The Lib Dem Clifton Thicky duo of Babs “Call me ma’m” Janke and her even more ridiculous Cabinet Member for Care and Neighbourhoods, Bev Knott, have truly excelled themselves with this one.
Can it only be a month ago that this pair of thundering plonkers, their feet barely under the cabinet table, were stood outside their private partner, Mimosa Healthcare’s (Blogger passim), zero-rated Sunnymead Manor Care Home in Southmead reading from a script prepared for them by a madly spinning under-fire social services senior management team in a state of advanced panic?
Indeed it was. And let’s remind ourselves what Bev told the Evening Cancer:
We spoke to quite a number of residents and they seem contented enough
Contented enough? So that’s all right then. Er, no it’s bloody not actually.
Julie Harding reported in yesterday’s Cancer, “A nurse who worked at a Bristol care home has been accused of failing to properly look after patients in her care.”
And guess what? The care home in question is of course Sunnymead Manor.
I wonder, did Babs ‘n’ Bev’s council officers remember to tell them about Sunnymead’s very own “Angel of Death” before the pair blundered along to the home on their ill-advised PR mission last month?
And did the pair bother to do any basic research and checks for themselves before rushing in to support at any cost their business friends Mimosa? Did they even get a brief let alone master it before they started shooting their mouths off?
Because rest assured, the Cancer’s report on Sunnymead’s now missing “Angel of Death” is not the worst of it by far.
A major court case is now in the offing over events at Sunnymead that has the potential to expose a stomach churning social services scandal every bit as harrowing in its own way as Haringey’s Baby P.
Forget the rumours of flea infestations and the relatively low-level – albeit utterly disgraceful – abuse allegations that have been swirling around Mimosa’s other Bristol home, Kingsmead Lodge at Avonmouth. Mimosa and Bristol City Council are about to enter a different league entirely.
So isn’t it a shame nobody at social services thought to share any of this with the council leader and her close colleague before they mouthed off isn’t it?
And it’s even more of a shame, as our political leaders and the people directly responsible for our old people’s welfare, that Babs ‘n’ Bev don’t seem to possess the basic critical skills to question what they’re being told by a bunch of arse-covering social service managers, even when there’s bucketloads of evidence to suggest they’re talking nonsense.
So do the hapless Lib Dem duo know what’s happened at Sunnymead? After all, Babs told us she’s “taking a personal interest in the quality of service the council gives” at the home. Does she think that announcing she’s seen a few residents looking “contented enough” at Sunnymead is going to quell the inevitable public outrage that’s coming over this?
Stay tuned because this is going to get very interesting indeed …
Meanwhile over at Mimosa’s Kingsmead Lodge home, events are now moving forward under the watchful eye of the coroner.
A lot of police now appear to have been drafted in to the Lockleaze cop shop specifically to conduct a rather thorough investigation at the home, while Mimosa’s attitude seems to have undergone a remarkable transformation since the coppers started crawling in earnest all over their business.
The young care worker suspended for “whistleblowing” has been quietly reinstated, while the hopelessly inept smear campaign against campaigner Steve Norman – masterminded by Mimosa Operations Director, Mark Butler, and tacitly supported by elements within Bristol City Council Social Services – has been quietly dropped.
(Tacitly supported? More like explicitly supported and assisted in the case of Liz Sutton, a manager in Adult Community Care. She openly passed confidential information provided to her by a whistleblower to their private partner Mimosa; they in turn passed it to their Birmingham-based PR firm who then fired off various releases to the local press using the information. Naturally our piss-weak politicians have done nothing about this revolting piece of shit social services manager, despite all their shiny little moralising confidentiality and whistleblowing policies. But do our politicians have the ability to act? The Green Bristol Blog is currently demonstrating that a bunch of traffic engineers are able to run rings around them. Ed)
The latest reports coming in say the coroner will be looking to have a jury inquest into at least one death at the Kingsmead Lodge, which is likely to be very inconvenient for some of the parties involved.
Keep watching this space on this one too.
Excellent thought provoking item BB. It is a fucking scandal that these vile private sector profiteers are being allowed to exploit the most vulnerable people in our city, and that elected officials and public servants are facilitating it. More power to your elbow in exposing them all.
In the Cancer article it said that the nurse in question was responsible for 34 elderly frail patients – that in itself is an absolute disgrace.
The treatment of frail older people in this country is something we all need to address. Unless you are very wealthy, or you have family who are prepared to devote their time to caring for you, it’s a grim prognosis. And certainly much worse now than thirty years ago, when council run services provided a good basic level of care. Given the fecklessness of my own offspring I am committed to drinking myself into an early grave to avoid the fate of the poor old buggers featured here.