Tag Archives: Telford

‘Toxic’ culture led to dozens of deaths – of mothers and babies – at NHS trust

Mothers and babies died due to a “toxic” culture at an English NHS trust – according to a leaked report on what is being described as the largest maternity scandal in NHS history.

It seems substandard care at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust not only led to deaths but also caused permanent disability for some children.

Clinical errors were compounded by substandard follow-up investigations that failed to ensure lessons were learnt, while bereaved families were treated with “a distinct lack of kindness and respect”.

The report details clinical malpractice over nearly 40 years that led to the deaths of at least 42 babies and three mothers.

More than 50 children also suffered permanent brain damage after being deprived of oxygen during birth, and the investigation also identifed 47 other cases of substandard care.

More than 600 cases of clinical malpractice are now being examined, involving repeated failings by doctors, midwives and hospital bosses.

As hundreds of cases have yet to be checked, the list of casualties is likely to grow.

The leaked report identifies:

  • A long-term lack of informed consent for mothers choosing to deliver their babies in midwifery-led units – where risks can be higher if problems occur – which “continues to the present day”
  • A long-term lack of transparency, honesty and communication with families when things go wrong. This supported a culture that was “disrespectful” to families who had been “damaged” as a result
  • Failure to recognise serious incidents. Many families who had undergone horrific experiences were told they were the only ones and lessons would be learnt. The report said: “It is clear this is not correct”
  • A long-term failure to involve families in investigations that were often poor and described as “extremely brief” and “overly defensive of staff”
  • A lack of kindness and respect to parents and families with multiple examples of deceased babies given the wrong names in writing or referred to as “it”
  • Not sharing learning, meaning “repeated mistakes that are often similar from case to case”. Failure to learn was present from the earliest case of a neonatal death in 1979 to cases occurring at the end of 2017
  • A lack of support for families who have “experienced significant loss and tragedy”
  • A long-standing culture at the trust “that is toxic to improvement effort”

The new report is not the result of action by the NHS or the government, though.

It seems the scandal would have remained secret if not for the actions of a family the trust had mistreated.

The Stanton-Davies family had lost a baby daughter in 2009 after midwives failed to monitor her condition – among myriad other failures.

They had to fight for an inquest. Once it proved their daughter’s fate had been avoidable, the family challenged the NHS to re-examine its investigation of the circumstances of the child’s death.

That review revealed systemic failings which enabled the family, with the parents of a second baby, to persuade then-Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to order an investigation in 2017.

The scale of this scandal is huge – and can only increase.

At this point, This Writer can only echo the words of mother Rhiannon Davies, whose determination to find out why her daughter died has taken matters this far:

“How has this been tolerated for so long? It is horrific.”

Source: NHS Trust’s ‘toxic’ culture led to mother and baby deaths | Central – ITV News

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Former suspended council officer is new Brecon and Radnorshire Brexit Party contender

Desmond Parkinson: The new ‘rainbow man’ of Mid Wales politics.

Well, this is embarrassing – for This Writer and for the Brexit Party.

Nigel Farage’s company-posing-as-a-political party has been threatening to stand a candidate in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election – but when it did, so few people noticed that I got the wrong end of the stick and wrote a story about something involving him that happened 13 years ago, by mistake.

The genuinely amusing aspect of this is that nobody noticed. I only discovered the mistake when my source contacted me at around 2.30am to tell me they thought I’d got the timeline muddled up.

(I must, of course, take this opportunity to sincerely apologise for the mix-up, which was due to me being sent background information about the gentleman in question by my source, without any links to the announcement.)

So the story is that the Brexit Party’s candidate for Brecon and Radnorshire is a “rainbow” man who has flitted between hard right-wing parties after quitting a council job from which he had been suspended.

Desmond Parkinson is a former police chief superintendent and former national assistant secretary of the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales. While in these roles, it seems he did score some notable achievements – it is said that he was responsible for the creation of the Sex Offenders Register and also championed a successful campaign to ban handguns following the Dunblane tragedy in 1996.

And he was said to have fought to overturn the double jeopardy law, thereby enabling the convictions of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence. One wonders what he thinks of Marc Wadsworth, the anti-racism activist who campaigned for justice for the Lawrence family but was subsequently and falsely accused of anti-Semitism by the Labour Party.

He was employed by Telford and Wrekin Council as a senior licensing officer in 2004 but was suspended from that position in 2006. Neither the council nor Mr Parkinson himself would comment on the reasons for his suspension, according to the Shropshire Star.

He resigned as a council officer the following year, it seems, and I have been able to find no further information about that matter.

He next appeared six years later when – in 2012 – he stood as Conservative candidate to be the West Mercia Police and Crime Commissioner, losing to Independent Bill Longmore.

Then – in 2016 – he sought election as the UKIP candidate to be Dyfed-Powys Police and Crime Commissioner, losing to Plaid Cymru’s Dafydd Llewelyn. It seems he also campaigned as a UKIP candidate for election to the Welsh Assembly at the same time.

The following year, he switched parties to become a Conservative candidate for a Welshpool Town Council seat in 2017.

Now he has switched loyalties again – to the Brexit Party.

Can you really trust someone who changes his allegiance with the wind? Someone who was suspended from a position of responsibility with a local authority for reasons unknown, and quit before it was possible for the public to find out what those reasons were?

According to the BBC, Mr Parkinson said the by-election was a “matter of integrity” and people had been “let down” by the Conservatives.

Fine words. A man who forged expenses claims (Chris Davies – who was re-selected as Tory candidate against all reason) being criticised by one who left his licensing job under a cloud – and both have been members of the Conservative Party, which tends to indicate that that organisation will let anybody in!

And what does it say about the Brexit Party when it takes in Tory cast-offs?

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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