There but for the grace of God ......

[themolesmother]

I don’t often do rant but this has really got to me and I need to get it off my chest somehow.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=496235&in_page_id=1879

For those of you who hate the whole link thing, here’s a summary.

Fran Lyon is 22.  She was doing a degree at the University of Edinburgh.  She discovered

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

Damn LJ's just eaten my post. In brief:

- would this be the MSbP that recently had a couple accused of murdering a foster child. A child whom it turned out the hospital had killed by screwing up a dose.

- if even I knew what pyloric stenosis was at 10 as a result of fanatical James Herriot reading, why the hell didn't the HV? Except that they often seem to be oddly ignorant.

- Remembering the Orkney Satanist scandals (IIRC the people involved were barely disciplined), I think that my authoritative diagnosis from a distance and without knowing the people involved (which seems to make me the person whose opinion should carry most weight) is "mass hysteria".

[themolesmother]

Yup, it's that MSbP. The same sydrome of which the "discoverers" - Roy Meadow and David Southall - have both found themselves up before the GMC for questionable practices. There's a big ongoing debate about the whole thing and the cases of Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Trupti Patel are only the tip of the iceberg.

The HV got her comeuppance. I "accidentally" overheard the lovely Ward Sister giving her hell when she called in to see me the day after the operation. The door had been left ever so slightly ajar and they were standing right in front of it .... :-).

The Orkney and Rochdale Satantic Abuse cases were mass hysteria INMHO, too. A lot of people with more weighty opinions have said the same. It angers me a lot that the social workers involved were not disciplined. One of them even got promoted!!!

MM

[snorkackcatcher]

Promotion is normal in cases of appalling offical screwup, after all. It's the cover-up, circle-the-wagons instinct at work -- because not promoting them would practically be to admit liability, and that would never do, would it?

Since this is a Mail on Sunday article, I suspect there may well be more to the story (or less to it, given the tabloid tendency to just make stuff up), but on the face of it it's appalling.

[themolesmother]

I've been following this story since it first caught my eye in August in the Telegraph. The MoS story is a fairly good charting of its progress as I know it. The details have also been consistent across the media which is why I tend to believe Fran's version of things. In my previous job detecting "slants" was part of my brief :-).

I agree with you about the promotion thing. Happened all the time in my old company.

MM

[nineveh_uk]

I found a bit more to the story on one website trying to show how much the MoS had "emphasised" bits to demonise innocent social workers, but it only convinced me that whilst the diagnosing-at-a-distance doctor may in fact have been acting in good faith (because he - and again bear in mind that this was selective quotation - was apparently responding to questions about MSbP that had been put to him, rather than raising them, and said that surely they needed to determine first whether there was actually any evidence that the young woman had ever made symptoms up), the use of his words to justify a removal of the child was thereby even more appalling! Not a good outcome for the website.

[themolesmother]

I think Northumberland Social Services will be left with a bad case of egg-on-face after this. They've put out a press release following the Tonight programme that just reeks of arse covering. Birmingham, the authority actually dealing with Fran's case at the time she left the country, is keeping schtum as they probably see it as the best way of avoiding any flak.

MM