Wondering what we can do really. In a bit of a despondent way. The update I posted this week illustrates how public bodies can simply delay. With seemingly unlimited doses of delay powder. A sort of modern wday ‘smoking out’ policy. Earlier today I found out that Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) are delaying their response to my Freedom of Information request about their ‘investigation’ because a Public Interest Test is being carried out.

I don’t know what this means and the FOI dept at OCC were unable to enlighten me beyond the fact it will involve a delay of up to 20 working days. Another month potentially. It would be bloody brilliant if they could soup it up a bit and complete this test (test?) in days rather than weeks but given the weighty blanket of on going delay, I’m not going to anticipate anything. July 22 is the new date.

I don’t have a bar anymore. That was crushed somewhere along the way. When we realised that these public bodies can do whatever they want to devastated parents/families and no one will stop them. I now expect the worse and, so far, that has been spot on.

Another parent, Nic, whose child died a few months before LB posted this on my blog yesterday.

Nic regularly posted comments in support, in shared grief, rage and despair at the impossibility of trying to get accountability, justice or anything to make sense of the apparently casual and brutal chucking aside of much loved children’s lives. One of the first comments she made included the request ‘More photos please’.

So here’s another pic from that holiday in 2010. When we were walking a completely different path. And, on a more cheery note, the #JusticeforLB flag is returning to Glastonbury this year with the legendary Lawthom Goodley crew. Bloody good timing in the circumstances.

Just under two days in Tromso this week. Midnight sun land. Well not much sun but spectacular sights. And so much daylight. Which was strangely mesmerising. I learned a lot from colleagues about life in northern Norway. Including snow management techniques. The importance of building capacity to allow space for snow. Built on an understanding that the snow ain’t going anywhere fast and everyday life needs to continue.

Sloven and OCC don’t seem to understand the need for this space when it comes to grief and families. Instead they just shovel, or try to. A process that’s destructive, counter-productive and hugely damaging.

There are policies that try to create space for grief within the NHS. The sensible and straightforward Being Open framework, for example. But policies are just words if they’re ignored. As meaningless as the non-apologies identified by Ally, LB’s cousin, in her recent dissertation on Sloven communications.

There are obvious differences between heavy and sustained snowfall and grief. But I find it hard to understand how the grief stuff, something so agonisingly accessible – most people can, if they can bear to go there, have the beginnings of imagining what such grief feels like – is dismissed or ignored. Intensely human, deeply emotional and gut wrenchingly awful experience is trampled over, ignored or worse, by the public bodies responsible.

How do we get it so blinking wrong?

I came across Sloven’s 2013/4 Annual Report today in which they make the extraordinary claim that they are 100% compliant with Duty of Candour obligations (p121).

100% compliance? Eh? How can claiming LB died from natural causes in July 13, failing to disclose his full medical records until November 14 (via the coroner), accepting that his death was preventable in February 14 and then claiming again he died through natural causes in November 15, fit with duty of candour compliance? How can not sharing how Nico Reed died with his family for nearly two years be candour compliant? Or do learning disability related incidents stand outside this indicator?

Up until the last couple of months, I’d probably have written to the Board chair asking for some clarification on this. Not any more. The OCC report (OCCRAP) and their response to my obvious and fully justified distress about this report, on top of the various brain melt communications we’ve had with the now ex-Sloven Board chair/still-in-post CEO documented on these pages, have demonstrated that they have the power to do what they want. Including telling the most fanciful of lies and sticking them.

It’s simply one fucked up, archaic and sometimes corrupt system.

This afternoon, stuck on the Oxford Tube coming out of London, I was reading negative academic related stuff on my twitter timeline. Then my niece forwarded her undergraduate dissertation. She’s just completed a degree in linguistics at Leeds. For her dissertation she did a critical discourse analysis of four documents; Sloven’s public statement on the publication of the Verita report, their briefing document to Monitor, and letters from the CEO and Board Chair to us.

I still don’t fully understand what transitivity is but non-apologies are pretty straightforward. In a kind of a random shambles; human, mother, (proud) aunt, campaigner, academic, raging woman, Oxford Tube captive and probably other identities, I read this dissertation. Between Hillingdon and Lewknor.

I was struck, in particular, by three things. First, it’s an example of an undergraduate dissertation that’s robust, rigorous, relevant and political. I’m impressed by both Ally’s work/focus and the encouragement and support she was obviously given by Leeds.

Second, (and I won’t say much about the content right now) the conclusions are clear, carefully evidenced and show that Sloven (and probably other NHS Foundation Trusts/local authorities) don’t operate anything approaching a whiff of candour, openness and transparency.

Third, if an undergraduate student can produce a clear, critical and well evidenced piece of research demonstrating this, why is so much meaningless talk still being talked?