a DfES concept which is not viable on first principles.
I quote the record:
“DfES
Project Management 8 October 2003 to 11 May 2004
project
delivered to DfES in turnkey condition
·
core papers mislaid
·
core papers unread
·
key feature overlooked
·
project replaced by its opposite
·
key appointments made on lack of project familiarity
·
project originators excluded
·
project divested of almost all relevant expertise” NATC
/ DfES 14.5.04
May
I have your comments?
Yours
sincerely,
Oliver
Cyriax
