AVONLEA CLOSURE: The exclusive inside story on Highland Council’s handling of the troubled children’s care home based on confidential emails

Highland Council’s handling of the closure of a Caithness children’s care home was deceptive and led the public, elected members and the media to be misinformed.

Internal emails seen by the The Inverness Courier’s sister paper, The John O’Groat Journal, through Freedom of Information raise serious questions about the conduct of some officials and the integrity of local authority statements.

In them, council officials range from accusing local people of “illegitimately challenging” their decisions to confusing the public about the authority’s true intentions.

Highland Council denies being “deceptive” but refused to address some of the comments as they were made by now former employees.

Former chief executive Donna Manson said the closure became “absolutely necessary” after the Care Inspectorate said it intended to cancel Avonlea’s registration.

• Read Highland Council’s full response to the report here: “The council’s media comments were not ‘deceptive’”

Avonlea Children’s Care Home in Wick closed in December 2022 after the Care Inspectorate gave it the worst rating available – “unsatisfactory” – in July of that year.

Days later the decision was taken to close the facility and that was confirmed in late August, but that decision was reversed in early September to “temporarily vacate” it.

Over the next months, amid significant disquiet and media attention, there was a flurry of confidential discussions and, in December that year, Avonlea was finally closed.

It remains baffling why the local authority responded as it did because its reasons behind the closure plan were legitimate.

The council acted swiftly out of apparent good intentions to close a home that could have been damaging to already vulnerable children and young people.

But the defensive and secretive responses about the decision kept the public in the dark and suggest that the September U-turn was never a serious option despite the home being subject to a review.

For the first time we can show what really happened between the Care Inspectorate report in July 2022 up to the December closure.

In our exclusive report, we show who knew what and when they knew it as well as exposing in their own words how officials dealt with those outside the council.

And we carry the council’s full response – as well as that of Donna Manson – as to why it acted the way it did.

The crisis period surrounding Avonlea

The crisis period surrounding Avonlea started on July 21, 2022 when a “crisis meeting” was called after the Care Inspectorate rated the service “unsatisfactory”.

The previous year inspectors had rated it “weak” – a sharp decline for a care home that for 10 years up to 2019 had been rated “excellent”, “very good” and “good”.

What followed was one of the mystifying and disturbing episodes within Highland Council’s operations in recent years, leaving five Caithness councillors furious.

Collectively Ron Gunn, Jan McEwan, Matthew Reiss, Struan Mackie and Andrew Jarvie felt they had not got the whole truth from the council.

The response to their Freedom of Information requests to Highland Council – totalling more than 200 pages of internal documents and emails – form the sole basis for this report.

Five days after the “unsatisfactory” rating, the Groat’s David G Scott was told that Avonlea would be closing and asked the council to confirm.

• Highland Council: ‘The emails the Groat refers to ‘already provide the reason why the public line provided was not specific about closure’

Here is what the head of social work services Margaret McIntyre told the media officer:

“We are in the process of notifying staff and the young people. This is very early stages and while it is intended to close the house, this has to be planned.

“Comment [for the media]: ‘The service are [sic] currently considering and planning a possible range of options for Avonlea Children’s House. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage given these discussions with the staff and children involved’”.

Despite Mr Scott having accurate information it took another month for that open secret to be confirmed, despite service users and staff knowing about the closure.

That was made public on August 24 when the Groat reported that “Avonlea children's home in Wick is set to close” as it was still being discussed internally.

‘This is local communities challenging inappropriately’

Four days later, then chief executive Donna Manson, in an email about Avonlea, confirmed the closure. Here is what she said:

“Often care homes [redacted] adults and children's are closed because they are not meeting standards. This is serious – it is not every day that the chief social work officer closes a care home.”

In the same email chain two members of the Caithness Voluntary Group voiced their “disappointment” at developments which they saw as a “step backwards”.

That group was set up to support the third sector and aims to help “citizens access the decision-making processes affecting their community”.

Mrs Manson’s email continued: “The local organisations who are coming forward with a voice have no role in this matter. This is local communities challenging inappropriately in a matter regulated by a national body.”

No evidence or argument was offered about what precisely was “illegitimate” about “local communities” challenging the decision of organisations like the council.

• Highland Council: The council ‘does not comment on statements made by previous employees’

Council leader and Wick and East Caithness councillor Raymond Bremner then wrote to Mrs Manson calling for “an urgent briefing to the Caithness members”.

He said: “I think you’ll find that there is a fair amount of unrest in the community. That’s because there are more questions than answers.”

August 29 saw Mrs Manson ask Fiona Duncan, the head of social care, the aforementioned chief social work officer, to arrange a briefing for councillors.

But that was only after Cllr Ron Gunn said he wanted to call a Caithness special meeting on the issue of Avonlea, and the briefing happened on August 31.

You can read through emails mentioned and others in this report between council officials below:

‘Not formally closing’

Then two days later – September 2 – the council reversed its public position, telling the Groat that Avonlea was "not formally closing" and would only be “temporarily vacated”.

Staff at Avonlea were blindsided by the report and on September 5 an official was still unable to give them “any answers on what ‘temporarily vacating’ meant”.

One possible explanation offered by the council is the publication of a review of residential care in the region which found its use “was above the national average”.

It claimed that alternatives are needed and, in response to Groat chief reporter Alan Hendry, the council said the home’s future “will form part of a much wider review”.

But that does not appear to explain why a council supposedly overly reliant on residential care apparently chose to keep a residential unit open that it previously sought to close for being “unsatisfactory”.

Then, in late September, Mrs Manson and the executive chief officer for social care Fiona Duncan travelled to Caithness to conduct a briefing for councillors.

Ahead of the meeting, Fiona Duncan wrote to a member of the care staff underlining her approach: “I need to stress that my focus is on what Caithness needs not what members want – these are very different things but they appear quite fixated on it at the moment.”

The nature of the briefing and the subsequent closure led Cllr Andrew Jarvie to ask Mrs Manson at a full council meeting if he was wrong about "feeling misled" by her.

She referred him – for a second time – to the Standards Commission and – for a second time – he was exonerated.

‘No change of plan with a carefully managed closure’

Then in mid-November there was a major sea-change in how the council was discussing Avonlea following another media inquiry from Mr Hendry.

He asked for a “brief update on the Avonlea children's home in Wick” after jobs at the home were advertised, where the following is revealed by Margaret McIntyre:

“There is no change of plan with a carefully managed closure. [Redacted], I am deeply concerned about giving any more information to the press as this would mean a possible breach of confidentiality through possible identification. I would prefer that we do not comment to respect confidentiality”.

If there “is no change of plan” then the council’s statements from September 2 about Avonlea "not formally closing" appear to be completely untrue.

• Highland Council: ‘There is a difference between taking steps to vacate and moving to formal closure. This distinction was made in the emails you have’

On Friday, December 2, Jean Gunn, who was then working for the Groat, asked about the Care Inspectorate’s two-week improvement notice on Avonlea. The council said:

“The Highland Council have quickly addressed the actions as required in the enforcement notice. Highland Council officers continue to work closely with the Care Inspectorate who are aware of our planned closure of this service.”

So the closure was back on, but in a surprise development it appears from an exchange on December 5 this message had to be delivered to staff at the home.

Another “crisis meeting” was held where staff were told “that Avonlea would be closing with no plans to re-open”.

‘When the communication shifted from prior clear communication of closure to some sort of changed narrative’

The same day Jean Gunn got a tip-off from Avonlea residents and sought confirmation that the facility would close by Christmas.

Fiona Duncan appeared reluctant to answer questions: “Do we have to respond to this as we replied on Friday and have nothing more to add.”

Even the communication official responded: “We do really because they are claiming that service users are being told it will close. Can we provide any reassurances that this is not true or is there a timescale or embargo agreed as to when it can go public if it is too close?”

He had to try again the next day, his questions indicate that he understood the value of being open and frank, and were as relevant as any put forward by reporters:

“In our statement it says Highland Council has addressed the actions as required in the enforcement notice. What does that actually mean? And are we resigned to the fact that this facility will close? Therefore is the reporter’s source correct that it could be closed in two weeks? And what will happen to the residents thereafter?”

The response from Ms Duncan refused to address whether or not the facility would close by Christmas – in fact it did.

When chairman of the health and social care committee, Cllr David Fraser sought information and a timeline, Fiona Duncan said: “I hope to meet David later to discuss in more detail and put him off”.

Addressing how to respond to Cllr Fraser, Margaret McIntyre confessed a difficulty and appeared to offer the first concrete explanation why Avonlea was closed. Here is what she said:

“There is a lot of detail in that including time periods when I was off work i.e. when the formal complaint/safeguarding issue came in, and when the communication shifted from prior clear communication of closure to some sort of changed narrative, which to be honest, I have never got to the bottom of.”

• Next week we look at the response from the councillors charged with running the region.

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