An update. To Meeting Katrina Percy really.  Board papers for the meeting next week at Sloven towers are now available. Sigh. Pretty irritating to read I’m “currently going through a painful grieving process” (?) and, by inference, they are waiting patiently for this process to end so they can meet me. They seem to be trying to do a number on me as a slightly unhinged, random, easy to write off, isolated ‘mum’. Pah.

Bastards.

This got me thinking about power. And this foul process*. We don’t want to meet with KP (or any other Slovens). We’ve had (at least) two meetings arranged with them since LB died. They mucked about each time in a completely inappropriate way and we withdrew. To read (and hear on local news this week) a “we tried to meet with the grief stricken woman but she’s too disordered to do it..” line is pretty fucking crap.

Given the catalogue of their actions since LB died we’ve decided the risk of further pain (of sitting through fake, jargon laden, self serving words) outweighs ‘helping’ KP learn to do a better job. (Yep. Seriously. One of the several, random, almost ‘Carry on Spying’ type approaches trying to persuade us to meet her…)

In the newest board papers LB is first on the agenda. A lengthy section in the Chief Exec’s report (he’s certainly moved on from being a “service user” who died of “natural causes” tucked away in a paragraph on p84 of the papers last July). I wonder how much the ‘expertise’ they’ve brought in over the past few months to buff up their act has cost? Another Freedom of Information request on the pile to be filed. Oh to be an NHS trust with seemingly unlimited resources to respond to and fight off those pesky avoidable death cases. Unlike the families they crush in the process*.

KP’s LB coverage in the board papers includes the statement; they will “continue to seek a face to face meeting with me us when I we feel it’s appropriate and helpful”.

Well, to save you wasting any more time or effort on this, you can park it.  We don’t want to meet with you.

This position shouldn’t remove transparency or candour from the ‘process’. If a bereaved family don’t want to meet with trust members, for whatever reasons, the duty of candour should remain. We should be kept informed of what’s happening some other way. If someone is seriously injured or dies outside of an NHS setting, there’s no expectation that the person, or their family, are expected, encouraged (or pressured) to meet face to face with the perp (or their spokesperson) as a condition of being kept in the loop. We found out on social media yesterday that three members of staff from the unit are suspended. That is a pretty shite communication channel. Post Francis, and all that guff.

But then it’s all shite really.

(Well with glimpses of sunshine and potential for change, like the #107Days campaign, the legendary Phil Gayle and team, remarkable journalist Saba Salman and the beyond awesome team of Sting Radio DJs.)

*Understand fully we’ve been able to draw on resources to be able to make some noise here… We ain’t going to fight our dude’s ‘corner’ and then fuck off.