Category Archives: Jeremy Hunt

The Whorlton Hall disclosures

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My blog is developing a bus theme which would delight a certain cheeky chappy we miss off the planet and to the moon and back. I wrote a CQC related post about the shoddiness of Mencrap provision yesterday evening after a longish gap and then, 24 hours later, comes another CQC related post.

After Panorama exposed brutal and cruel treatment at Whorlton Hall recently, the CQC today published the series of edited reports that begin when Barry Stanley-Wilkinson, a CQC inspector, wrote a report about the provision after an inspection in 2015. He found Whorlton Hall required improvement on all domains inspected. The report was not published until today.

We welcome the disclosure today in the rarely seen spirit of transparency. It offers an insight into an inspection process that should probably be chucked into the nearest skip. Coincidentally there was “a large skip within the hospital car park, which contained debris as well as long planks of wood which had large nails attached” when Barry and team visited.

So today we can trace how a CQC inspector writes a report which goes through layers of review. At each stage meaning is stripped back to bordering on the meaningless, words substituted for more vacuous ones (selected by a ‘word coach’ using a quasi scientific tool). The report then, apparently stripped of the layers of editing (audit trail) bounces to a final review stage which, in the case of this particular report, led to it being punted into the, er, nearest skip.

More evidence was needed apparently though it is not clear where that decision came from in the documents released today. Six months [six months] later, nearly 12 months [12 months…] after Barry’s inspection, Whorlton Hall mysteriously received a good inspection rating. And that was history until the Panorama team went in this year.

So what did Barry’s original report highlight?

  • Environmental risks including the skip and parts of the building in which people couldn’t be observed.
  • Incomplete record keeping (including observations) and lack of risk assessment review.
  • Poor quality reporting of multi disciplinary team meetings.
  • Recordings not legible and no treatment or discharge plans formulated.
  • Out of date medication policies and no rapid tranquillisation policy
  • Lack of plans around sexuality and sexual behaviour and poor take up of annual health checks.
  • Inappropriate staffing levels and poorly trained staff who lacked understanding of the Mental Capacity Act and ways of communicating with people.
  • A low stimulus room used without protocols or procedures.

Basically a cornucopia of potential and chilling human rights abuses which were allowed to flourish for another 4 years. Between the CQC, NHS England, Hancock, ineffectual and careless commissioners, limp processes like Leder and self serving and greedy charities like Mencrap, it really ain’t hard to work out what underpins the stark and devastating disparities in the life outcomes of learning disabled people.

I seriously hope the Human Rights Committee are all over this on Wednesday afternoon.

In case readers need reminding of what living lives we all have a right to live look like, here are Dawn, Gina and Jess enjoying a beer after walking 100kms of the Camino de Santiago last March.

 

 

“Ensure the toilet door in the section 136 suite at Antelope house is replaced quickly”

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Earlier this week, Rich was out and I was home alone. The growing condiment pile felt right and a deep late Autumn sunset beckoned. I grabbed my camera and headed to South Park. I bumped into a few people I knew walking down there. Brief, warm and casual catch ups. Heading off between each with an eye on the sun. Despite knowing from a newly discovered nerdy site sunset was at 6.52pm.

Across the park there were smatterings of students/freshers, young people and others. Being or pounding across the park in serious running strides, sitting, walking, talking, laughing and playing games. Loosely shared eye and phone action on the slowly setting sun.

I dipped down to dandelion level while waiting.

It was quiet and spectacularly beautiful.

Walking home [after the reported 6.52 sunset and 30 minute twilight window] I felt peaceful.

The next day my phone rang. The latest Care Quality Commission inspection of Southern Health (Sloven) was embargoed until Friday. Ah. Ok… Sloven. A Trust with an astonishingly grim back drawer full of failing CQC inspections. A Health Services Journal award winning CEO (2011 from memory) who doshed a mate millions before disappearing with a £250k pay off back in 2016.

Yep.

All that still trips off my ‘you effectively killed my beautiful, beyond loved son’ tongue. And it will continue to do so until I really understand why.

Back in March we naively thought the outcome of the Health and Safety Executive criminal prosecution and £2m fine was a seminal moment in NHS history. A shot across the bow of all Trusts. A judge pulling no punches in his ruling. Generating critical scrutiny across the health and social care provision of this crapshite trust and wider. Good care, ligature points, care plans, medication storage, staff supervision and so much more sorted. These are basics after all.

Reading this latest report generated yet more tears and distress. How low can you continue to go in providing ‘health’ and ‘social care’.

The inspection in June 18 generated a warning notice around the safety of young people in a Southampton based unit. A warning notice around safety.

Five years after our son drowned. [He drowned]

And so many others have died.

The Sloven exec board are still stretching out their entitled legs. Apparently kicking any whiff of a negative inspection report into the long grass. No determination, commitment or even interest in trying to own these continued failings.

Reminding me of those early, baking hot July days. Almost five years to the day swatting away the CQC inspection like they did with LB’s death. [He died]

There were 20 breaches of legal requirements that the trust must put right. We found 74 things that the trust should improve to comply with a minor breach that did not justify regulatory action, to prevent breaching a legal requirement, or to improve service quality

We issued seven requirement notices to the trust. Our action related to breaches of 21 regulations in seven core services.

I dunno. Reading it I jotted so many notes. Bashing on the keyboard. Scratching furious fucking pen to paper. So much so wrong. Still. Beyond wrong.

The trust had not completed the anti-ligature work at Leigh House (identified as needed in previous CQC inspections) which posed a significant risk to young people and was not being adequately mitigated against.

Governance systems did not always provide robust assurance to the trust board about issues within services. For example, we found the board were not cited on staffing issues in some services, low levels of staff supervision, poor compliance with care planning and an inability to provide accurate restraint data. 

And more:

Poorly written and stored care plans; no patient involvement in or knowledge of care plans; poor note keeping; not following the MHA; lack of staff supervision; inappropriate medication management and storage; risks to young people in MH services; lack of hygiene and broken equipment; issues around privacy and gender; safeguarding issues; ward temperature issues; lack of competence in syringe driver training.

The same old and more. Five years on.

Lives tossed out like rubbish. With no consideration. Reputation ruling the roost still..

This sentence strangely leapt out, from the 54 page report.

Ensure the toilet door in the section 136 suite at Antelope house is replaced quickly.

Sort the toilet door. It only takes a few fucking hours.

Don’t poke the beast…

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The footies on. Somewhere. Everywhere, it’s so damn quiet. Home alone with Bess. Listening to music. Head spinning from so much happening and not happening. LB’s five year death anniversary speedily approaching. The day before NHS 70th birthday celebrations. I feel queasy already. Hunt and NHS England remain silent about the leder review. Bouncing back FOI requests as too expensive. Refusing to comment.

An extraordinary level of engineered wilful disinterest.

Non-disclosure

I put in a Subject Access Request a month ago asking to see Valerie Murphy’s statement for the MPTS hearing. She read my statement. Her barrister commented on it during his illness inducing cross-examination.

The answer came back today:

“I do not believe there is information that is disclosable under the DPA”. Oh. The GMC will however disclose extracts relating to LB if I sign a confidentiality agreement.

Murphy had no such restrictions. She can say whatever she wants about my statement. To whoever she chooses.

And so it continues..

A week ago a bizarre comment was posted on justiceforLB.org:

The answer to George’s question was this:

Spencer and Murphy studied at the same university at the same time.

Oh my.

[Howl].

We know snarky (or worse) and largely unchallenged discussions go on behind the password protected doctors.net (and I’m sure other forums). These started within weeks of LB’s death. Mother (and other) blame has had a remarkably unremitting purchase in health, social care, education circles for decades now. Noted and discussed at length by families. A steely silence (apart from the odd dissenter) from professionals who must recognise this shite for what it is.

These random, unexpected and typically incoherent attacks are pretty hard to endure. Our boy died. He died. You just don’t seem to understand this. He was 18. Can you imagine your child dying a preventable death in the ‘care’ of the NHS?

A beloved and beautiful child. Dying. A preventable death.

Can you begin to imagine?

Why don’t you fucking try to imagine?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five years and four months

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Time.

Approaching five years since LB died has been weighing heavily. Five years. Half a decade. Mostly taken up with a brutal fight for accountability. Leaving us barely standing at times. Irreparable, inexcusable damage and destruction.

Five years.

Five years since I last hung out with, touched, talked with, loved with my eyes as well as my heart, my beautiful, extraordinary boy.

Five years.

The Williams Review

Today the rapid policy review ‘Gross Negligence Manslaughter in Healthcare’ report by Norman Williams was published. Four months in the making. A ‘rapid policy’ route. Four months…

Four months.

Four months of hearing from ‘many individuals and organisations. Bereaved families, healthcare professionals and their representative bodies, regulators, lawyers, investigatory and prosecutorial authorities, as well as members of the public…’

A review conducted, written, signed, stamped and published within four months.

Four months.

Shorter than the length of time NHS England sat on the leder review before sneakily publishing it in May.

Four months.

And five years.

#bastards

Dancing around death…

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Ben Morris, the STATT unit manager, was suspended for 12 months today at the beginning of the Nursing and Midwifery Council hearings. He admitted 17 charges and ‘accepted his fitness to practise as a nurse is impaired because of his past, serious misconduct’. I read the consensual panel determination (a 43 page document capturing the charges, admission of guilt and the now typically late to the table remorse) over the weekend.

More pieces added to the map of we’ll never ever know.

Morris offered no explanation as to why he didn’t do the things he should have done (other than ‘working’ beyond his skill set). He didn’t blame anyone.

The shadowy figures of clinical commissioners and Oxfordshire County Council dance around the edges of these documents. Again.

Quality reviews screaming ‘ACT NOW’.

Ignored.

Why the fuck didn’t you do something?

No engagement. No interest. No care.

Hollow, brutal and public erasure of humanity.

#Leder review

 

 

Entering the labyrinth; a leder tale

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The leder report was published on Friday 4 May. Three years of the Bristol University project reviewing the premature deaths of learning disabled people.

[Blog commentary by Mark Neary, Mark Brown, two posts from Chris Hatton here and here. Opinion piece by Ian Birrell here. All worth reading (in any order).]

Key issues

1. The findings of the report (shameful).
2. The underfunding of the work (shameful).
3. The attempts to bury the report (shameful).

Here I reflect on the opaque and confusing labyrinth seemingly designed to make the premature deaths of learning disabled people disappear.

A song with no title 

No one knows what leder stands for. Including ‘go to’ Google.

leder

A (non) communication strategy

The report was finished in November 2017 and has been sitting in the grimy halls of NHS England while a communication strategy was devised. This took the shape of ‘timing, timing, timing and no communication’:

  • Bank holiday weekend and local election results.
  • No advance copies for the media.
  • No comment from NHS England or the Bristol team.

There would be no comment.

Holed up in the Holiday Inn Salford opposite the BBC studios on Thursday night there was no advance copy of the report despite repeated requests and cajoling from journalists.

I was sent a sneaky few bullet point findings to digest.

I went to the bar.

The coverage

8am-ish after fear-interrupted sleep still no public sign of the review.

Waiting outside the BBC Breakfast studio on the second or third floor, a 4-6 minute dash to the booth in the foyer for patching into the Radio 4 Today show was explained to me. Sofa to booth. Live coverage. Of premature death.

No report still.

The order was reversed. I beetled downstairs with Jayne McCubbins (who was instrumental in the coverage that unfolded). We worked out how to turn off my new phone, donned massive headphones and waited. In the small, darkened space. To speak to the Today programme.

The presenter wasn’t versed in the implications of the report. Jayne provided the headlines then I was asked about LB.

Nope. Don’t coat this scandalous evidence with a gratuitous dose of pity porn.

No.

It was a fairly tense interview. At the end a response from NHS England was read out. [Their only response to date.]

We welcome, they say, this interim report, the first of its kind in the world. These early lessons will feed into hospital and community services work including early detection of symptoms of sepsis and pneumonia prevention, constipation and epilepsy where there is significant progress. They go on to say another £1.4m more will be spent this year so that those responsible locally as well as the University of Bristol and NHS HQ can ramp up the speed and number of reviews.

There’s not much to say about this statement other than the absence of the gravitas, sensitivity, concern and commitment to action you would expect. A report that should have generated immediate and unqualified responses by the government, NHS England and others.

Ramping up the speed.

Ten minutes later I was on the red sofa with Naga and Charlie. They asked relevant, important questions.

“Who is listening?”

No one.

The label of learning disability is now the equivalent of being diagnosed with a life limiting illness. This report adds further evidence to a bloated evidence base.

The coverage that morning is generating the saddest (powerful) tweets from various families. George Julian is pulling them together here in a twitter moment.

Including Danny and Joey.

An urgent question and a bolt for the door

Today Barbara Keeley MP raised an urgent question about the report. Jeremy Hunt legged it as soon as she stood up to talk. An extraordinary moment. All that talk on December 15 2015 when the Mazars review was leaked to the BBC. Pomp and promises. The world leading champion of patient safety…

He left. He walked out. He couldn’t spare 20-30 minutes of his time to engage. His myopic and dangerous lens never more visible in this action.

The hapless and hopeless Caroline Dinenage was left to fend questions. The Minister of (no) Care. Parroting ill-informed and vacuous responses. It was a hard watch. The full transcript is here.

Questions were asked about the content of the report and the publication timing.

The Bristol team finally burst into action. Tweeting to say no, this ain’t true.

Too little too late

I’ve puzzled over the role of the Bristol team here. As a researcher myself. We’ve long known about the challenges the team have faced with a paucity of funding and unrealistic expectations. They have, in some ways, done the best they could do with that level of challenge. The problem I have is with their lack of challenge to the challenge.

Only 8% of the 1300 deaths referred to the team have been reviewed so far.

1300 people. With families, lives, history and stories. People. With mums, dads, sisters, brothers, grandparents, cousins, aunties, uncles, friends, pets. People. Some with no family. Still people. People.

Erased.

Rubbed out.

By an underfunded project that couldn’t cope with the number of people.
By the Bristol team who stood by.
By the actions of NHS England who remain silent (and so much worse).
By the action of Dinenage who was prepared to stand up and defend the indefensible.
By the silence of Jeremy Hunt.

Violence, silence and erasure.

 

Smashing it

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We did it. A historic judgement by Mr Justice Stuart-Smith on Monday morning which involved a £2m fine for Sloven Health. LB and TJ Colvin were treated with the respect they deserve. Justice was served. We had been prepared that the sum of money was not as important as the Judge’s comments would carry more weight. As it was Mr Justice smashed both. He carefully read out a judgement so drenched in sense and fairness it was extraordinary to listen to. In a court again packed with JusticeforLB campaigners including several members of My Life My Choice.

The sensitivity and commitment of the Judge, Bernard, the HSE team and the media who attended (many of whom have followed the campaign over the years) were also extraordinary. Kindnesses that will stay with us.

Our statement about the prosecution can be read here.

Michael Buchanan’s news film with beautiful video clips of LB is here.

A few thoughts and outstanding questions

We were surprised (and pleased) to hear Jeremy Corbyn raise LB, TJ and the campaign in Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday. May also praised the efforts of the families. This is good but serious questions remain about the failure of the various regulators/bodies to act on what the Judge described as ‘the dark years‘ of Sloven. Jeremy Hunt is captured in the Commons looking slightly uncomfortable. So he should. It’s not the job of bereaved families to ‘uncover the serious systemic problems‘ in health and social care.

Mr Justice describes ‘very grave concern‘ that endemic failures were allowed to arise at all and to persist for so long. I mean why was this? Do senior people leave sense on a middle rung of the ladder to success? Are critical scrutiny and self reflection dirty words in senior circles? Is the culture so dire that no one can offer challenge to unspeakable actions?

Many of the mountains of email exchanges we have through Freedom of Information requests include abysmal statements and the complete absence of challenge to these statements by numerous people. Norman Lamb stands out as someone who stood firm, recognised how wrong it was and acted. And made sure action happened.

We have in the Justice shed a long standing plan to hold an exhibition plastering this documentation around a cavernous space to allow people to wander around and read the levels of shite and what families are forced to endure. What is said and not said. Replicated in too many other cases.

Looking back across the five years there was a wilful refusal by NHS Improvement, NHS England, the CQC and Jeremy Hunt to act. One example. Two referrals (yes two) of Katrina Percy to the CQC’s Fitness to Practice panel in 2015 and 2016.

1. Mike Richards sent  a ‘fuck off she’s fine’ letter months later (the referral had got lost). 2. After chasing we were told the fitness panel would wait for NHS Improvement’s trouble-shooting Chair Tim Smart’s exec board capability review. Smart bafflingly concluded the board were all fine. Percy again exonerated.

NHS Improvement and the rest continued to slumber.

Point 4 of the judgment states: ‘When the systemic problems were finally recognised, a welcome realism entered the Trust’s appreciation of what happened‘. This interpretation glosses over the crucial point that it was the replacement of ‘pay off Percy’ which enabled the (slow) recognition of failings. She and her turgid, complacent and arrogant board have got off scot free.

Unlike the MPTS panel which decided to include the ‘difficult field of learning disability’ as two mitigating factors in deciding to suspend Valerie Murphy, Mr Justice states ‘the fact that the Trust’s breaches were most likely to affect vulnerable patients is an aggravating factor‘. Of course it is. That he simply saw LB and TJ as human is at the heart of his narrative and judgement. And what has been largely lacking from the broader NHS related responses.

The sentence is here. The biggest Health and Safety related prosecution fine in the history of the NHS.

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There has been some unsurprising meithering on social media about this fine. Yesterday we found out that Sloven quietly sold the Ridgeway Centre in High Wycombe last November. This was one of the spoils they took with them having lost the Oxford contract because they were so shite. A sale that netted them a tawdry sum of £2.3m. Dosh taken from Oxfordshire provision.

It’s a shame the £2m can’t be channelled  into providing groundbreaking provision for LB’s peers some of whom continue to flounder without appropriate support in county.  ‘A TJ and Connor centre of life, love, fun and brilliance’. But that’s out of our hands.

Mr Justice was spot on with his ‘just and proportionate outcome‘.

Finally

We’re pretty much done now. We did what we set out to do and whilst none of it will bring back our beautiful boy we collectively did a bloody good job. As Mark Neary reflected yesterday we may have changed the way campaigns are run.

One of the central features of the campaign has been the extraordinary live tweeting of the various hearings by George Julian. She is now looking into a more sustainable way of doing this for other families. Making dirty practices by public sector funded and instructed counsels visible in real time is priceless. If you can spare £1 a month (or more) please fill in the form on the post and let George know.

I hope a light will be shone on the persistent cover up of the ‘dark years’, the culpability of Percy and the board and that those more widely implicated will absorb some of Mr J’s sense, fairness and integrity and now speak out. Critical scrutiny, transparency and honesty is essential for safe, effective and inclusive health and social care.

I’m off to Spain tomorrow with various #JusticeforLB campaigners to walk the LB bus the last 170 miles to Santiago de Compostela*.

After that it’s back to work. And life.

Thanks, thanks and many more thanks – so many thanks – to everyone who did and kept doing what they could and so much more. We seriously smashed it.

old-pics-2-4

*UK walks are also taking place. Rumour has it, in another magical twist, Mr Fortune, Winnie Betsva’s barrister from the inquest is doing the Devon walk.

 

 

 

Power, irony and the ‘sorry’ ship…

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‘Sorry’ or an absence of sorry has been a consistent feature of the last few years. We’ve collected a right old rag bag of non-apologies including ‘I’m sorry for any distress you may have felt…’ ‘Please accept my condolences for your loss‘ and ‘I’m sorry if [fill in whatever here]. Last week Valerie Murphy finally ‘found remorse’ and produced an apology for the MPTS panel.

The Murpy effect

At LB’s inquest, one of the barristers, Mr Fortune, offered Murphy the opportunity to say sorry to us when she was giving evidence. An eminently sensible and kind man, he’d obviously helped his client Winnie Betsva come to the decision to do so when she earlier gave evidence. Winnie said sorry. Clearly and unambiguously. Murphy’s non-response lead Fortune to dramatically say “I specifically did not ask we, I addressed the question to you. Dr Murphy please answer.” After further procrastination she stated “It was the right decision. I don’t believe there were failings”. On the inquest recording you can hear the courtroom door slam as I walked out. [I didn’t slam it, it closes loudly.]

Fast forward to yesterday and an email from the GMC. Murphy’s solicitor said she wants to write to us and are we willing to allow the GMC to pass on our home address.

When the ‘sorry’ ship has sailed…

There comes a time when the space to say sorry expires. How long that window remains open will vary but given we went into the MPTS tribunal last August fully expecting and prepared to accept an apology from Murphy four years after LB died it lasts some time.

That ship has sailed now. It sailed for me when instead of saying sorry she allowed her barrister to unnecessarily cross-examine me for nearly two hours.

I had to leave that room too when he told me she was upset. For a brief break before returning to more of the same. While Murphy sat next to him. Feet away.

I’d hazard a guess that Murphy wants to apologise to us now because this absence is repeatedly referred to in the sanction decision. The focus of the MPTS process is on finding demonstrations of insight and remorse by the doctor and the panel helpfully suggest what she might produce before the hearing next year. Including

A reflective account addressing what you have learned and done in respect of the Tribunal’s findings of facts, impairment and sanction demonstrating your level of insight;

[As a bit of an aside, in my thoughts about this I had a sad chuckle earlier remembering LB’s approach to unwanted stuff like hex bugs, broken watches, the egg of trust. He just binned em. Without hesitation.]

The panel should have drawn a dotted line under a potential apology at this stage. It really doesn’t take much insight or reflection to realise that it is probably too late. There’s heavy irony here that the panel are prepared to drag an apology out of Murphy in pursuit of evidence of insight without themselves showing any insight or reflection of the continuing brutality of the process for us. Murphy, likewise, is demonstrating no insight into her actions if she’s prepared to suddenly fashion an apology after everything she’s done and hasn’t done.

Final thoughts

Power is, as always, at the heart of this sorry business. The power to withhold a genuine sorry or to give a half baked non-apology. The power to choose to send ‘the sorry’ a circuitous route to the recipient or simply to others. The power to give a medic – who catastrophically failed a patient by not providing the most basic of basic medical care – chance after chance to buck her ideas up. The erasure of any consideration of the impact of the whole process – including actions taken and decisions made – on the family and wider.

This is an extract from one of the responses sent to the Professional Standards Association expressing concerns about the panel sanction decision.

The Equality Act requires public sector agencies to make reasonable adjustments such that the service offers a similar standard to groups such as disabled people to that experienced by other people. Using learning difficulties as a mitigating factor points in a direction contrary to the Equality Act, seeming to accept that standards are lower for medical professionals working with people with learning disabilities.

I can’t help thinking the MPTS process has descended into some kind of farce. Underpinned by an inability to see LB as a person, demonstrated by using ‘learning difficulties as a mitigating factor’.  It’s the only way I can make any (non)sense of it.

[As a postscript, as I’m struggling to make sense of this, if anyone has any different thoughts please chip in below.]

Under giant trees…

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I don’t blog much any more. I’m off work. I don’t have the concentration to do much more than play candycrush, sort through stuff and graze social media. I’ve become a half arsed, flakey version of a Stepford Wife. Rich gritting his teeth when I brightly suggest that if we wipe the top of the cooker daily it will remain clean.

My days are strangely unfilled with little and so much. 

I listen to this, over and over again.

Haunting and magical particularly from 3.16.

Richard Handley’s inquest has been live tweeted this week (@Handleyinquest). A cheeky chappy surrounded by love and a family effectively excluded from the work sadly needed to keep him alive. A tale of barbaric and inhumane failings.

The overlap with Connor’s inquest is harrowing. Blame shifting, lies and an absence of remorse. Richard’s mother brutally and unnecessarily questioned at length.

I bought a bag of wool and crochet hooks. I need to learn to hold, hook, turn and gently pull through wool though woollen hoops and loops. I’m watching a ‘crochet for beginners (left handed)’ youtube film. It takes practice apparently but the basics are clear:

“Move your crochet hook under and over the yarn, and then pull it through.”

I do this. Listening to Under giant trees.

‘Always make sure patients with epilepsy are within sight or sound when bathing.’

‘Make sure Richard has a healthy diet (plenty of fibre) and monitor bowel movements…’

Under, over and through.

Clear and simple instructions.

Giant trees. 3.16 is the best bit.