Monday, August 05, 2019

By close of business today the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's say they will decide whether or not my complaint about the so-called reference sent to St Joseph's Hospice will progress to a stage 2 of their complaints process (WITH UPDATE 5/8/2019)

In response to the letter from St Mungo's in Update below:

August 5, 2019
Dears,
This correspondence from St Mungo's makes one think of the kind one would expect to get from the authorities who managed Brave New World or 1984!!!
Are you in a situation where you might lose your housing?
We are so concerned. How can such wonderful contributors to our world be so ignored and bureaucratically left twisting in the wind????
Please keep us up to date on your continuing saga!
Faithfully yours,
Donald A. Collins, Founder of International Services Assistance Fund


Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

St Mungo's Complaints

Please tell us about your feedback

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. Three weeks ago 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. On 24 July I received an email from the St Mungo's Quality Team. They say they will decide by close of business today whether or not my Appeal will progress to a stage 2 of their complaints process. If it does not, or in the absence of a fair response to my proposal last Friday for a written reference that I can use to help me find voluntary work in end-of-life care, 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: 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.


UPDATE 5 August (5.01pm): This afternoon I received the dismissive letter below in an email from St Mungo's Quality and Continuous Improvement Manager Elinor Childs. I have responded by writing to my TST caseworker. I have asked her to provide me with a to-whom-it-may-concern letter that I can use as a reference to help me find voluntary work in end-of-life care. In the absence of a fair response to this request, I will indeed complain to the Housing Ombudsman that I am not not happy with this final response to my appeal above.

Quality and Continuous Improvement team
3 Thomas More Square
London
E1W1YW

5 August 2019

Dear Maria

Your request to appeal your complaint to St Mungo's

Thank you for your email of 19 July 2019, in which you indicated that you were not satisfied with the response you had received to your complaint at stage 1 of our complaints process. This is being treated as a request to progress your complaint to stage 2 of our complaints process.

As the Quality and Continuous Improvement Manager at St Mungo's, it is for me to consider your request and decide whether or not your complaint should progress to stage 2. Your complaint would progress to stage 2 if:

- The investigation failed to consider all of the reasonably available evidence; or
- The response was not consistent with the reasonably available evidence.

Having reviewed the original complaint and response, I consider that the investigation did consider all of the reasonably available evidence, and the response was consistent with that evidence. Your complaint will therefore not progress to stage 2 of our complaints process. This means you have exhausted the St Mungo's complaints process.

In response to your email to complaints@mungos.org on 2 August 2019, the reference that was provided is in line with St Mungo's internal procedures. Any further reference provided would have to be in line with the same procedures and would therefore not include any further information than the reference already provided.

If you are not happy with this response and wish to take the matter further, you may contact the Housing Ombudsman on the details provided below.

Housing Ombudsman Service
Exchange Tower
Harbour Exchange Square
London E149GE
Telephone: 0300 1113000
Email: info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk

Yours sincerely

Elinor Childs
Quality and Continuous Improvement Manager
St Mungo's

***

We were evicted from our previous flat in March 2013 because according to our then live-in landlady's ex-husband, Dr Nigel McKenzie, a consultant psychiatrist in Highgate Mental Health Centre, our flat was needed for somebody with a mental illness. As Declan states in paragraph 8 of his updated complaint to the UN last month, former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler also lived with human rights activist Belinda McKenzie in the same political 'safe house' for a couple of years until 2007. According to BBC Panorama, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair"; he was jailed for seven weeks in 2002 for breaking the Official Secrets Act. It's unfortunate that Shayler declared himself the Messiah in 2007, became a squatter, and was subsequently ridiculed in the press for changing his name to Delores Kane. A New Statesman article published in September 2006 featuring Shayler and Belinda gives no indication that Shayler believed he was the Messiah at that time; whilst a Daily Mail interview with him the following year reveals he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007. He has never regained his normal self.
The Esquire article below* is mentioned in a Guardian article dated 27 March 2012. It's an eye-opener, highlighting the monitoring and surveillance that Shayler had to live with back in 2000, and the contradictory briefings and slanders that were coming out of the British establishment and the media. The author, Dr Eamonn O'Neill, is a lecturer in journalism at Strathclyde University.

*On 2 May 2013, Issuu removed this pdf from my Issuu account following a copyright complaint by Hearst Communications. I had uploaded the article to my Issuu account in December 2012. In March 2013, when last I checked, the article had been viewed more than 15,000 times. It can be read here.

BBC PANORAMA: The David Shayler Affair (August 1998)

Former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair", according to BBC Panorama. He was jailed for seven weeks in 2002 for breaking the Official Secrets Act.

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