I came across Sloven’s 2013/4 Annual Report today in which they make the extraordinary claim that they are 100% compliant with Duty of Candour obligations (p121).
100% compliance? Eh? How can claiming LB died from natural causes in July 13, failing to disclose his full medical records until November 14 (via the coroner), accepting that his death was preventable in February 14 and then claiming again he died through natural causes in November 15, fit with duty of candour compliance? How can not sharing how Nico Reed died with his family for nearly two years be candour compliant? Or do learning disability related incidents stand outside this indicator?
Up until the last couple of months, I’d probably have written to the Board chair asking for some clarification on this. Not any more. The OCC report (OCCRAP) and their response to my obvious and fully justified distress about this report, on top of the various brain melt communications we’ve had with the now ex-Sloven Board chair/still-in-post CEO documented on these pages, have demonstrated that they have the power to do what they want. Including telling the most fanciful of lies and sticking them.
It’s simply one fucked up, archaic and sometimes corrupt system.
mydaftlife 
That first paragraph …. Obviously not written by KP. Obviously not part of the Induction Pack (they have one? ) Obviously not read by newly appointed CEO’s . Its time she crawled out from under that rock. With a copy of Sloven’s aims in her hand.
We are delighted to hear that Southern Health are 100% compliant with Duty of Candour obligations. This will make the work of the Independent Investigation into Nico Reed’s death so much easier when the Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group when they appoint the investigator in a few week’s time. Transparency in the investigation will mean it is more thorough and will achieve a more better result for all concerned.
” there have been occasions when we have needed to apologise, learn lessons and take
steps to address areas of weakness.” (from the introduction).
In LB’s case, they didn’t (and they still haven’t properly); they absolutely didn’t (and if they’ve any learned lessons, that learning is not focussed on improving things for patients, but on how to weasel out of responsibilities); and they didn’t (and haven’t – unless one counts closing an underperforming provision as an acceptable way of ‘addressing weakness’).
Who is supposed to audit this self-congratulatory shite (heaven help ’em)?
” Achievements of the year:
– Major environmental improvements at John Sharich House; ” (p.11)
They closed it for good following a CQC report in March 2014. What is the point of improving the environment for nobody?
“Our patients and service users are at the centre of our every thought and every action. By working innovatively yet meticulously we deliver care which is tailored around the unique
requirements of individuals and constantly evolving around their changing expectations.”
More shitespeak. Don’t for one minute believe that patients, even in the mass, never mind as individuals, are at the centre of ‘every’ thought and ‘every’ action. They couldn’t be. Such superhuman perfection is not possible, and blathering on about this imaginary achievement only wastes time and prevents people getting to ‘good enough’.
This paragraph is also a prime example of the ‘mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence’, in which writing consists of ‘phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse’, that Orwell criticises in ‘Politics and the English Language’. Why ‘innovatively yet meticulously’, as if innovation and attention to detail were mutually exclusive? I can only think that the writer wanted to imply that innovation and attention to detail are mutually exclusive for mere mortals, but lo! the Sloven superhumans can do both! At the same time! (Possibly while also walking and chewing gum, patting their heads and rubbing their tummies!) As for the bespoke care malarkey, that’s just prefab-henhouse boilerplating, thrown together from shoddy abstractions. To quote Orwell again, ‘an accumulation of stale phrases chokes (it) like tea leaves blocking a sink”.
If we are using blocked plumbing metaphors, I can think of a more apt analogy. Picture available on request.
Having also just read the Justice for Nico blog too this morning, I was appalled to read a comment from a man who is still waiting 12 years on for some accountability from I am assuming the same NHS Trust. He did not use their name, but that was the impression I got. Even if it was not Sloven, that is still wrong on so many levels to keep someone in limbo simply by not having the answers to give a family when there has been a death. So this constant avoidance tactic seems like a well used one. No candour or transparency yet for him, poor man.
I have just read the blog after reading your comment and twelve years for Gods sake it just takes any wind out of your sails that poor family.
I fear the fanciful lies are documented by the darkest of forces. I maintain hope that you are the exceptional ground breaking Mother that exposes what lies beneath. I quit two years in. A very kind young man sent me a document in February 2015 as next of kin, acknowledging an adverse reaction to a black triangle medicine report. The report should have been made two years earlier by the NHS consultant. It appeared in hard copy on his desk on a Monday morning two years later, no work colleague could account for its appearance. The GMC closed the investigation.