I wrote about LB’s 18th birthday here. A day trip to London and a wish that Tulisa was his sister. Other birthday outings are dotted around this blog. Most involve London. Giving evidence (howl) during the inquest I talked about how we drove round Camden in June 2013 looking for Dappy. We didn’t find him.

Out of the hundreds of pages of damning/harrowing reports, records and staff interviews I read in the two years before the inquest, the odd thing made me smile. One was this family tree produced when LB was in the unit. I think a psychologist did it with him. LB, love him, disrupted the framework by telling her his family included Lawrence, Anne, Dappy and Tulisa. Anne was a mystery until a quick google tonight revealed Tulisa’s mum is called Ann. (Long lost) Lawrence remains a mystery.

It’s LB’s 21st birthday on November 17th. [Howl]. I don’t know what we’ll do. I sort of hope the Mazars death review is published that day. A review, generated by LB’s death, that will (surely) change the landscape of learning disability provision in the UK. A review that will mark a point in which chat about change is no longer acceptable.

The review examines deaths in Sloven’s learning disability and mental health ‘care’ between 2011-2015. The post Winterbourne View period. A period in which there has been so much talk about learning disability provision and no action. Huge amounts of dosh given to endeavours like the Winterbourne Joint Improvement Programme (since disappeared), Bubb’s breakfasts and the like. All the while actual people were being disappeared. In full view down Hampshire and Oxfordshire way*.

The publication date for the Mazars review seems to be ‘at some as yet undisclosed time in the future when a set of currently missing hoops have been found and gone through with a set of as yet unidentified really important people who may have run out of the necessary ink in their fountain pens to sign off publication. Ink which can only be produced from a rare vegetable that only grows once a year on a remote island off the island of Java.’

Not surprising really. The review implicates all the key players. Sloven, commissioners, NHS England, Monitor, the CQC and the Department of Health. The commissioning of a review into the methodology used in this (independent) review raises so many questions about what ‘independence’ in this context means my brain just freezes. The story seems to be that Sloven challenges to the methodology must be sorted pre-publication so as not to muddy the water. Eh? The findings are so controversial we need to dot the i’s and cross the t’s big time?  Producing a level of robust engagement not necessarily present in other independent reviews? Mmm.. that’s pretty awkward.

I’m kind of lost here for so many reasons. Not least the Verita 2 report that has findings and then a brief conclusion so off beam I was left wondering what magic dust had been sprinkled over these proceedings to allow such speedy publication (after a lamentably long and delayed production process). If the current examination of the Mazars methodology finds nothing untoward, will some other review into their processes be commissioned? Like did the investigatory team have the recommended five a day during the process? Or were any of the half arsed records they examined not treated with the necessary respect a piece of paper deserves?

We seem to be in a space of absurdity. Generated by a review that found the unthinkable.

*And elsewhere quite possibly…