Social Services have long memories, and a messianic distaste for having their noses tweaked by those with more power then they.
Those with equally long memories will remember the case of Stephen Neary that we so successfully championed on this blog.
Steven was the 20 year old autistic lad who, Hillingdon Borough Council, when presented with the opportunity – Steven’s father had requested three days respite care whilst he recovered from the flu – contrived to have Steven deprived of his liberty for a full year and incarcerated in their Orwellian ‘Positive Behaviour Unit’.
We chronicled Mark Neary’s long fight to have Steven returned to the home he knew and loved here and here. It culminated in Mr Justice Peter Jackson, in a historic ruling made public because of the ‘extensive social media coverage’ that ‘Hillingdon Borough Council had acted as if it had the right to make decisions about Steven, and a combination of turning a deaf ear and force majeure, it tried to wear down Mr Neary’s resistance stretching its relationship with him almost to breaking point. It relied upon him coming to see things its way, even though, as events have proved, he was right and it was wrong.’
The Judge ordered Steven’s release from the ‘Positive Behaviour Unit’ in time for Christmas 2010. That the mental and financial strain of fighting for Steven’s release did not break Mark Neary’s spirit is a testament to one man’s love for his son. It undoubtedly tired him out.
So a year later, Mark applied to Hillingdon for respite care yet again. He is entitled to it, it is the right of every carer in the country to have some help, paid for by the rest of us, to a break from the onerous duty of full time single parent carer. Hillingdon are in charge of the funds that are allocated for this service in their area. That they do allocate them for many families can be seen HERE. Not for Mr Neary though.
On Saturday night, Mark Neary returned home to a letter from his caring local council informing him that his request for an allocation of £3,900 to pay for 42 nights of a carer staying overnight to ensure that Mark got some beauty sleep – ‘was denied‘.
“It is not our practice to fund additional respite care elsewhere when the service is already provided and paid for by the local authority”.
Where, you might ask, is this ‘respite care provided elsewhere by the local authority”.
None other than the Orwellian ‘Positive Behaviour Unit’ that so traumatised Steven and his Father when he was incarcerated there for a year.
Force majeure, as Mr Justice Jackson so perfectly described it – he may have forced Hillingdon to release Steven, but now they say that unless Mark Neary returns him there, he will have no break from caring for his son.
That is one vicious Borough.
Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...
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And will there be even an iota of the OUTRAGE poured into the web by the usual suspects over the recent Met police autistic boy in swimming pool incident?
Nope.
How nasty and vindictive can you get?
I hope the poor bloke manages to find some help.
These vindictive swinish jobsworths will never admit error.
So how about (if you can bear it after your bad experiences recently) starting a collection for a private carer to relieve Mr. Neary?
I’m sure many will contribute a few pounds each – you’d soon exceed the £3900.
I’d have to think about that one Ed P, no offence to Mark Neary, but as you say, after recent experiences….
Sad but True. Have a care, and don’t get involved, Love. You do not need any more hassle with Banks and things.
Perhaps someone in England could do it.
The Empire Strikes Back.
What Mark Neary did was to challenge the empire that the SS had built. There is no way they could let such a challenge go, they had to show him who was/is in charge.
This is the typical response of the ‘nanny knows best’ outlook foisted on the country by the last labour government and helped along by the lib faction in the present one.
Short of taking them to court again I don’t see any way out. Ed P’s suggestion, while good, has the problem of setting a precedent, which could be used by the SS in the future.
I spoke to Mark earlier this year when writing a couple of pieces on the case for this blog. He told me at the time that Hillingdon wanted to put Steven back in “the Unit” in which he had so unhappily been illegally incarcerated and the very mention of the place made Steven extremely distressed. Understandably so. I’d say this is Hillingdon trying to get one back. Shocking. Judicial Review, anyone?
G the M
Addendum. Mark also told me that the issue of damages remained unresolved and pending a further hearing. So it may well be that there is an avenue to be explored there….
Hillingdon are doing the name of the civil service a great disservice.
I know we shouldn’t be targetting the people in the council who are only doing their job and “following orders” because that would make Mark and Steven’s situation even worse. But they, who for some reason (possibly losing their job so understandable to an extent) do not stand up and do the right thing, should be felt to be ashamed and embarrassed at working at Hillingdon even if the public don’t know their names.
This can be done by other people who do interact with Hillingdon ensuring that the staff know that their actions (or inactions) are being noted by the public and opinions formed in negative terms. It can also be done by other staff at Hillingdon, such as the PR staff who will have an even harder time in the future putting out good news from the council, but only if journalists do their job properly and question Hillingdon properly rather than parrot out press releases.
Hillingdon can either put up walls in a bunker down mentallity or open up and admit their mistakes and move on. The former means that Hillingdon’s name is going to be continued to be dragged through the mud. Do the people of Hillingdon want that or have they given up on their council too?
“…but only if journalists do their job properly …”
We can forget that, then…
Since this case is not family court and can be reported upon, perhaps Christopher Booker in the Telegraph might be interested?
If not Christopher Booker, then Ian Hislop at Private Eye would probably be interested
Thanks again Anna.
For those interested, Lucy Series asked me to write a blog post about some research I and others had done into the state of carers assessments. Each year, every local council gets a carers grant from central government (These average apporx £1.7 million). In 2010/11, Hillingdon conducted 1236 carers assessments. I’ve had four of them and they usually last about 90 minutes. In that year, all those assessments produced just 8 outcomes for carers. I am one of the unfortunate 1228, for whom the experience was completely worthless. That year, Hillingdon received a carers grant of £1,046,000. Where has the money gone?
The linnk to the blog post is here: http://thesmallplaces.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/mark-neary-what-price-carers.html
Where has the money gone? Probably in the pockets of the council CEOs. The money isn’t ring fenced so councils are free to spend it on roads or on the salaries of their executives.
This lack of ring fencing of government money for such care is mentioned in this Daily Mail article – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116568/What-makes-Government-think-learning-disabled-right-live-squalor-weigh-20-stone-teeth-removed.html
“The money isn’t ring fenced…”
*clutches head in despair*
Idiots!
You’re all missing the point. When local neighbourly friendship is replaced with a Communist State ‘welfare system’ what do you expect? You and the father have slept walked into their snare. Wake up plebs before it’s too late.
How right you are. When we vote for a bigger government, we get bigger government.
Or as someone put it, a population of sheep begats a government of wolves.
I blame our parent’s generation who voted Labour after the war so they could get a Welfare State, which promised to take care from the cradle to the grave. Once the slippery slope started………
Did you see the article about the psychologist being investigated for false reports to let the SS take away the babies of young mothers for adoption? not seen much more about it though. How did we all grow up without these people?
@ carol42 “not seen much more about it though.”
Nor are you likely to whilst the mainstream media is controlled by bodies like The CFR and with The Fabians/Jesuits controlling the BBC.
Paedophilia and bestiality are the only scandals that can now be effectively used for blackmail. All the other sexual perversions are now readily accepted by our perverted society.
“How did we all grow up without these people?”
Because if they had tried it on in those days there would have been rioting on the streets and too many social workers in hospital with severe injuries.
Perhaps it also reflects upon the current standard of today’s manhood i.e. girly men.
“A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”
Mahatma Ghandi
Ivan. This overall situation may well have been ‘foisted on us’ by the labor nanny State but it is implemented by the ‘ordinary’ people employed by Hillingdon Council. These are the ones who exhibit the complete lack of Integrity and humanity. It is they who are vicious in their responses. They live next door to someone. They shop in the same supermarkets and are otherwise quite indistinguishable from you and I. Were a ‘Legal’ suit be undertaken it out to be personal. The individuals should be held to account as well as any ‘group’ ie political Party or local council. Following Orders is not a good enough excuse and should not be.
Hillingdon is not the only borough with a vindictive and nasty social services in the capital. One used the argument either accept their nationally known block contract provider who could not provide what was specifically required by the carer or take direct payment to buy ones own preferred provision. Carer unwilling to deal with ‘rotten borough’ finance department who expect you to keep perfect records, when they keep bad ones, so never had the service. Years later situation unchanged for a significant 24/7 carer of 2.
Did complaining to Local Government Ombudsman help? Well hardly when they accept lies from rotten councils and then uphold their actions even when a judge would not. LGO will fight tooth and nail to avoid a Judicial Review of a decision that would show them up on this (reported by the rotten borough to the relevant committee).
Who cares about carer’? Not those vindictive souls in social services , whose own kind reported in a national newspaper in 2009 that social workers were not infrequently vindictive- something those the likes of poor Mr Neary learnt the hard way.
I found that my local council (not Hillingdon) had a much more co-operative attitude whan I asked quite politely of the local government ombudsman whether, since the council was entitled to a copy of every communication from me to the LGO about the case whether I would be entitled to a copy of every letter the council sent to the LGO. The LGO confirmed that this was perfectly fair and reasonable and agreed to let me have copies.
The LGO officers were unnerved in all probability with the extent of evidenced distortions / fabrications/ omissions by the local authority which were given in the complaint.
The LGO work itself turned out to be so poor that it would need to be made public, (LGO are not accountable publicy), to be believed. Others too have noted this issue.
These ex-council wallahs and their council cronies do not like to be shown up. Their defence, as Mark Neary too found, borders on the powerfully indifferent/ callous (LGO) or powerfully vindictive / defensive (Councils).
The LGO did provide the council’s written communication in response to its queries, but as an oversight after the provisional view was sent. Facts were distorted, compared to actual entries as written in the very voluminous client case notes sent to the LGO which the investigator, in an e-mail, indicated had not been fully scrutinised by the investigator. It would take a blind man not to see this distortion, the LGO did not wish to see it even in a very detailed, referenced, response- the LGO turned out to be blind.
Being polite of course is important, but that would make me a lion in sheep’s clothing and I suspect that no more results in justice, until or if you have the media behind you.
I hope the communications you received helped you win your case. If not well maybe you need to be a lion next time- who knows?
I found that the investigating officer assigned to my case was a most pleasant persn when dealing with me, but she was a solicitor and trained in dealing with evidence. I had a file of evidence that did not support the local authority’s view and after one attempt at stonewalling, they found that there was evidence to suggest strongly that the local authority were not being truthful. What sealed the deal was the fact that I had a local authority cassette, my copy of a tape recorded meeting which the authority had written to the LGO to say had not been recorded, and when I played it to the investigating officer, she had a field day. I just got the impression that she did have a bit of an axe to grind with that authority and was pleased to have found someone who had the equally bureacratic mind of those who framed the law to ensure that my file was complete and the file the local authority provided was missing several incriminating documents. It worked and I got my apology.
You have just supported the view that complaining to the LGO amounts to little more than ‘pot luck’. Just a footnote, a solicitor I used reminded me (as I am trained in evidence base in science) the law is not scientific in its approach- so that explains why the law is an ass?!
With view to your solicitor investigator at the LGO. A care agency worker had been a solicitor and last worked in local government. Curious where solicitors from local government experience end up.
A message for mark and Steven.
Personalisation. if you are entitled to respite, get the £3,900 as a direct payment and choose wehere to buy your respite care. There a number of voluntary organisations which will help, you’ll find them locally. i’m not saying they won’t fight this, but you are entitled to a direct payment.
We already get direct payments for Steven’s normal day to day package of support when he is out and about on his community activities. They have said that I cannot use direct payments to fund the respite, for the same reason Anna mentioned above – they have a inhouse facility that must be used. The way Hillingdon audit the direct payment accounts is incredibly high handed – I have to give receipts, time sheets etc for everything. The irony is, they sell their direct payments scheme as “offering greater choice and flexibility”. Our choice is for Steven to return to the place that caused him so much trauma, or nothing at all.
Hi Mark
Your experience with this issue is mirrored in another local authority’s decision in connection with respite service from their block contract with a single provider for this locally. My sympathies to you also in connection with your efforts to deal with direct payments. Carer refused this although offered it because of the high handed attitude well known in other authorities regarding record keeping / audits. Significant carers do not need the sheer extra work involved.
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