So the meeting went ahead on Friday. I wouldn’t say it was the best meeting I’ve ever been to. There is a long way to go before anything can ever be put right and many promises made. So far without substance but not to say there won’t be substance coming forward.
To start with, the meeting itself was very off-putting. As soon as I arrived, I found myself segregated from the professionals arriving. I was made to wait in a totally different waiting area for one thing, which just reinforced an atmosphere of negativity as each professional that walked in, actually had to pass me to go to the reception.
Baring in mind, I knew none of them. It was intimidating to have them pass and glance my way with the unsmiling dirty looks, that I found myself being given. So quite understandably, I wasn’t too pleased even before the meeting had started.
I also found myself being invited in, to this meeting last AND after the professionals were already seated. So another form of intimidation that took place from the start and to add to it social services had brought a trainee social worker with them, without asking beforehand if that was okay with me.
There were numerous social care staff and health staff all who had never met me before.
The social worker was the first to speak and announced she ‘was allocated’ and went on to try and suggest I hadn’t co-operated with assessments and blamed me for the non-completion. I didn’t sit there and just put up with her suggestion. Nor did I accept her ‘I am allocated lark’ and I told her straight just how rude she was not contacting me before this meeting and not to mention at all, that she was allocated. It wasn’t appropriate for her to just turn up and announce her allocation at a 117 meeting, in front of all. Nor was it appropriate for her to be talking out of turn, on behalf of her department, who had so ignorantly ignored me and all I had to say, for some years, before finally deciding to attend my son’s meeting.
And it was brought up, how her predecessors or previous allocations had ignored. Apparently, her come back was ‘ I am a fresh pair of eyes’. Which is not really going to convince me of her commitment. It’s always going to be a case of proving it and none before have ever managed that, so far.
Given that her department has only recently issued a statement to the Ombudsman, that my son’s seizures are behavioural and not part of his epilepsy and that the Ombudsman used this as ‘fact-finding’, I actually mentioned this to the so-called ‘lead’ department being social care and told them that sort of mindset has to change. Reluctantly, the new consultant verified the incorrectness of that particular statement social care had made… but not on the first call.
He kind of realised if he wasn’t going to be straight, that there was going to be a zero-tolerance as never encountered before. I actually told him if he wasn’t going to be straight with me it would never work and I sincerely meant it.
There will never be a situation of obvious ‘skirting around the surface’ as I will never put with it again and will always insist on the root of the matter, being dealt with. That’s as it should be, but many professionals prefer to defer proper answers.
The point I have made, to the Council regardless of lead department status, they are not entitled ‘to make it up’ as they go along.
Incidentally, social care is only the lead as a result of the unjustified refusal from health to allow my son full continuing health care. I am also aware that social services are always keen to rid themselves of costs and regardless of being at my expense. I have had vast experiences of their filthy tricks, which included, in the past, less than halving my son’s care.
I had to go all the way to the Ombudsman, to put it right and even after doing that I became a victim of the forced demise of my son’s care package…which a recent Ombudsman didn’t put right thanks to the appalling misinformation that was presented to the Ombudsman by The Council…which the Ombudsman chose to use…grossly unfairly. “It was the council who said it’ was the excuse.
It was also mal-administration, not just on behalf of the Council but also the Ombudsman’s office, who aren’t very keen these days to uphold complaints, about the council’s actions which are more than obviously maliciously not upheld, in the first place by the Council themselves…just for the sake of it. The Ombudsman is then allowing this situation to take place… and leaving unpaid carers no recourse other than the lucky few unpaid carers who can afford judicial reviews to be conducted, to overturn wrongful decisions. The rest have to take it on the chin and regardless of the real damage caused.
It’s another type of segregation, to be fair, and that’s very much my opinion and it only serves to breeds total dissatisfaction at the end of it.
But I also realise that I can go beyond being dissatisfied, as that will not be the end result and I have confidence, in that fact. Of course, singular wrongs that have been done do not form, in any respect, the finale.
Not that it should ever do so either.
My mind is actually boggling a much greater and totally oppositional direction than that of just plain dissatisfaction, as I intend not to accept that situation, for either myself or my son.
What the ‘new team’ needs to understand is, what the concept of reasonable adjustments actually means, in the true sense and it’s not just me who will be reinforcing that concept. It’s on the menu…and it’s going to be a repetitive dish, which seems best served cold.
As for the obvious segregation that has already been tried and tested. I have no qualms of working alone and no fear of it either.
