Hats off to Alyson Bell, the TSA’s Managing director, for publishing the results of an independent review carried out in September 2013 in the Winter 2013-14 edition of TSA’s publication, The Link (sent to members, one of whom kindly passed it to The Gimlet Eye, although not currently accessible to non-members on their website). It makes interesting reading – there are compliments about the speakers and facilities at the annual conference, however there are many areas identified for improvement, such as the comment about TSA Forums that “London Telecare Market Place events are better”. (London Telecare has now of course become UK Telehealthcare). Of particular interest to The Gimlet Eye is the feedback on training which begins with the observation that “Current satisfaction rate was 50%” and goes on to explain that members wanted it delivered more ‘hands on’, with ‘how to’ topics and at lower cost.
It is then quite surprising that Lancashire Social Services, presumably still reeling from the abrupt cancellation of the pricey One Connect deal last November, are said to have awarded their recent tender for telecare awareness training for hundreds of staff (which presumably should be ‘hands on’ and ‘how to’ focused) to the TSA. Was the key factor in selecting the TSA raising the low satisfaction rate with training, or was the lead consideration a lower or lowest cost compared to other bidders? (In this respect, had Lancashire Social Services read the feedback in The Link’s review, The Eye wonders?)
Other factors: the TSA is not a large organization, so given the evident size of the training requirement, will this mean even fewer people available to deliver courses to members? Will it mean contracting in people to deliver courses who perhaps, as TSA members, were competing against the TSA for the Lancashire work?
Is this what member organizations should be doing? Comments please!
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