Over a week now since the Oxfordshire County Council ‘independent review’ into LB’s death hit my inbox. Without warning. Since the awkward, slippery discussion with the Deputy Director of social care silence has again again descended on County Towers.

There’s a dog eared copy of the review by my computer. Well it’s not really a review. More 21 pages of typed words that have made me feel quite ill. A second state body acting in an explicitly self serving and systemically toxic way. Apparent sole concern; reputation safeguarding. Negating our experience and creating myths around what happened. OCC present LB’s death as largely due to a series of flaky decisions/non action by me.

The level of fabrication about what happened, is chilling. I’ve got an ‘intentional? No surely not… must be incompetence…’ loop in my head trying to make sense of this review. Then the fact LB died crashes in. [He died?] Followed by ‘these are public bodies… NHS? County Council?’ The world spins. There is no sense.

I’m haunted by the power that’s become so blinking visible through Sloven and OCC actions (and the equivalent non action by other publicly funded bodies that you’d think would intervene).

We live in an evidence based age and this OCC review has the stamp of ‘authority’ from, er, OCC. Independent Case Review: CS (dob. 17.11.94-d. 04.07.13) is a document that can be shared with all sorts of people/organisations across time. It’s already shared with Verita and apparently will be heading the coroner’s way. I’ve been told publicly by the coroner to stick to facts not opinion at the inquest. There is no question that any ‘official documentation’ given to the coroner might be a bit flaky. Publicly funded bodies have teflon coating and headed notepaper that guarantee ‘truth’ and legitimacy.

I haven’t gone through the review, line by line for factual inaccuracies. It’s too depressing, distressing and I work full time. But dipping in, randomly, the howlingly biased framing makes my brain weep. I’m portrayed as the never never; never doing this that and the other. OCC staff are the always and forevers. Staff member X returned from annual leave and “started work to bring professionals together to look at how CS could return to life in the community” (April 10th). Cue the Dambusters theme.

There’s no sniff of any scrutiny of the findings. Or basic reflection about them. Not by anyone; the ‘independent’ reviewer, the shiny new Deputy Director (who allegedly added an additional layer of quality assurance), other readers or the Director who signed it off and then pinged it, out of the blue, into my inbox.

No one seemed to stop and think;

‘Er, erm. Hang on a minute, Quite a few things don’t stack up here. I mean was his mum really ignoring all advice in an obvious crisis situation as this review suggests? Why would she? I don’t understand. Didn’t this set alarm bells ringing for staff? There seem to be a lot of questions for me. For instance why would it take X three months from April 10th to organise a meeting to bring professionals together? That’s a long time for a young laddy to be locked away. Should he have really been in there? I mean, if nothing else, this provision cost £3500 per week. And did we have permission to share his health and social care records without his family’s permission? Why weren’t his family involved?’

Nope. No one spoke up.

And no one seems to have asked the obvious question: ‘A young dude died here. We all know he should be alive. What the fuck went wrong?’

It turns out that now OCC have published this report without our knowledge, and shared it with at least one external organisation, I’m expected to go through all 21 pages and highlight the factual inaccuracies contained within it. [Warning: the report apparently took 8 months to publish because the new Deputy Director of Social Care wanted it to be as robust as possible and added quality assurance. Hard hat time for those who need services in Oxon.]

Can you imagine wading through old emails from a time when your son was still alive [he died?] to correct a report you didn’t know was being written? In your own time? Serious brain melt. How much was matey boy paid to write this rubbish I wonder.

Deep breath.

Here’s just one example around respite. (I don’t think OCC can seriously expect me to keep this confidential in the circumstances). The report is so biased it’s almost comedic. Definitive statements about my ‘failings’ (without evidence) throughout but light touch on OCC on any dodgy ground. The ‘it appears from the records’ consistently falls on the side of the council with no consideration the records might be a little bit partial.

Not quite what happened. As the email exchange below demonstrates. I waited in all day for the three of them to turn up. The care manager eventually called to say she wouldn’t be able to come round after all. She’d run out of time. Bit of a shocker really in the circumstances. During that call she described the respite centre as a building with a snooker table and made it a completely unappealing option.

More mysterious reporting about respite here:

In contrast, from my blog, 18 March 2013:

And from March 19th…

How can the records possibly show “I did not take up the offer”? It’s just made up rubbish leading to one of the cracking conclusions:

Ah. It was all my fault. Trial by a ridiculous, crap and biased report. I’ll leave you with one more nonsensical snippet while I crawl off and wonder what the hell is going on.

Postscript: It would not be possible to rebut a lot of this stuff without having documented the experience on the pages of this blog. So important to keep detailed notes. And so blinking wrong.

Here’s the gig. I get to work this morning and receive an email from the Director of Adult Services, Oxfordshire County Council (OCC). It turns out they commissioned an independent review into LB’s death last year. And, for some reason, he’s decided to send it to us today.

Eh?

The email ends: As you know this report was undertaken and will be shared as part of a confidential investigation.  I would ask you to respect the confidential status of the report.  If you need to share the contents to third parties (other than your immediate family) then you should seek our written confirmation.

Eh?

It turns out they handed over LB’s health and social care records, without our knowledge, to a social care consultant.

He then interviewed various people, including LB’s teacher, before writing a report so riddled with inaccuracies and bias (the usual we did great, mum is unreliable/flaky rubbish) you might as well chuck it in the nearest skip. But then of course they won’t. It has already been shared with Verita and it will be given to the coroner among other people.

I can’t describe really what it’s like to find out that an independent review has been conducted into your dead son’s care without you knowing. Surely that’s the baseline of respect? That it details things like your kids’ dates of birth, and includes stuff like “SR cancelled the meeting”, when I didn’t, or “SR advised to contact the respite centre at Saxon Way. The records show that SR did not take up the offer”, when I did, but omits things like mentioning that the staff member who suddenly upped her game on the communication front did so because she was under supervision after we’d complained about the service.

Typical OCC slippery shite.

I spoke to the Deputy Director this afternoon who first denied sharing records despite the report stating: “Methodology: I have reviewed all the records held by the local authority for both Children’s and Adult’s Services…I have also reviewed copies of the Health Service RIO notes from 11 Jan to 19 March 2013 for the psychology and psychiatry service…””) and then suggested the reviewer was internal at that point because they were paying him. Astonishing. Howl inducing. How can people say and do such hideous things? He died.

By the way, OCC (and Sloven), if your strategy is to grind us down until we either slope off in despair or are destroyed, this was a cracking move.

Are you allowed to conduct an independent review of “the support that had been offered to LB and his family” without informing us?

Are you allowed to share LB’s notes with an external person without our permission?

What happens now an inaccurate report is being circulated?