Flash: C.A.T.H. Board changes
Details are still awaited but the news is that after a meeting which went on until nearly midnight on Thursday there have been a number of significant (and in the view of this author) long overdue resignations from the C.A.T.H. Board of Trustees.
The main news is that Ruth, Vivian and Mary have all resigned as Trustee Directors and Walter is restored to his elected position of Chairman and George is back as a Director.
We can only hope that the new Board will see fit to let the Members know more of the details of what happened as soon as they can, not just to prevent rumour and schism, but more importantly, so that we can all learn what went wrong, and make sure it never happens again. It seems to me that these changes can only be in the best interests of C.A.T.H., its staff, its volunteers, and the people it helps. Valuable lessons have been learned but they need to be understood by everyone, not just the few.
C.A.T.H. has a great future and one of the best ways to make sure of it is a much better informed and involved membership. The events of the last few months have shown how important it is that when bad things are happening that the good guys (and ladies) stand up and be counted. The days of secret board meetings and private Minutes and worse are dead and gone and I have no doubt that, with Walter as Chairman, other changes will take place to make the governance of C.A.T.H. a much more open and transparent process in the future.
So I'm off to find that glass I mentioned somewhere and may be a wee dram. Or perhaps a mug of Horlicks ....
Saturday 3 May 2008
Saturday 19 April 2008
I simply don't believe it!
...... to quote the late Mr Meldrew. Well, for a start, Mary Carroll's letter to we members. The more I read it and look at Walter Grant's letter, the more that Mary's letter simply does not add up.
Why on earth would Walter want to undermine the charity he so obviously supports and to which he was elected as Chairman at last year's AGM? There must really be something very seriously wrong if the Chairman resigns and OSCR are called in and are investigating. And why, if as Mary says, her board of trustees is doing such a good job, are OSCR investigating? What are they investigating and why has the Board itself not sorted out whatever problems it has got itself into?
Worst of all, is Mary's letter all the information that we the members are going to get? If so we have every reason for concern. Just what is it that Mary Carroll doesn't want us to know about?
It is all extremely worrying. There are the rumours, and rumours of rumours and even worse, these are beginning to become topics of conversation amongst people outside C.A.T.H. Rumours of a certain seniour female manager, known to be very close to Mary Carroll, leaving very suddenly, possibly suspended, before Christmas, and not coming back. Rumours of large amounts of money involved. Rumours of mysterious boxes found, of hurried and very secret board meetings, and worse, much worse, rumoured to come.
If OSCR is involved, then whatever anyone says, or doesn't say, then, QED, it must be serious, possibly very serious. Remember Breast Cancer Scotland? What could it mean for C.A.T.H? What is this all about, where did it start? What is going on, who is responsible and what is going to happen next?
There are rumours of all kinds of things, including some very worrying ones indeed, so, when is this Board, which Mary Carroll now seems to be running, going to come clean? If what one rumour has it is true, that when the Board meet, if Walter is there, that none of them will even speak to him, then the signs are not good, not good at all.
So don't hold your breath while you wait to find out what is going on. The answer appears to be that it won't be soon. Walter mentions an EGM in his letter. I'm beginning to think it can't come soon enough. What do you think?
My advice to them would be not to leave it too long.
Why on earth would Walter want to undermine the charity he so obviously supports and to which he was elected as Chairman at last year's AGM? There must really be something very seriously wrong if the Chairman resigns and OSCR are called in and are investigating. And why, if as Mary says, her board of trustees is doing such a good job, are OSCR investigating? What are they investigating and why has the Board itself not sorted out whatever problems it has got itself into?
Worst of all, is Mary's letter all the information that we the members are going to get? If so we have every reason for concern. Just what is it that Mary Carroll doesn't want us to know about?
It is all extremely worrying. There are the rumours, and rumours of rumours and even worse, these are beginning to become topics of conversation amongst people outside C.A.T.H. Rumours of a certain seniour female manager, known to be very close to Mary Carroll, leaving very suddenly, possibly suspended, before Christmas, and not coming back. Rumours of large amounts of money involved. Rumours of mysterious boxes found, of hurried and very secret board meetings, and worse, much worse, rumoured to come.
If OSCR is involved, then whatever anyone says, or doesn't say, then, QED, it must be serious, possibly very serious. Remember Breast Cancer Scotland? What could it mean for C.A.T.H? What is this all about, where did it start? What is going on, who is responsible and what is going to happen next?
There are rumours of all kinds of things, including some very worrying ones indeed, so, when is this Board, which Mary Carroll now seems to be running, going to come clean? If what one rumour has it is true, that when the Board meet, if Walter is there, that none of them will even speak to him, then the signs are not good, not good at all.
So don't hold your breath while you wait to find out what is going on. The answer appears to be that it won't be soon. Walter mentions an EGM in his letter. I'm beginning to think it can't come soon enough. What do you think?
My advice to them would be not to leave it too long.
Sunday 13 April 2008
By way of a postscript
All crises have their lighter side although sometimes it is hard to appreciate it when you are up to your midriff in alligators. The current C.A.T.H. problems are no exception although sometimes the humour is rather darker than normal. The problem is that I can't share any of it with you until the clouds start to clear from C.A.T.H's future, which could still be some time yet.
Suffice it to say that while the swans are paddling around serenely pretending nothing is wrong, there is an awful lot of paddling going on everywhere. Facts are coming to light, some of them quite surprising and some, I'm afraid, quite disturbing. Questions are being asked and answered and slowly the realisation is dawning that things have got to, and will, change for the better.
So if you have a glass, raise it in a toast to the future of C.A.T.H., for it most surely has a very good one.
Suffice it to say that while the swans are paddling around serenely pretending nothing is wrong, there is an awful lot of paddling going on everywhere. Facts are coming to light, some of them quite surprising and some, I'm afraid, quite disturbing. Questions are being asked and answered and slowly the realisation is dawning that things have got to, and will, change for the better.
So if you have a glass, raise it in a toast to the future of C.A.T.H., for it most surely has a very good one.
Sunday 6 April 2008
Home thoughts on a Board?
Having read Mary Carroll's letter the first thing I did was to go back and re-read Walter Grant's letter.
Did Walter's letter accuse the Board of C.A.T.H. of serious misconduct? No. It said he had resigned on February 11th (which the Board has never told us had happened), that he did so because he was increasingly at odds with the actions of the rest of the Board, and that he resigned as Chair in order to avoid becoming implicated in these actions and their consequences.
His letter went on to say that Board has carefully kept the knowledge of these events from us, which certainly seems to be true, and that the Board of Trustees of C.A.T.H. is now under investigation by O.S.C.R., which we must assume is also true, and which has again been kept from us by the Board.
It goes on to describe some of OSCR's powers, to apologize to us for not being able to prevent the actions (unspecified) of the Board which have led to this OSCR investigation, in spite of attempts to do so by himself and the Chief Exec, and to say that, whatever the outcome of the OSCR investigation, he believes the only way is to replace the current Board by means of an Extraordinary General Meeting.
In short his letter is factual, informative and helpful. It raises a lot of questions, but these are questions that presumably the Board should be telling us the answers to, not Walter, and which OSCR are looking into as well.
So I went back and read more of Mary Carroll's letter to look for answers, but only found more questions. Was her letter, I wondered, the result of a Board Meeting where Walter's letter had been considered in depth and a thoughtful and measured response composed, as might have been expected, and the Membership then informed in detail about what has been going on? I don't think so. Its purpose seemed simply to malign Walter for writing to us as Members and to trivialize the importance of what he was saying and the OSCR investigation.
Was it, as she puts it, "an attempt to undermine the integrity and competence of the Board"? Well, no, I don't think so. It seems to me that if whatever the Board has done has done to occasion an enquiry by OSCR must be very serious. To me that speaks for itself about just who has been undermining the integrity and competence of the Board, and it isn't Walter Grant, but the Board themselves.
Mary Carroll goes on "... the unfounded nature of these accusations will soon become apparent following the conclusions of the initial OSCR enquiry" . The italics are mine, not hers, but I still haven't read Walter making any accusations, nor does Mary Carroll say what these accusations are, although she and her Board must be fully aware by now what they are.
Moreover, and I have checked on the OSCR web site and with their guidelines, OSCR aren't in the business of "initial enquiries". OSCR investigate complaints by one or more people into the conduct of Charities, make up their own mind as to whether there are grounds for investigating, and then get on with it. I think it is fair to assume that Mary Carroll is therefore being unduly optimistic when she refers to "the unfounded nature of these accusations". If OSCR is investigating the C.A.T.H. Board, they must feel that there are sufficient grounds for doing so, and as Members we should be extremely concerned because of the implications this has for current operations, staff, service users and for future funding.
And hence Mary Carroll's last paragraph does not exactly fill me with confidence either. I am grown up enough (hopefully) to know that when someone patronisingly tells me to "be re-assured that this Board continues to manage the CATH organisation in the best interests of its service users, staff and members, as it has done for the past 17 years", that this may vary somewhat from the actual truth. At the very least I expect that this same Board will come clean about what has been happening, and what has caused what is very obviously a much more serious situation than Mary Carroll, and her Board, seems willing to acknowledge.
So, on balance, I tend to believe what Walter Grant says. His letter is informative and consistent with what few facts are known, whereas Mary Carroll's is patronising, very uninformative, misleading, and factually incorrect. That is just my opinion. You should make up your own mind.
What is very obvious is that, as Members, we have been kept completely in the dark up to now, and that there are a lot more questions to be asked, and not just by OSCR.
Did Walter's letter accuse the Board of C.A.T.H. of serious misconduct? No. It said he had resigned on February 11th (which the Board has never told us had happened), that he did so because he was increasingly at odds with the actions of the rest of the Board, and that he resigned as Chair in order to avoid becoming implicated in these actions and their consequences.
His letter went on to say that Board has carefully kept the knowledge of these events from us, which certainly seems to be true, and that the Board of Trustees of C.A.T.H. is now under investigation by O.S.C.R., which we must assume is also true, and which has again been kept from us by the Board.
It goes on to describe some of OSCR's powers, to apologize to us for not being able to prevent the actions (unspecified) of the Board which have led to this OSCR investigation, in spite of attempts to do so by himself and the Chief Exec, and to say that, whatever the outcome of the OSCR investigation, he believes the only way is to replace the current Board by means of an Extraordinary General Meeting.
In short his letter is factual, informative and helpful. It raises a lot of questions, but these are questions that presumably the Board should be telling us the answers to, not Walter, and which OSCR are looking into as well.
So I went back and read more of Mary Carroll's letter to look for answers, but only found more questions. Was her letter, I wondered, the result of a Board Meeting where Walter's letter had been considered in depth and a thoughtful and measured response composed, as might have been expected, and the Membership then informed in detail about what has been going on? I don't think so. Its purpose seemed simply to malign Walter for writing to us as Members and to trivialize the importance of what he was saying and the OSCR investigation.
Was it, as she puts it, "an attempt to undermine the integrity and competence of the Board"? Well, no, I don't think so. It seems to me that if whatever the Board has done has done to occasion an enquiry by OSCR must be very serious. To me that speaks for itself about just who has been undermining the integrity and competence of the Board, and it isn't Walter Grant, but the Board themselves.
Mary Carroll goes on "... the unfounded nature of these accusations will soon become apparent following the conclusions of the initial OSCR enquiry" . The italics are mine, not hers, but I still haven't read Walter making any accusations, nor does Mary Carroll say what these accusations are, although she and her Board must be fully aware by now what they are.
Moreover, and I have checked on the OSCR web site and with their guidelines, OSCR aren't in the business of "initial enquiries". OSCR investigate complaints by one or more people into the conduct of Charities, make up their own mind as to whether there are grounds for investigating, and then get on with it. I think it is fair to assume that Mary Carroll is therefore being unduly optimistic when she refers to "the unfounded nature of these accusations". If OSCR is investigating the C.A.T.H. Board, they must feel that there are sufficient grounds for doing so, and as Members we should be extremely concerned because of the implications this has for current operations, staff, service users and for future funding.
And hence Mary Carroll's last paragraph does not exactly fill me with confidence either. I am grown up enough (hopefully) to know that when someone patronisingly tells me to "be re-assured that this Board continues to manage the CATH organisation in the best interests of its service users, staff and members, as it has done for the past 17 years", that this may vary somewhat from the actual truth. At the very least I expect that this same Board will come clean about what has been happening, and what has caused what is very obviously a much more serious situation than Mary Carroll, and her Board, seems willing to acknowledge.
So, on balance, I tend to believe what Walter Grant says. His letter is informative and consistent with what few facts are known, whereas Mary Carroll's is patronising, very uninformative, misleading, and factually incorrect. That is just my opinion. You should make up your own mind.
What is very obvious is that, as Members, we have been kept completely in the dark up to now, and that there are a lot more questions to be asked, and not just by OSCR.
Mary Carroll's Response
The following day the plot thickened with the arrival of a letter signed by Mary Carroll "pp Vivian Mason, Acting Chair, On behalf of the Board of Directors". The letter is dated the 3rd of April 2008 so it must have been written immediately on receipt of Walter Grant's letter? Was this letter written after a meeting of the Board to consider Walter's letter and their reply I wonder, or was it written off the cuff by Mary Carroll assuming authority and acting alone, without a Board Meeting?
As before, the letter is re-typed here and any errors and omissions must be laid at my door.
"3 April 2008
Dear Member
We understand that you have received a letter from the ex-Chairman of CATH, Walter Grant, accusing the Board of CATH of serious misconduct.
This letter is an attempt to undermine the integrity and competence of the Board and the unfounded nature of these accusations will soon become apparent following the conclusions of the initial OSCR enquiry.
Please be re-assured that this Board continues to manage the CATH organisation in the best interestes of its service users, staff and members, as it has done for the past 17 years.
With the very best wishes,
Mary S. Carroll
pp Vivian Mason, Acting Chair, On behalf of the Board of Directors"
Wow! I will leave you to do, as I did, re-read both letters and start to ask a few questions. I have posted my thoughts as the next post. I am sure you will have questions to ask as well, so I will leave it there for the moment. In short like me, you may form the opinion that something very fishy has been going on and that we, as members, have been kept well and truly in the dark.
As before, the letter is re-typed here and any errors and omissions must be laid at my door.
"3 April 2008
Dear Member
We understand that you have received a letter from the ex-Chairman of CATH, Walter Grant, accusing the Board of CATH of serious misconduct.
This letter is an attempt to undermine the integrity and competence of the Board and the unfounded nature of these accusations will soon become apparent following the conclusions of the initial OSCR enquiry.
Please be re-assured that this Board continues to manage the CATH organisation in the best interestes of its service users, staff and members, as it has done for the past 17 years.
With the very best wishes,
Mary S. Carroll
pp Vivian Mason, Acting Chair, On behalf of the Board of Directors"
Wow! I will leave you to do, as I did, re-read both letters and start to ask a few questions. I have posted my thoughts as the next post. I am sure you will have questions to ask as well, so I will leave it there for the moment. In short like me, you may form the opinion that something very fishy has been going on and that we, as members, have been kept well and truly in the dark.
Saturday 5 April 2008
Walter Grant's letter
This letter arrived last Thursday via our trusty postman. Once in the dim an distant past he used to arrive before lunch, in spite of numerous invitations to take cups of tea with the ladies of the village. Now he arrives, if we are lucky, somewhere around the one o'clock news. Such is progress.
Walter Grant, for those of you who don't know him, was elected by the Members to the Chairmanship of the Management Board of C.A.T.H. last October. He also acts as Chaplain to the Charity and spent a lot of his previous career in H.M. Submarines. As befits an ex - submariner he is a man of deep convictions and impeccable integrity, someone whose word and judgement I would trust implicitly, so his letter came as a considerable shock.
I have retyped it here, so any errors and omissions from the orignal document are mine. The letter is not dated but since it arrived on the 4th I assume it was sent on the 2nd or 3rd of April 2008.
"From: Walter SB Grant
To: All Members of C.A.T.H.
As you may of heard, I resigned from the post as Chairman of the Board of Trustees on the 11th of February. Resigning from the post to which I had only been elected last October was a very great personal disappointment to me, but over those few months I had come to realise that I was increasingly at odds with the actions of the rest of the Board, and that resigning as Chairman was the only alternative to becoming implicated in these actions and their consequences.
The events of these months will soon become public knowledge, although your Board has carefully kept them from you until now, as they have the fact that the Board of Trustees of C.A.T.H. is now under investigation by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (O.S.C.R.) for, amongst other things, misuse or mis-application of the Charity's funds.
O.S.C.R. has wide-ranging powers of intervention, interdiction and referral and can appoint a judicial factor, appoint trustees, suspend or remove any person concerned in the management of the Charity, freeze the assets of the Charity and if necessary refer the matter for further action, for example in the case of fraud. The serious consequences for C.A.T.H. should O.S.C.R. decide to take any of these steps could, and should have, been avoided and I hold myself partly responsible for not being able to do so in the face of a Board conflicted in interest but united in a determination to expensively proceed on a route down which they were advised not to go by both myself and your Chief Executive, Kath Critchley; advice which was given in anticipation of the serious potential consequences of just such an investigation that the Charity now finds itself under.
Whatever the result of the O.S.C.R. investigation, it is clear to me the governance and long term health of C.A.T.H. can only be ensured by a complete change of Board membership. To this end, I and a few other concerned members will be calling for an Extraordinary General Meeting as urgently as possible to elect a new Board. Until then, I am still a member of the Board and will continue to attend meetings in spite of being ostracized by the rest of the Directors when I do so.
I hope we will have your support at the E.G.M. meeting to save C.A.T.H.
Yours sincerely
Walter Grant"
Obviously this raises an awful lot of questions. Rather than attempt to list them or answer them here, I suggest you read on to the next post before responding.
Walter Grant, for those of you who don't know him, was elected by the Members to the Chairmanship of the Management Board of C.A.T.H. last October. He also acts as Chaplain to the Charity and spent a lot of his previous career in H.M. Submarines. As befits an ex - submariner he is a man of deep convictions and impeccable integrity, someone whose word and judgement I would trust implicitly, so his letter came as a considerable shock.
I have retyped it here, so any errors and omissions from the orignal document are mine. The letter is not dated but since it arrived on the 4th I assume it was sent on the 2nd or 3rd of April 2008.
"From: Walter SB Grant
To: All Members of C.A.T.H.
As you may of heard, I resigned from the post as Chairman of the Board of Trustees on the 11th of February. Resigning from the post to which I had only been elected last October was a very great personal disappointment to me, but over those few months I had come to realise that I was increasingly at odds with the actions of the rest of the Board, and that resigning as Chairman was the only alternative to becoming implicated in these actions and their consequences.
The events of these months will soon become public knowledge, although your Board has carefully kept them from you until now, as they have the fact that the Board of Trustees of C.A.T.H. is now under investigation by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (O.S.C.R.) for, amongst other things, misuse or mis-application of the Charity's funds.
O.S.C.R. has wide-ranging powers of intervention, interdiction and referral and can appoint a judicial factor, appoint trustees, suspend or remove any person concerned in the management of the Charity, freeze the assets of the Charity and if necessary refer the matter for further action, for example in the case of fraud. The serious consequences for C.A.T.H. should O.S.C.R. decide to take any of these steps could, and should have, been avoided and I hold myself partly responsible for not being able to do so in the face of a Board conflicted in interest but united in a determination to expensively proceed on a route down which they were advised not to go by both myself and your Chief Executive, Kath Critchley; advice which was given in anticipation of the serious potential consequences of just such an investigation that the Charity now finds itself under.
Whatever the result of the O.S.C.R. investigation, it is clear to me the governance and long term health of C.A.T.H. can only be ensured by a complete change of Board membership. To this end, I and a few other concerned members will be calling for an Extraordinary General Meeting as urgently as possible to elect a new Board. Until then, I am still a member of the Board and will continue to attend meetings in spite of being ostracized by the rest of the Directors when I do so.
I hope we will have your support at the E.G.M. meeting to save C.A.T.H.
Yours sincerely
Walter Grant"
Obviously this raises an awful lot of questions. Rather than attempt to list them or answer them here, I suggest you read on to the next post before responding.
Why we are here
We are here because the blog template on the main C.A.T.H. website is a rather primitive one, for example it does not appear to allow comments and there does not seem to be a way (should we need it) to restrict input to Members only.
And there is a second reason. C.A.T.H. is currently living in what the Chinese would call "interesting times". Putting this blog offsite from the C.A.T.H. website allows C.A.T.H. Members to use it independently of the C.A.T.H. site, a facility which may become important in the next few months. To access it directly, simply use the "add to favourites" facility to be found on the standard toolbar above, or copy and paste the address to your brower's favourites list.
More about this later. For the time being enjoy Grand National afternoon. My favourite? Its got to be either Hedgehunter or Opera Mundi. It certainly isn't Slim Pickings (no mean musician) or Fundamentalist, or Comply or Die or Mr Pointment. But I could be wrong. On the other hand I rather fancy Ossmoses. Back later.
And there is a second reason. C.A.T.H. is currently living in what the Chinese would call "interesting times". Putting this blog offsite from the C.A.T.H. website allows C.A.T.H. Members to use it independently of the C.A.T.H. site, a facility which may become important in the next few months. To access it directly, simply use the "add to favourites" facility to be found on the standard toolbar above, or copy and paste the address to your brower's favourites list.
More about this later. For the time being enjoy Grand National afternoon. My favourite? Its got to be either Hedgehunter or Opera Mundi. It certainly isn't Slim Pickings (no mean musician) or Fundamentalist, or Comply or Die or Mr Pointment. But I could be wrong. On the other hand I rather fancy Ossmoses. Back later.
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