[I’m revisiting unpublished blog posts this week. Sorry I started firing them into the public domain earlier without making that clear or realising that blog followers would get a glut of email post notifications. I’m going plod through them over the next few weeks and add commentary where appropriate in bold without changing the original text. Some may be half finished (sometimes without a title) like this one. Written 19.2.15.]

Blimey. Days away from the anniversary of the publication of what we now call Verita 1. The official start date of #justiceforLB. How awkwardly awkward is this? A young dude with epilepsy made worse by medication, has his medication changed in a specialist [howl] NHS secure setting, experiences increased seizure activity noticed by, er, his family. Is left to bath unsupervised within spitting distance of four members of staff (while the other other four patients allegedly slumber) and drowns. Not surprisingly, the independent investigation into his death was damning.

I went to Banbury today for the first time and, in a fresh setting, couldn’t help noticing the tiny manoeuvres parents do to keep their kids safe from obvious hazards like busy roads. Simple stuff.

It was an exemplary fuck up situation.

And?

And?

There is no and. A year later we’re waiting for an inquest, an outcome of a police and HSE investigation, Verita 2 and a Mazars death review. Oh, and staff disciplinary action.

If LB had full citizen status and died in some other way; a road accident, street attack, drug overdose, whatever, the justice process would typically be sorted by now. Another young person, Martha Fernback, died locally around the same time as LB. Someone was found accountable for her death nearly a year ago. A year ago? I read her mum’s book in which she mentions seeing LB’s freshly dug grave in the woodland section of Wolvercote Cemetery that July. When she was choosing a spot for her daughter [howl]. Her daughter who fell into the mainstream justice stream. Without this murky NHS connection.

Not only are we getting no closer to any sniff of accountability for LB’s death, but the ongoing reviews are becoming increasingly meaningless to us. Sloven board paperwork carelessly records that the mortality review [Mazars death review] will be published late summer. Eh? I was reassured only a week ago by NHS England that this was met).

[Published late summer… Gawd. We were so blinking naive. I thought the non action was ‘awkward’ back in the day. That the obviousness of the failings around  Connor drowning in an NHS bath, highlighted by an independent review, would generate kick ass action. [Howl] This is the plan. The long game. A slow smoking out of bereaved families using dirty tricks like ‘not knowing’, endless delay, state funded stinky Pete counsels and the juicy button of ever present, dazzling pain to press and harm. 

The Mazars review was eventually leaked to the BBC ten months later on 10.12.15.  ‘Officially’ published by NHS England (NHSE) a week later. The day parliament went into recess for Christmas. NHSE pulled a repeat stunt this May with publication of the leder report. Attempting to kick unsavoury findings without commitment to action into the long grass. In 2015, Jeremy Hunt answered questions about the Mazars review in the Commons. Hollow answers but ‘answers’ of a kind. This May he simply left the chamber when the leder review was raised.

There’s palpable optimism and resistance in these unpublished posts. It makes me feel an odd combination of sadness and a raging ‘fuck you, you fucking bastards’. So many years passing. So much billy bullshite. Still.

Over the last few weeks in meetings or chats on social media, the ‘high profile’ of #JusticeforLB has been raised. Anecdotes shared. Email comments. A range of people who now know Connor’s name and what happened.

“#JusticeforLB is a social movement. An unprecedented capturing of the humanity of Connor and so many other people. It’s given families the confidence and strength to challenge the death of their child or sibling…” 

Good. Brilliant even.

Revisiting these unpublished posts has made me reflect how easily they could be written today. 

I don’t remember going to Banbury.]