I was astonished to get a call from BBC Radio Oxford (love em) yesterday about the new failed CQC inspection at Slade House. Eh? I said. A what? Slade House?
Yep. Turns out Slade House 2, which has six patients, failed on management/leadership and staffing. There was no registered manager and no nursing staff available (or even on site) overnight despite two patients with complex health care needs (which, er, don’t stop when darkness falls). 
Nah. A joke. Surely. I thought. A unit, a stones throw from where LB died, in which patients lives are endangered by inadequate staffing levels? And failing leadership/management? (Though clearly superhuman efforts on the part of some frontline staff). That can’t possibly be. Each patient is funded at a cost of around £3500/£4000 a week. Not providing nursing staff overnight is simply obscene.
[Not just on the part of Sloven but also the part of the commissioners (Oxon CCG and the Oxon County Council) who are apparently content to pay enormous sums of money for crap all. Not only consigning people to lives devoid of an imagined future but also leaving them in spaces of risk and danger. Can you imagine? Can you begin to imagine what this must be like to experience? No one comes out of this with sniff of integrity or decency.]
I was genuinely bewildered. How many CQC fails are the Slovens trying to chalk up in the ‘north of their patch’? How low can you go? How crap can you actually be while your Chief Exec tweets bland and empty nonsense about ‘leadership’?
Well, that leads us back to the big old million dollar (sorry) question really. Why did the Sloves want to take over the Ridgeway Partnership back in the day? Mmm. Worth a little bit of back to the future stuff. Back to early 2012… and a delvelet back to the heady days of the Ridgeway Roadshow….
[I feel chilled thinking that I could have easily driven past this meeting, a short distance from home.. without sniff of what was to happen and our dealings with this bunch].Take it away Katrina Percy, Sloven CEO. Roadshow Rodeo Extraordinaire. Why do you want to take over the Ridgeway?
The first big thing for us is to create a big voice for learning disabled people..
Eh? A big voice? Wow. Just wow. How the hell did you try to do this? By allowing the Oxon patch of your provision to sink into such malaise drenched disarray that LB died [he died?] and the CQC failed inspection after inspection after inspection?
Sadly there are even more billy bullshit arguments from 2012: 
Moving quickly on – from a set of such meaningless statements I want to stab myself in the eye with a sharp stick coated in scotch bonnet chillis – we’re left, quite simply, with not much more than the £8 million reserve and good old Chunky Poundland. Mmm. Awkward. So blinking awkward and wrong.
If Sloven lose the contract in Oxfordshire (which lets face it, ain’t looking unlikely given their track record of such consistently abject shite) they can hypothetically/ allegedly withdraw to Sloven Towers, leaving their ‘patch in the north’ without a backwards glance, clutching a full to bursting bag of Oxon designated bullion.
To borrow from the legendary Ron Burgundy. As ever. Stay classy Sloven. And next time you want to ‘create a big voice for learning disabled people’, park it eh?
mydaftlife 
No words. ….. 😥
What more to say. All been said but to what avail?
Who listens when it’s learning disabled involved? We can all see ourselves older and vulnerable and worried about our care but few get What it means to our children who are vulnerable.
Panorama material. Wide publicity needed.
Could “Lots of lovely money that we don’t HAVE to spend on staff, because we can get away with anything” be added to that list?
A big voice for users and carers? HOW DARE THEY?
Like you, I am so sick of meaningless slogans. Endless sodding cheerleaders (about the only thing they can lead) while things get worse and more desperate.
Well we all like a bit of gossip don’t we?…. Very recently I heard a rumour, and it is just a rumour so I have no way of proving this. It is alleged that Sloven support staff will take a cut in wages, or at least lose their enhancements, while all management will of course have a wage increase. It is suggested that this may be a trick to make cutbacks in order to become the cheapest tender for the LA at the end of the year.???????? God help us.
Sara
If CQC person found own mum, dad, son, daughter, dad, auntie, granny etc etc, in danger of dying from neglect (potentially) that night or even NOW….. and CQC person has loads of evidence that this provider has terminally failed others, would same CQC person just suggest ‘immediate action’ needed and leave, as they do…Or would they take their own son daughter etc etc out of the door with them, as they left at a run?
CQC person, why is my/our son and daughter, dad, mum, etc etc worth so much less than yours?
As far as I am aware, they do not leave premises until actions taken to ensure they(residents/patients) are considered safe
Been mulling over for days whether to respond to Em above.
I have no doubt of the determination of CQC leadership and people to do their job to the letters.
Thing is, they do it in a context where superman or superwoman would fail. We all know the constraints they face; powerful scary medics, nil monitoring by commissioners, profit first poor to dangerous care, tired and over worked often inexperienced managers and unsupported penny paid staff, absent powerful owners who don’t want scandals or whistle blowers …………….and shareholders …only motive the cash return.
I watched the modern TV serial Nicholas Nickelby some time ago. Where a fictitious monstrous home manager fooled an inspector. (Till Nick exposed him). How often do we read of an adequate (what does that mean?) service is exposed as failing or much worse very soon after.another inspection.
Surely the first and only measure for CQC has to be – ‘Would I be confident to leave my own vulnerable beautiful boy or girl (etc) here …..a minute longer?
This is why, I really do live the nightmare,, as my daughter at any moment, could be taken to such places for assessment, etc by court order, and incarcerated for as long as she is allowed to live ,
As could all the autistic etc cash cows. At £4,500 per week. So imagine, the dirty tricks, and illegality, that will be used to capture them. And the worse they are made, the more the justification for their incarceration, and the more money they can make.
This business model, of privatised, unaccountable monopolies, is the modus of our present government, and it is a sealed system, with captive consumers, cabal extortionate charges, and deliberately no accountability, or checks.
As I have posted here, it has happened to legal services, so no one can even attempt to gain accountability, by even enforcing the law.
SERCO has made a total mess of everything it is responsible for, and been dishonest, but made huge profits, which makes money for investors, and help the economy, the public are just the commodities, that are ripped off,
They have ripped off the court translation service, probation, and the policing of the immigration compounds, see my tweet this week, and defrauded gov of 70 million at least, and yet were to, and still may, take over our child protection services, allowed to remove children, for adoption, regulate childrens homes, with no checks.
SERCO, CAPITA etc, whatever letters they choose for an outsourcing, rip off agency, will be the next to take over mental health services, this is why its getting such media coverage, it also links up with the big pharma in US, as the UK is a huge profit opportunity for them.
Huge, any, drug trial can be carried out on these poor encaged, deemed mentally disordered people, under the MCA 05 regulation,s so they are a massive international pharma opportunity.
Thank you for getting this info out.
Sara we all, and you above anyone else,know what is going on. We all know it is corrupt. We all know that LB died(My God, he died) and………WHAT NEXT. The MCA is not fit for purpose…….WHAT NEXT.??????? My mind boggles. Since 1999 I have faced this moral dilemma. MY SON IS AT RISK. I could say God help us, but our sons and daughters are children of a lesser God
Southern Health/Ridgeway Partnership Social Care services failing to keep people safe. This division sadly includes the service where Nico resided & covers Oxford City, Abingdon, Wallingford, Chalgrove, Bicester & Kidlington social care.
http://www.cqc.org.uk/location/RW1ZX
Silly me I was under the impression that any vulnerable person in care who was liable to be at risk at night would have what they jokingly called ‘waking staff’ on duty. Whether they actually stayed awake was questionable, but at least they were being employed as night staff by the big chiefs who ran the unit/hospital/care home. They deemed it was needed. They deemed it was a safety precaution.
There appears to be no one in management here who is going through the motions of actually making sure that this practice is even remotely being adhered to. They really do not give a damn, do they? They do not give a damn what the CQC think either do they? After all most of the people they care for (care for?) have no feelings do they? Apart from the parents and family no one gives a shit do they? That is why the management of these places are so confident that they will always be protected from any blame.
Imagine the furore if a parent left their vulnerable family member alone in the house all night. The social services would have a field day.
The time has come for some accountability from the providers/LA’s and the numerous health ministers who have come and gone and done absolutely nothing to change the appalling abuse of families who are trying to make the quality of their loved ones lives better.
Its has actually got worse in the last 10 years.
As they charge what they like ie 4,000 per week, without the need to justify the costs, give, as you say, appalling service, that is allowed to kill, and do not even get in the media, when they do..
This is why successive govs ie both labour and tory, see NHS and social care, as a guaranteed money making opportunity,
Any of them will have the means to go really private, or know someone ,who will keep an eye on their relatives,, and keep them safe.
The political classes are laughing at the vulnerable, and seeing them as mere commodities to make money out of.
We need, as I keep saying, and appear to be the only one, who will take out well worded petitions in changOrg, with detailed info on deaths, structure of systems etc don’t fancy the research — would someone else like to do it.??
This at least would /should/ might galavanise action, and at very least embarrass the important, now pre election big opp.
Sadly, or more disgustingly, all charities and representative voices appear sabatours . fifth columnists .
My plight with Issy everyday, shows there is no accountability- deliberately made that way throughout the systems.
Same with all the thousands groomed from care homes, they are taken for 3,000 per week and there are no staff to stop them absconding, and are far less safe in care. So billions can be made forventure capital.
LA have no accountability and worse still not only are they our children , it is also our money— the check…
Wake night staff are on the unit and AWAKE. in fact there are 2. There is nothing the support worker can’t do in an emergency that is any different than a nurse. The only difference is administering a paracetamol if needed. Give the hard working support staff some bloody credit as my Daughter is one and she gives her life to they place.Maybe Southern Health should actually look at relationship in that place. Always put 2+2 together and get 3…..
You have no idea what you’re talking about. So unless you so please shut up!
can anyone else support Jennifer Henderson at change.org. I am sorry I can’t tweet,ping or link. Jennifer and her family are meeting with her LA now. Her brother Mike will be shipped out of town to an old peoples home rather than be supported in his hometown of Wigton. Mike is 47 and has lived at home all his life, he has downs syndrome and dementia.
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