Church and State blog: I appeal the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's TST. The St Mungo's Quality Team will decide by 5 August whether my complaint about the so-called reference sent to St Joseph's Hospice will progress to a stage 2 of their complaints process

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

I appeal the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's TST. The St Mungo's Quality Team will decide by 5 August whether my complaint about the so-called reference sent to St Joseph's Hospice will progress to a stage 2 of their complaints process

"Such indecent behavior!"
-Don Collins Sr, President, ISAF, Washington DC

Our Church and State website has no less than 57 Nobel Laureates on it; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State" (updated today).

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

St Mungo's Complaints

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I hereby make a Stage 1 complaint about my TST caseworker following a reference for a hospice for the dying that didn't reply to the question about my "honesty, reliability and temperament".

What action would you like us to take

Sofia Pires had repeatedly assured me that she was good for a reference of my character. Please can you provide me with an explanation for why she did not reply to this hospice's question about my honesty, reliability and temperament.

I have twice written to Ms Pires about this, but to no avail.

Maria [Lola] Heavey
6 July 2019

Declan and I are housed in a flat that is part of the Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative. Alongside our tenancy is access to the Mayor's Tenancy Sustainment Team (TST) at St Mungo's. It has been acknowledged by the Greater London Authority in court papers that both Declan and I can live independently – we do not have addictions or mental illness or behavioural issues. Our needs are solely related to the harassment, discrimination, intimidation and victimisation we routinely face. Last week I received St Mungo's TST's response to my complaint about a reference for voluntary work my caseworker sent to St Joseph's Hospice. I was told that my complaint was not upheld on the ground that this caseworker did not know me well enough to reply to the Hospice's question about my honesty, reliability and temperament. My application to the Hospice of course was not successful. This morning I received an email from the St Mungo's Quality Team. They say they will decide by 5 August whether my Appeal will progress to a stage 2 of their complaints process. If it does not, I will complain to the Housing Ombudsman that I did not get a fair response from them and that unreliable support is deemed "satisfactory" in my case, thereby placing our tenancy at risk (a threat to life).

19 July 2019

Dear Quality Team,

I wish to appeal the decision of St Mungo's TST not to uphold my complaint. Please find attached response letter detailing the outcome of the investigation.

I wish to complain on appeal that I was misled into thinking that my TST caseworker would provide St Joseph's Hospice with a reference for me. On 17 April 2019, this caseworker inputted into your Opal system the following piece of information about me:

She now has her DBS certificate and is going to apply for a volunteering role in St Joseph's Hospice next week. It has been agreed that she will put me down - Sofia Pires (TST Caseworker) - as her personal referee.

In fact, my caseworker should have informed me that she did not know me well enough to be my personal referee. I had no idea that she would be unable to comment on my honesty, reliability and temperament, when asked to do so by the Hospice.

I hereby request that you uphold my Appeal or inform me of my right to further appeal.

Yours sincerely,

Maria Heavey

In re Reference sent to St Joseph's Hospice by St Mungo's TST

Paragraph 36 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

36. The Applicant and his wife's tenancy agreement was renewed like-for-like for the second time last year, but only when court proceedings against St. Mungo's were imminent two months after the Applicant complained that the decision not to reissue another tenancy for two former rough sleepers with support needs amounted to a type of harassment and a death threat. Since then, the Applicant has been battling St. Mungo's from pillar to post to stabilise his and his wife's tenancy (see Annex 16, pp. 39-41). First it was problems with inaccurate case notes, which got more serious in August 2018 when the Applicant discovered that notes St. Mungo's assured District Judge Avent the year previous had been rectified by them were in fact being held under the Applicant's wife's name. Last year the Applicant also had to battle St. Mungo's for his own Tenancy Sustainment Team (TST) caseworker and to stave off enforced joint visits. This year the Applicant has already had to twice battle St. Mungo's to have removed outrageous notes that were inputted into their system on both occasions without his knowledge or consent. Last month, in June 2019, the Applicant's professional referee observed: "This obscene disregard for your rights seems to continue unresolved!" The following week, the Applicant's wife received from her TST caseworker a completed volunteer reference form that had been sent to St Joseph's Hospice. This caseworker left blank a question relating to the Applicant's wife's "honesty, reliability and temperament", and has not explained her reason for not completing this section of the form. The Applicant's wife's application was not successful. (Emphasis added.)

12 July 2019: Threat to life: Updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's highlighted

Last year St Mungo's made the international press for all the wrong reasons. They are accused of helping to get rough sleepers arrested and deported. When the story came through my Russia Today (RT) news feed, it left Declan gob smacked. He subsequently spoke with Diane Taylor, the journalist covering the story for the Guardian.

EU freedom for rough sleepers infringed - shock horror. https://t.co/RuJKrSEiTm
— Andrew Martin (@devonprof) May 14, 2018

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

http://churchandstate.org.uk/about/

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

I appeal the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's TST. The St Mungo's Quality Team will decide by 5 August whether my complaint about the so-called reference sent to St Joseph's Hospice will progress to a stage 2 of their complaints process

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