The Chair of Wandsworth LINk has commented on the article which appeared in yesterday’s Guardian, about Mark Clark’s resignation from Wandsworth LINk.

Roger Appleton wrote:

As the current chair, I don’t wish to comment on why Mark Clark resigned from Wandsworth LINk but I did want to clarify the policy of payment over which he said he resigned.
The policy was not to pay members for attendance at meetings but to reward health and social care service users for individual and specific tasks undertaken.
The NHS and local councils already pay service users for the work they do on service improvement. Wandsworth LINk wished only to adopt a similar approach. 
Many regular service users are disabled or with long-term health conditions which stop them earning a proper wage. Paying them for the time they contribute to health and social care improvement reflects a wish to reduce this problem and value their contribution.
As the article says, this policy has now been dropped by Wandsworth LINk because it was found to be out-of-line with other LINks and difficult to implement.