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.