Well, we seem to have been quite proactive as a department. Our department met with the head of HR in our current trust on Wednesday, and today we met with the hospital union rep.

It seems like there are three things going on almost at the same time that really have to happen in sequence to be legal. First of all we have to TUPE over to the new employer (with no other change to our role or contract) then there has to be negotiations to establish equality of terms of employment with new and old employees, and then there will be a process of organisational change to configure the new service structure. Each process is supposed to involve a formal consultation process, and protection to our existing job role, pay, and terms and conditions. Interestingly they can’t go into the former process with a predetermined outcome in mind for the latter process, as that would not involve the requisite level of consultation or openess to negotiation.

It seems like they will either have to offer us a continuation of our current posts at the same band and with the same remit, or offer redundancies, or offer a reconfiguration in which people are offered “suitable alternative” positions (which are supposed to retain the same status, and be within the skill set of the person involved) with a guarantee of no reduction in salary for a 3 year period (the length of this is dependent on length of continuous service, and in our trust is 3 years is for staff with more than 7 years continuous service like myself).

So, the union are very curious about how they can be saying that they are TUPEing me across, but that my post doesn’t exist unless the commissioners pay more for it (as TUPE has to be with the intention of the person continuing to do the same job). They are also surprised by the implicit threat that some people will lose their jobs, and a number of other places where the process has already deviated from the expected protocol.

There are also lots of issues about the time-scale of the change, and whether it will be possible to sort out payroll, transfer of patient records, etc legally within the time proposed. I can just imagine a worst case scenario in which from 1st October (a mere 6 weeks away) we have to get written consent from each service user to carry their records over to the new trust, and otherwise having to start new files with no history of our involvement and no access to our database…

Update: The union have put in a grievance and the new trust seem to have partially retracted their “non-negotiable” plans (though not in a legally binding way), but we are all set to transfer to the new employer on 1st October. So, I’m guessing the next few weeks will be critical in seeing whether they are going in with an attitude of prioritising the quality of the service we provide, or of saving costs.

The commissioners have agreed to pay more to ensure the survival of the projects outside of the core tender, which is good as it protects my post but bad as it means the two tenders were not considered on a like-for-like basis (as one included these projects, and the other is now being paid more for them, when it seemingly won the tender by being cheaper).

We’ve been told that the expectation is that all current employees will still have jobs within the service in a year from now (but with no guarantees about structure or grading).

So, its a bit of a watch this space. What I can say is that the process of change is disabling in itself. I don’t feel like I can plan ahead, and I feel too overwhelmed to be very productive. I also feel my loyalty to the service has been seriously undermined.

Well, we had the initial meeting with the new bosses yesterday. They called it a CAMHS conference, which is a ridiculous name as it implies some CPD function, not being told about the plans for all of our jobs. I wrote it in my diary as “CAMHS job briefing” which felt like the most neutral name I could give it. It also started with a sandwich buffet and a chance to network with members of the two CAMHS teams that are becoming one, which was really strange because it was far too tense and ambiguous for anyone to be doing proper social networking.

Then we got moved into the main room, where the power players of the new organisation stood at the front and talked about the new service structure, with PowerPoint slides. This varied from being full of management speak, budgets and acronyms, to being snide and patronising about how “other people might be sitting there and think they know best how to run a CAMHS service, but we know better, and this is now publically proven as we won the tender, so they need to stop thinking that and accept we are going to do it our way”. A lot of the digs seemed to be aimed at the clinical leads from my service.

There were some reassurances that nothing will change on the ground until January, except for the appointment of the new CAMHS manager and the 4 team managers, but that we should expect to be in new premises and working within a new structure by April. However, they haven’t yet identified where the new premises will be. There were also reassurances about job security for most people: “there will be more jobs overall than there are now, so no-one, except five or six psychologists, needs to worry about their job security, and for the most part we think we can maintain people’s job bandings”. Nonetheless, as they kept changing their phrasing about who these 5 or 6 posts were, everyone wanted to check that they weren’t “at risk”.

Interestingly for me, I was clearly named as one of the 5 or 6 posts that are at risk (along with two other colleagues who offer paediatric psychology) in front of 60 or so peers, without ever having been formally told this prior to this point. They said that as my new project was not included in the map of CAMHS for which they tendered, it would not be something they continued unless they received additional funding, though they were keen to secure this. In the meanwhile, to assume that I’d be TUPE’d over with everyone else and that I’d hear by October, probably, whether this funding was to be added.

On each table were only 3 copies of a sanitised and abridged version of their tender document (no budgets, numbers of posts or gradings included, and no appendices) to share between 12 members of staff! They presented a diagram of the service structure on their PowerPoint that was different from the diagram in the tender document on the table, and different again from the diagram in the CAMHS manager post that is currently up on NHS jobs. Whole posts that were in some versions were out in others (eg a nurse consultant post) and some had reference to heads of professional groups being involved in a “CAMHS seniors group” that didn’t exist in others. Nonetheless they told us that the service structure was “already finalised” and “not up for consultation or further discussion” (which the union rep thought conflicted with the idea that all organisational change requires full consultation with existing employees).

We then split into groups for each new managment cluster (the plan seems to be to have 4 teams, loosley arranged about the tiers of delivery, with my team in with Tier 2) and were asked to make notes of our concerns, questions, ideas and suggestions. My most obvious question was why put Tier 2 and LAC together, as one is about early preventative interventions and the other about the most complex and entrenched multi-agency interventions. However evidently this fell into the “because we say so, and its non-negotiable” category. Their justification was that each manager would then have a similar amount of staff to manage, and that it wouldn’t mean there was any integration between the services. However it made me wonder whether actually it was because they were both areas that were of interest to a manager who was involved in shaping their bid. It doesn’t say much about whether they sincerely want to use the skills of the (much larger and more experienced) teams and managers in the south of the county though.

I also read the section in their tender document about LAC services. Interestingly, even though to my perception (having offered a county-wide LAC service for several years, with the agreement of both sets of management, despite them getting half the funding) they have been extremely avoidant of this client group, they claim to have proven success with LAC. They are also proposing to buy in psychological consultation, training and supervision from a private fostering agency that I have provided training to, whilst placing my job (which offers all of this) at risk! This led to an interesting conversation between me and the Executive Director (who asked “How can I help you darling?” and replied “If you think you can do better cheaper, love, you knock yourself out” which felt rather patronising) and the Clinical Director (who I found arrogant and defensive) about LAC services and the fact that they clearly had no clue about what was already being delivered.

I left feeling quite annoyed. The event felt badly organised and disrespectful towards the people who have led and developed our service. There was no awareness of process issues, and it followed too long a delay without communication. Their approach came through as dictatorial rather than supportive (and very different to the approach that I’d have expected if the outcome had been reversed).

I really felt for my head of service and the other senior colleagues that I have grown to respect over my 6 years in this department. It made me realise that my loyalty to this job is really loyalty to them as people and professionals, and to the clients we offer a service to, rather than to the organisation. I took this job because I liked my supervisor and the culture of innovation and support. Change that and I’ll have no interest in staying.

P.S. Whilst typing that I got a phone call from my supervisor to check how I was feeling after yesterday and consult about how to take things forward. That would be a good example of how you earn staff loyalty!