This weekend involves work. ‘Proper’ and campaign work. Part of the latter involved sifting through events of the past 21 months on my blog. I came across this post from a year ago in which I document the seeds of including a request that all deaths in Sloven’s learning disability and mental health provision are investigated in the Connor Manifesto. Our concern was the ease with which Sloven slapped a ‘natural cause death’ on what happened to LB and how it probably wasn’t the first time they’d done this. We met the Real David Nicholson, then CEO, NHS England, a few days later who agreed to commission this review. Days before retiring.

I suspect a few people involved at that point and later probably wrote this commitment off as a tick box exercise to be sorted with a bit of (superficial) number crunching and benchmarking with other Trust data.  A final fling. Or flout on the Real DN’s part. But the Mazars got the gig and ran with it. And gave the task the commitment it both demanded and deserved. The report will be published in the next few months.

At the opposite end to the spectrum of investigation, it turns out that the Sloven staff disciplinary processes led to (certain) staff being disciplined in a robust process (which is good). Clinical staff were, in an apparently equally thorough process with similar external validation, found to be doing all they could be expected to do. No action taken.

This is odd given the referral we made to the GMC last spring remains under investigation.

Power and prejudice. Death by indifference. Dead with indifference. Though I’m beginning to wonder if indifference is the right word.