During a departmental meeting today, a colleague gave a talk about a project he is involved with; Human Resources for Healthcare in Africa. Part of this work is focusing on how to reduce the shocking mortality rates of children under 5 in Mali and Uganda.
He talked about the drop in mortality rates that emerged as an outcome of the setting up of the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths in the UK in 1952. Setting up an enquiry into deaths in Mali and Uganda seems to have, similarly, led to a drop in mortality rates. One reason being that once healthcare professionals knew that these deaths would be investigated, they started paying more attention to the care they provided.
Leaping to this talk from mundane discussion around office moves and desk space left my head spinning.
…once healthcare professionals knew that these deaths would be investigated, they started paying more attention to the care they provided.
As simple as.
Meanwhile, in the UK, talk of setting up national board to look at the premature deaths of learning disabled people after the shocking mortality rates identified by CIPOLD was watered down into a mortality review programme. Seemingly serving a ‘pointing to’ function. ‘Look… Bristol University are doing this.’
…once healthcare professionals knew that these deaths would be investigated, they started paying more attention to the care they provided….
And once health and social care professionals/organisations witnessed the abject lack of any substantive action by the government response to the Mazars findings they all got a symbolic ‘get out of jail free’ card.
No reason to pay any more attention to the care provided.
Business/death as usual.
mydaftlife 
There can be no more scandalous indictment on our government, our morality, and our humanity, than, to allow the deaths of our most vulnerable, just because we can.
I feel,like there is this horrible silent acceptance going on again. Like there was horror and then it was over. What was revealed was eugenic practice in our hospitals and society. The acceptance that killing by action or neglect is ok if you are not one of our favoured future gene machines. The irony is that probably that “quirky” person is the future, is evolutions way of redirecting neuro pathways, albeit experimental and too soon, but evolutionary ( my view but is my response) . You coukd make a very sad film in the future about it. Misunderstood person fights bigoted society theme. Rags to riches always a winner. Now rambling.
We will remember it well when hopefully real people star but still might have new celebrities ( you never know, Prince George might need a few bob)
The torture and killing of people who don’t fit the norm has always been part of our history. Business as usual once a “deviant” has been suppressed or terminated. Everyone back to business.
fFS that just can’t happen can it!?
We have not killed off our quirky/different/autistic in history, they have been revered, and, have, like Beethoven, Wagner , Mozart, produced our music.
And, like Jane Austin, George Orwell, our prose. Socrates our philosophy, and Leonardo, Michelangelo and Van Gough our art.
https://finolamoss.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/autism-the-betrayal-of-the-different-for-profit/
Now they are merely fodder, for our most profitable industry over from the US- autism.
Reduced to moderate, if not severe ‘intellectual impairment’, deliberately, not on a cognitive basis, but an adeptive one.
Check out, the specifiers in the DSM5, which are now used to assess intellectual impairment ie old retardation, by experts accessing basic ‘capacity’ in the Court of Protection.
https://finolamoss.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/profitable-retardation-of-the-autistic/
The reason, is so it is easier, to justify, the removal of the autistic’s capacity, so that these exceptionally gifted people, can be drugged, and strapped into wheel chairs for life to make profit.
It can happen, it is happening, and it will happen. Every day we have to face the reality. But never forget profit is the driving force. The company that owns the residential home my son is in has made £2,000,000 pure profit from him with the collusion of the LA, the Courts and the NHS.
There is a huge, cabal monopoly industry, besides the care home provision, Making huge profits for doing nothing, except for prescribed, forgone conclusion, box ticking.
Official Solicitors, who serve no purpose, but to help the Local Authority’s policy to remove for life, to secret, unaccountable private profit ‘care’. And purport, subversively to be independent and act in the ‘best interests’ of their client, the deemed ‘incapable’.
The LA, and now the Health and Social Care Trust lawyers, who do exactly the same thing, as the LA and OS lawyers.
There can be no independent voice, as parents, are not allowed to act for their children, as there are made up issues of abuse/safeguarding, and their interests are deemed to conflict with their own children’s.
The State’s do not..
The Judge, is also paid for agreeing with the OS,LA,HCT lawyers.
The Health and Social Experts, and an Independent hired expert, are paid to build up the strength of evidence on capacity to agree with each other.
The GPs ,are paid to purport to protect the vulnerable by visits and checks for weight loss, self harm and abuse only, and only in the family homer. And, are also paid by COP for statutory assessments and reports.
The community nurses are paid to feed into the doctors, and monitor for neglect, abuse, self harm only, and only in the family home.
Yes, there are many titles feeding in, put doing nothing, except ticking boxes for removal to care were even death goes uninvestigated.
But it is happening, has been happening for decades ?
It is a very tricky area, for choice and fear, and fantasy come as triplets when parents find they are pregnant with a child with Down’s. But what are the motives behind the increasing investment in research and publicity on earlier Down’s diagnosis. Is it to help parents make the most difficult of all decisions; to save an uncaring State’s cash or slippery slope eugenics of the different ?
There is no way to tell how disabled a child with Downs will be…
My son grew up in the middle our unique three children. He has never taken drugs, got in with a ‘bad’ crowd, bullied any one or committed any crime. Sees/remembers everything, and behaves no grudges. There have been problems and much pain. None were his. He has caused not a jot but love and pride. He lights up my, and for many others, life Every day. He is my son.
But I worry for him.
All our problems have come from increasing lack of caring support and neglectful even abusive support; LA’s nasty culture of poor leadership etc and their taking their bat home when challenged. No access to justice when needed and the life wasted don’t bother complaints processes. And the creeping morphing downwards, with rare exceptions, of useless Social Work into a soul less care manager ticking a box. All worries me.
Now poor NHS health care (and much worse) if it can be accessed at all. Mainly healthy up to middle years, PEOPLE like my son die on average aged 53 and no one notices or asks why. Why ?
I worry.
In spite of it all this; I bless every day that I was not offered the option…….. not to know or share my life with this wonderful and unique man.
And I worry.
Weary Mother what a wonderful insight into love.
Thank you Pauline
The answer is simple.
All these issues, result from a lack of accountability of anyone, within the system.
If, the NHS issue misleading letters on the reliability of a Downs tests, they cannot be sued.
OK, the law is there, but it cannot be enforced.
So, they mislead, and Downs, and a lot of not Downs babies are aborted by stealth.
The companies get money, for supposedly creating a wonderful new test, the NHS, no doubt, gets rewarded on a target basis, for the number of abortions that result.
And all is on a profit basis, albeit if public recycled, and soon, if not already privatised services.
Its also win win, as if the mother refuses a test/abortion, and a Downs child is born, then it can be fed, into the very lucrative learning disabled industry, and find itself like Thomas Rawnsley, being removed under the MCA and MHA, to make profit for life, in the LD private provision care and hospitals and pharma industry, following yet another policy, of the now cabal of Health and Social Care, which again, is probably target lead by payment on the numbers placed in institutional care.
And then, as we have seen with Thomas, no matter how abusive and neglectful the ‘care’ provision, nothing will be done, and, even if it results in death, this will be due to natural causes and Downs.
sorrowful but obvious that no one is going to bother to look sharp for fear of reprisal now or in the future. Some people matter less and their deaths are routinely rubber stamped with conditions that are not life limiting. If you are of the right sort by contrast your relatives can be assured your sudden death will be fully scrutinized, no matter that you are of a very great age and have partied like it is 1999 for the best part of it. Two worlds.