Formal complaint to Care Commission & Dumfries & Galloway Council – Failure of duty of care by J Alexander & named managers

Posted: February 25th, 2010 | Author: DGPPG | Filed under: News

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Friends of Dunmuir Park      Registered Charity  SC017823

22^nd February 2010                                 From the Chair  Mrs M Sproat  Dumfries

Delivered by email to:

Mr G Stevenson  Chief Executive       Dumfries & Galloway Council      Council Headquarters
English Street
Dumfries
DG1 2DD

Copy to  The Care Commission as a formal complaint vs the Service Provider Dumfries & Galloway Council

Dear Sir

Formal complaint – failure of duty of care by J Alexander & his managers

This formal complaint about Dunmuir Park Care Home (DPCH) is from the Friends of Dunmuir Park (FDP) and residents being sent by the Chair to Dumfries & Galloway Council by email as resolved at the meeting of the FDP Charity Trustees and residents on 18^th Feb 2010 at DPCH.

We request that as Chief Executive you promptly, properly and independently investigate this under the Council Complaints procedure.  We say this explicitly because in 2006 our complaints were ignored and not actioned.  Please ensure this complaint is immediately acknowledged with confirmation of how, when and by whom it will be investigated.  We are also complaining to the Care Commission, hence they have copy of this for the detail.

FDP is a registered charity consisting of wholly unpaid volunteers from the local community who have for the past 30 years supported DPCH and residents.  Over that period community donations have been around £70,000.  Unlike other some other D&G ‘charities’ we are truly independent of both the Council and NHS, because we neither solicit nor receive any public funds.  For your information we will be happy to send you our most recent OSCR annual report and accounts as approved 23/4/2009 for the year ending 31 January 2009.

Dumfries & Galloway Council, Care Service Provider SP2003003501, is fully responsible for DPCH as both landlord and care provider, service number: CS2003010864, as registered with the Care Commission.  This formal complaint concerns the personal failure by the Director of Social Work Mr J Alexander and those managers reporting to him namely: Ms H Collington, Mr P McCann and Mr B Needham, all being responsible for the safety, welfare and well being of DPCH residents and respite users, with a statutory duty of care to them.

The complaint is the apparently deliberate failure by the Council and J Alexander as a policy to carry out basic maintenance at DPCH, despite our and the Care Commission repeated requests to do so, whilst giving personal assurances and undertakings that this will be actioned.  This has put residents and staff at risk whilst dangerous dilapidated chairs, some having already collapsed, continue to do so.  After two years it is clear Mr Alexander and his managers on behalf of the Council have both mislead residents, the Care Commission and FDP playing us all for fools.  Note that explicit Care Commission reported concerns have been ignored.

It appears this is either deliberate Council policy to ‘save’ cash short term, or incompetence or both, whilst Mr Alexander has been deliberately misleading and presumably endorsed his subordinates lack of action, no doubt to reduce expenditure at the expense of the most vulnerable in their care.  As the Director he is the most responsible senior manager and statutory officer.  Therefore when he promises action we must expect that his word can be trusted.  After two years it is evident that it cannot and that he is uncaring and untrustworthy.  This is not acceptable behaviour from a public servant holding such high office, or from his subordinates.

At a meeting on 25 Feb 2008 at Woodbank in the presence of Cllr I Blake, Mr Alexander gave an unequivocal undertaking to a FDP Trustee, also the legal representative of a resident, that all the long outstanding basic and protective maintenance at DPCH, for which there is an annual budget, would be actioned.  The building was needlessly being allowed to decay with windows & door woodwork rotting, simply for want of basic painting from the late 1990s

Very shortly after there was a wider meeting with FDP in the Town Hall at Castle Douglas on 28/2/2008, convened by the then FDP Chair Willie Bell at the request of Mr Alexander, who was very robustly challenged by the FDP Secretary, Mrs J Layden, about this lack of maintenance and internal decoration, wilfully neglected since the 1990s.  She also referred to the excessively heavy springs on fire doors.  Once again Mr Alexander unequivocally undertook and promised that such basic maintenance would be sorted out and actioned promptly and we understood that he instructed Ms Collington, Mr McAnn & Mr Needham to do so.  He and they failed to do so.

That was two years ago and the matter was regularly raised since at subsequent Dunmuir Park meetings with Mr Alexander and his managers, when similar reassurances were given.  But nothing was done.  The Care Commission have made adverse comments in their reports, the latest inspection 17 June 2009.  Such was the Inspector’s concern that she wrote as follows:

“The door into the main service building has little paint left on it now and looks shabby and

neglected. The window frames are rotten and without paint and the wood in places is

crumbling. The glass panes in some windows are insecure and mobile and present a risk to the

security of the vulnerable adults who live in the house. Some of the furniture and fittings in the

house need replaced as they are reported to be faulty. One of the residents has complained

about a dining chair falling apart and not being replaced. Bathrooms and kitchen need to be

updated and the paintwork and decoration throughout the home is marked, dirty and dowdy.

The standard of maintenance of the property from which the service is provided is not

acceptable and this has been identified in successive reports for several years.”

Take note that it was only after we, in desperation and frustration, widely circulated that extract, including to the media, that the “risk to security” of the “insecure and mobile” glass, some in the main back door, was fixed with some beading.  A quick simple job costing at most £50, but if painted would never have been a risk for month after month when glass in a main exit door could have easily fallen out and cut a vulnerable adult, or the staff.  This is a fundamental failure of duty of care after 20 months of repeated complaints and false assurances of action.  Mr Alexander and his managers are personally responsible for this situation; yet do not seem to care.  Is this the standard of maintenance at their homes?  We doubt it.

The Care Commission also report on the state of furniture and fittings with complaints from residents also being ignored as “identified in successive reports for several years”.  What needs to be done to get action?  At the FDP meeting last week, also attended by several residents, the care staff struggled to find enough basic dining chairs to sit around the table.  It was reliably reported that over the past two years around a dozen chairs have fallen apart to be replaced with a mix of old second hand gifted cast offs.  Two of those chairs last week that had to be used at the meeting were dangerously damaged and wobbly.  Is this the standard of furniture provided for Members and Officers?  Of course not.

But it is seemingly OK for learning disabled vulnerable adults and the front line care staff to suffer inadequate and dangerously damaged old second hand chairs liable to collapse.

Because this too has been raised repeatedly, including by the Care Commission, we hold Mr Alexander and the named managers personally responsible for failing to ensure proper and immediate replacements and are formally complaining about their dereliction of basic duty of proper care, despite repeated requests.  We note new furniture is readily provided at great expense elsewhere in the Council, where priority is clearly applied.

We believe these basic failures should be disciplinary matters in the light of the wholly foreseeable risks and the obvious failure of the duty of care and the deliberately misleadingly false assurances of action over years.  Mr Alexander, as the highly paid Director brought in post SWIA to provide strategic direction and leadership is personally responsible.

As FDP and on behalf of the residents and staff we now expect immediate action and are asking both you, as Council Chief Executive ultimately responsible and the Care Commission to ensure all necessary action is immediately expedited, without the residents being prejudiced in any way whatsoever in terms of continuing to live in their home, with decent furniture and proper regular maintenance, including basic painting and decorating.

These matters were once again raised robustly at the Dunmuir Park meeting on 10^th February 2010 and yet again noted by Ms Collington, Mr McAnn and Mr Needham, but based on the last 2 years we have zero confidence they or Mr Alexander will actually do anything, apart from uttering more meaningless platitudes and empty cheap talk.

This is now a formal complaint.  It was also resolved by our meeting that these complaints to both you as the Service Provider and the Care Commission also be circulated to Elected Members for their information and hopefully action by them on this occasion to hold Officers properly to account for their failures.  Also it was resolved to copy circulate to the media so that the general public and community can be aware of how the named managers and the Council actually regard and treat the most vulnerable in their care.  It seems that until there is adverse publicity nothing gets done and actioned, which is an unacceptable state of affairs.

We look forward to hearing from you very soon with confirmation of what you are doing and when regarding this complaint and the substantive failures.  Please email a copy of any reply to the Chair.   Thank you.

Yours faithfully,    M Sproat (Mrs)   Chair  Friends of Dunmuir Park

Note for Care Commission.  Attn: Mr Henry Mathias, Mrs Elizabeth Reid and Mrs Karen Fraser

Please action this as a formal complaint to the Care Commission in respect of the failures of the Service Provider and Managers as described in the above and respond to FDP as requested.

By email this letter was delivered to and received by both Dumfries & Galloway Council and the Care Commission having been discussed in detail with Karen Fraser along with the recent history.

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