We have two articles in today's Daily Telegraph relating to the Winterbourne View fiasco - an editorial and Vicki Woods using her usual Saturday column.
Vicki Woods column is, for once, a delight to read and one in which she mentions the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Like any oversight commission, CQC has built, for and around itself, a self-serving organisation whose defense is a website full of difficulties, making any investigation of itself by a member of the public virtually impossible.
Having had experience of the Audit Commission and their method of operation, the CQC will be no different in that any inspection is pre-arranged. Logic would dictate that if an inspection is to have any real meaning and effect then it should not be pre-announced.
These oversight commission only exist because the various levels of management in the organisations being inspected cannot be doing their jobs properly. In the case of Winterbourne View, exactly where was the manager of that establishment? In the case of the manager, where was his/her immediate superior? In other words, where was the oversight and internal inspection that any care organisation should have in place?
Winterbourne View, owned and operated by Castlebeck Care (Teesdale) Ltd is registered to provide care for up to 24 patients aged 18 years and over with a learning disability, and patients may be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. If inspections are to be held, then they should be an annual event, yet this is not the case as noted in the last inspection report available. Reading this report it is noticeable that staff do not receive annual training in physical intervention techniques. If that was the case, why were not further inspections made? It is also noticeable, unless I missed it, that no inspection is made on how care is administered.
Whilst on the subject of care for the vulnerable and elderly, it is worth considering Southern Cross and their failures. Subrosa has a thoughtful post on care homes and mentions her involvement by means of her voluntary work. Whether care homes are privatised or not, the inspection regime must be strengthened and should concentrate on patient care and how it is administered, rather than the present emphasis, which appears to be on compliance with regulations.
No doubt our political master will order an inquiry and temporarily wash their hands of the problem until such time as they actually have to try some other hair-brained scheme in an attempt to ensure mistakes witnessed in Witerbourne View and Southern Cross do not happen again.
1 comment:
Management in Britain is a Status not a Function; it is Being and not Doing.
Usually to get a position running an Agency or Quango or Charity Board or Council Bureaucracy you must be Nomenklatura or "one of us" as Thatcher put it.
So Lin Homer fails as Chief Executive/Returning officer in Birmingham after massive and blatant electoral (ethnic) fraud. She is removed and becomes Head of the Immigration Service where the doors are open wide to the detritus of the world. Bonuses for Failure later she moves on to another carcase.
Lyons from Birmingham Council becomes Head of the BBC Trust to be replaced by Lord Patten.
Environment Agency etc. Look at them all. It is like Soviet Russia with Party Affiliates running everything. Hospital Trusts - look at the Chief Executives who flourish after disaster elevated by political allegiances to new planes of arrogant incompetence while peons take the pain.
You must be old enough to see that Britain was infected by Marxism through association with Stalin in WW2 when criticism of the Generalissimo was banished from our press and the sycophantic adulation of Marshall Stalin made Socialism the one true god in Britain and anything to the right of Uncle Joe Nazism.
Britain was taken over. If Hitler was a reaction to Communist coups in Germany in 1918 and 1923 coupled with Franco-Belgian invasion and occupation; his demise left the way open for "Pas d'Ennemis a gauche"
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