Had a bit of a tense convo with the Director of Social Care on Monday. Their crap old report had been sent to Verita to be included in their broader review. And OCC’s legal team wrote in response to our questions about this review: “As we indicated it did not seem appropriate for the Council to seek your client’s involvement at that stage [during the review] given that she would have an opportunity to be involved with the Verita investigation and could make her comments in relation to the Council’s report as part of that.”

Wow.

So Sunday was spent correcting that crappy old report. A process that made me feel ill (I always feel crap these days but the work and emotion this task involved was too much). Around 4pm on Sunday I sent a shirty email saying I’d be invoicing the council for the work involved.

Anyway, the call on Monday was a waste of time. He wasn’t budging on his defence. It was fine to do such an investigation without our knowledge or involvement. It was fine to send the review to me by email out of the blue on a Monday morning. OCC had done nothing wrong. And the like. At one point he said in exasperation “You do things the wrong way, Sara. We offered you a meeting when we sent the report and you put your comments online for other people to read.”

Another brain melt moment.

Sorry Mr J. Putting stuff online is the only way to make visible the sneaky and deceitful practices that operate both within Sloven and OCC. Where families have little or no power. Given you commissioned and published this report without our knowledge, and were made to disclose it to us a few weeks ago, you really ain’t in a good place to talk about the wrong or right ways of doing stuff.

Reimbursement for my time was refused. With a classic and again dishonest statement;

Whilst I appreciate the time and effort you have spent reviewing the report, this report was an internal review to highlight any learning for Oxfordshire County Council.