4 Hours out of my life and what a waste of time. OK, not entirely a waste of time but any gains were coincidental.
I was invited to go along to a meeting at 3pm, the meeting started at 3:50!
The section 2 expires for Zoey at midnight on Tuesday so you’d think the professionals would be in a mad panic to work out what is happening next but, no, not one of them came to the meeting today with any clue what is going to happen next week.
How is this for logic:
They cannot lawfully keep her there as of midnight Tuesday, that’s not possible because there is no section 2. They cannot issue a section 3 without having a game plan on what services to provide, they know this. The services she needs cannot be provided to an adequate level where she is, they know that too. They want her in a LD unit in Kettering except, that is unsuitable because it is all male at the moment and all have challenging behaviour incompatible with Zoey’s best care. Even so, the LD Psychiatrist today said that a bed might be free there in two weeks time! She said it like it was the solution they were looking for until I pointed out that it would be two weeks after they are required to provide somewhere AND, there would still be 3 unsuitable male patients there.
I mean, this isn’t rocket science, do intelligent people lose all common sense?
They kept going away to have their little secret meetings. The final of these was passed on to us by a third party as the two psychiatrists didn’t want to talk to me again. They’ve decided that Zoey needs a section 3 order but that they don’t have anywhere suitable …. at all! They’ve had nearly 4 weeks to come up with somewhere suitable yet now, with less than a week to go, they don’t got anything and having started to look out of county!
On the plus side, me and Anne met Mike, the advocate who has been appointed for Zoey today and we were able to share with him out concerns and he’s putting a safeguarding complaint in. He agreed that what they’re doing there is a form of abuse, most certainly neglect.
The experts still can’t seem to agree whether or not Zoey lacks capacity, not legally. They say that clearly she isn’t able to make judgements on her own care but they’re not sure this constitutes legal lack of capacity! In the meantime, whilst they ponder this, Zoey is getting medication for her UTI. On the subject of the UTI, the nurse in the ward says she’s only had it since yesterday! I had nurses with years of experience telling me they suspected an UTI when she was at Northampton General Hospital! For some reason, Berrywood Hospital have decided to overlook the query on the UTI which would have been in her notes and declare it’s all somewhat new so not desperately urgent. Apparently, UTI’s can have all sort of behavioural consequences too but, no matter, they’re still not sure they can force medication so we’ll let that go then!
I am very strongly considering adapting the house here to have her home again. I am running out of alternate options!