Continuing on from yesterday’s post about naughty councils and our suspicion that floodgates will be opened, an eerie feeling of Déjà vu hit us as we read this morning’s latest article on Community Care entitled “Council slammed for using untrained staff for care reviews“.
This time it’s Northamptonshire Council who are on the receiving end of the Local Government Ombudsman’s radar. This council had failed to carry out reviews of care packages and used unqualified staff to carry out its work. The article tells us, “The ombudsman, Dr Jane King, also found that the council had breached government guidance in charging the two service users for their care“.
Once again, families are being compensated for these errors and once again, these murmurs may be the calm before the storm. We have a feeling it would cost the government a lot less if the system ran efficiently, to start with.
Researching Reform 
Watch for the usual trite comments from Councils. These are some of their usual coded statements :
“We will be reviewing our poilicies and procedures” – and carrying on just as we have been since time immemorial.
“We will be looking to putting extra resources into those services” – and chopping them off some of the other services.
and the absolute Classic of course, “Lessons have been learned!”. – no they haven’t and never will be but it’ll get people off their backs for a while, till the next calamity.
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Yes, yes and yes. We hear you, Jarl and we agree.
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I agree with you. You know them oh so well.
It has all the energy of the old church.
Give the service users a ray of hope that change is here, then in reality, carry on and maybe even worse if we justice makers take our eyes off this.
Lessons were supposed to be learned from Cleveland etc, yet a few years ago RAD was being used on tiny babies. Those screams will haunt me forever.
The witch hunts still continue – a snake in your home is a red flag still.
Exorcism is considered abuse in all religions but not in the Catholic one.?
Regarding the untrained staff- that is easy- fail in fostering assessments and the LA will simply change your name and you can carry on fostering.
Most service users are too traumatised and drained to even be able to launch a complaint.
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