Tag Archives: HSE

childcareYou may recall the investigation in April by the Children’s Ombudsman into the HSE’s neglect of a 10-year-old rape victim, Maggie.

Philip Boucher-Hayes writes:

Emma is eleven now, her parents are estranged and she would frequently return to her mum from overnight visits to her father with unexplained rashes, and disturbed/withdrawn behaviour.

Emma made a disclosure of abuse to her mother, she made the same disclosure to her GP, her teacher and the gardaí. This little girl never once changed her story.

As you know the DPP seldom pursues  prosecutions in this area largely because the evidence and testimony of young children is viewed as unreliable. But in Emma’s case the DPP decided to prosecute.

….Just as in Maggie’s case [see link below], for whatever reason some officials in the HSE decided that Emma’s mother was a bigger problem than this apparent open and shut case of child abuse.  They recommended against Garda advice that the father be allowed to resume access visits.

Emma’s mum was forced to go through the agony of sending her children, she says against their will, to stay overnight with their father … from where she would get text messages that would break the heart of any parent. This is a transcript of my interview with her.

Mother: “So the girls had a phone when the first went to stay with him. And they’d text me “I’m crying. I don’t want to be here”. They just didn’t want to go down to him and I had to force them to go down because I was told if I didn’t send them I’d be arrested. And that would be exactly what he would want, me being arrested and being found not to be a fit mother.”

PBH:“Was Emma abused again?”

Mother:“Yes she was. On two occasions that I know of…. that I have seen the physical manifestations of the abuse again, yes. One of them she had to have a rape examination in the children’s hospital. She had an anal infection, and they found pubic hair.”

PBH:“So there was a wealth of forensic and medical evidence supporting claims of abuse for the hospital to pass on to the HSE? Did they act on it?”

Mother: No they didn’t. They had a meeting and they decided that they weren’t going to act on it because it had come from me.

PBH:“It was medical evidence of abuse.”

Mother:“My opinion on it is that they have made a grave grave mistake, and I’ve told them so. I said that I would hold them responsible, and I will until I get an apology for Emma.”

PBH:In your opinion did they directly expose Emma to the risk of being raped?

Mother: “Yes … Yes … I am absolutely sure that they did. They had a wealth of people that they could contact. They never did. They spoke to the wrong teacher in her school. I alerted them to that. They still didn’t care. I wrote into them all the times they were making a mistake.”
“But every time I did the risk was that I would have them taken off me, and I was afraid. I had to way up the fact that if I did they’d be given to him …. or I could just keep my mouth shut … and I’ve had to do that. …. It’s absolutely eating me.

 

Emma’s Story (Philip Boucher-Hayes)

Previously : The Case of Maggie

6/10/2010. HSE seasonal flu Jabs Injections Programmes

Schools are “fed up” with the level of HSE immunisations they have to facilitate, according to the Executive’s Schools Immunisation Implementation Group.

The minutes of a meeting held by the group was released to Medical Independent (MI) under the Freedom of Information Act said that many schools are also unhappy with HSE requests for data on students. According to the minutes, dated 14 December, not all schools gave out MMR forms to students. It added that there was confusion in schools regarding which classes were to be given MMR consent forms, resulting in some classes not receiving the documents. “There is no way to figure out who got forms from some schools due to poor communication,” the minutes read. “Schools are fed up with intrusion by HSE immunisations and communication is breaking.”

But sure we’re all going to end up dead anyway, as the man said.

Schools ‘fed up’ with immunisation teams (James Fogarty, Medical Independent)

(Photocall Ireland)

hse

Philip Boucher-Hayes reported to Mary Wilson on RTÉ’s Drivetime last evening about an investigation by the Children’s Ombudsman into the HSE’s neglect of a 10-year-old rape victim, Maggie*.

Maggie was accompanied by her mother when she told Gardaí she had been raped in 2006. The Gardaí referred her to the HSE but they did not provide her with follow-up services for several weeks. Within that time she was raped by the same man again. When Maggie finally did speak to the HSE, she felt the HSE didn’t believe her, prompting her to attempt suicide.

The following is a transcript of last night’s clip. The italicised sections are from pre-recorded interviews Boucher-Hayes held with Maggie, played during the Drivetime discussion.

At the very end of the broadcast, Boucher-Hayes mentioned that it’s his understanding 40 pages were removed from the report into the girl’s case, at the behest of the HSE.

Mary Wilson: “It’s a lengthy report, Philip that you’ve had sight of. Will you give it to us in a nutshell?”

Philip Boucher-Hayes: “Mary, the HSE did not provide support services to an alleged rape victim because of a dispute with her mother. And the girl subsequently made several attempts on her life. She was also separately deemed not to be at risk from further abuse after she had reported the crimes against her when in fact she says that she was raped and threatened at knifepoint, just a few weeks after she made the report, to try and silence her.”

Wilson: “Now so that you can give us as much detail as you can about the girl, we’ll call her Maggie. And she says she was raped by a neighbour.

Boucher-Hayes: “And she revealed the rape to her mother at the end of 2006, who went with her to report it to the guards. She was referred to the HSE by the Gardaí but there was no follow-up, no services, social workers assigned or psychologists, nothing happened for several weeks until the girl’s mother actually went to the trouble of getting her solicitor to prompt the HSE into action. And from this point on, the Ombudsman’s report confirms a catalogue of errors that we have actually previously reported on this programme. First off, Maggie did not want to be medically examined by a man, which is understandable in the circumstances but the HSE was unable to find a suitably-qualified female specialist to carry out the examination. This was a national staffing problem, say the HSE, not one peculiar to Maggie’s individual case. But the Ombudsman’s report concludes and I’m quoting now:’The HSE actions in arranging medical examinations show significant and unexplained absence of time.”

Wilson: “And what was the dispute between the HSE and the girls mother?”

Boucher-Hayes: “The HSE wanted to interview Maggie on her own which in abuse cases is entirely understandable. But Maggie wanted to be with her mother. Maggie’s mother Sarah said that she was just representing her child’s concerns. Maggie had been through the trauma of relaying her abuse to the gardaí several times. Her first encounter with the HSE was hostile and unbelieving of her so she said she didn’t want to go back to them alone. Her mother communicated that and asked to be present, saying that she would just be expressing her child’s wishes for the HSE so that in effect the mother was blocking access to Maggie, because they wanted to interview her on her own. But remember Maggie was 11 years old at this time. Now I asked her when I met her first last year, why she wasn’t able to see the HSE on her own:

Maggie: ‘They, they did want to talk to me if I went in by myself. But I wouldn’t talk without my mum so after that they just didn’t want to talk to me at all.”

Boucher-Hayes: ‘Why were you not able, do you think, to not talk to them by yourself?’

Maggie: ‘I just didn’t feel comfortable talking to someone unless mum was there and there’d be some things that I didn’t want to say, because I didn’t want to go back over it, so I’d ask mum to say it for me. And then other times I would have talked, but when I was there by myself, I just wasn’t comfortable at all. In general, I was really shy anyways when it came to people I didn’t know, so I just wanted mum there, so I would be comfortable talking to them.”

Boucher-Hayes: “You were ten years old, so, fair enough on one level?”

Maggie: “It made it a lot worse because it was really hard to talk about it and go back over it anyways. Then, when, in turned out they didn’t believe me then, I felt like I was wasting my time telling people and I wished that I hadn’t told anyone in the start and just like, tried to forget about it and just let it continue on that I hadn’t told anyone because they didn’t believe me.”

Boucher-Hayes: “You would rather that the abuse would have continued then rather go through not being believed?”

Maggie: “Yeah. I would. Because it was. Because at first I didn’t know what was wrong, so I wasn’t really affecting me. And then when I knew it was wrong and was told that it could be stopped and I could get help, I was happy that that could happen. But then when it turned out they didn’t believe me and nothing was going to happen about it then it felt like I had gone through all of that for nothing.”

Boucher-Hayes: “And the ridiculous thing about this is that the HSE policy actually allows for introductory getting-to-know-you interviews with the parent present so it’s clear they could have had meetings with Sarah* present until the social worker, or psychologist gained her trust but that wasn’t what the HSE opted for in this case. And this is something that the Children’s Ombudsman takes them to task over in this report I’ve had sight of. Communication difficulties, they say, with the child’s parents were exasperated by administrative inefficiency and delay on the part of the HSE. The Ombudsman’s office met with Maggie and it concluded it’s clear that she feels her views were not respected by the HSE and that her voice was ignored. And the Ombudsman blames the HSE for not retaining direct knowledge of the child’s basic wishes and concludes, quote, unquote here: ‘The delay had a direct, adverse affect on the child by depriving the child of social work.”

Wilson: “So what impact has all of this, this lack of support services, had on Maggie herself?”

Boucher-Hayes: “Hard to tell what the absence of services did to her but this much I can relate as a fact. Not long after she reported the rape to the gardaí and before anybody assessed her mental health, she made an attempt to end her life and it was to be the first of quite a few such attempts.”

Maggie: ‘It hurt a lot and it made me very down and very low. And I just wanted everything to go cause I didn’t think I was going to get anywhere and because no-one believed me so I got really upset.”

Boucher-Hayes: “How low did you get?”

Maggie: “To a stage where I just wanted everything to go, I wanted to end everything, I wanted to end my life.”

Boucher-Hayes: “You couldn’t get out of bed, you just wanted to pull the duvet over your head, ‘go away world’?”

Maggie: “Yeah. Very much like that.”

Boucher-Hayes: “And when you say that you wanted your life to end, was it that you wanted somebody to come in and do something dramatic to help you or do you really think that you just did not want to go on living?”

Maggie: “Well sometimes I basically wanted it all to go away, to be dead, didn’t want anything anymore, I wanted my life ended. But then other times, it would have been a cry for help, to get people to act more, on what was going on, that I actually was really struggling.”

Boucher-Hayes: “And that’s why you started hurting yourself?”

Maggie: “Yeah.”

Boucher-Hayes: “What did you do?”

Maggie: “I started by cutting my wrists.”

Boucher-Hayes: “Was that a serious attempt of your life, or again, do you think that you were looking for somebody to come in and try and take charge and sort out your problems?”

Maggie: “Looking back on it now, I think I was looking for somebody to come in and help me and see that I actually was struggling and needed help.”

Wilson: “You said at the outset, Philip, that she was deemed not to be at risk from any further abuse. She claims though she was raped again after reporting the crime.”

Boucher-Hayes: “And there are questions here, very serious questions for the gardaí to answer, not just the HSE, and I understand the Garda Ombudsman is looking into the investigation of her case too. That report is expected in the coming months, but the HSE told the Children’s Ombudsman’s office, by way of explaining, or excusing its lack of action that there would usually be no allocation of a social worker on an ongoing basis if there was no ongoing risk that’s apparent to them. But from Maggie’s account it would appear that there was a clear risk because..for three weeks after she first reported her abuse, she didn’t leave the house and the first day that she did leave the house to go over to a friend’s, her abuser, she says, was waiting for her. He dragged her to his house, she says, that he raped her again and threatened to keep her silent, threatened her that she should keep silent at knifepoint. Now, obviously, these are issues for the gardaí and the DPP to answer, but if the HSE had been listening properly, if it had in fact engaged with her, at all, by that point, which they hadn’t, it would have understood clearly that she was reporting that there was an ongoing risk to her safety.”

Wilson: “Has she ever received the psychological or social work services that she needed?”

Boucher-Hayes: “Well, solicitors for the child contacted the HSE six months after she had first reported her allegations, in an attempt to try and get the HSE to engage directly for the child’s benefit. The Ombudsman notes, again, a direct quote from this report: ‘It does not appear that the HSE substantively responded to that request at that time’. In other words, what the HSE did was they just ignored this letter from the child’s solicitor saying ‘please, engage with her for her benefit’.The report also details how, in the ongoing catalogue of neglect that Maggie did eventually get to meet with a social worker, what she reported back, the substance of that meeting, with the social worker, was that she and her mother should stop complaining about everything that had happened to them, before that point, which, if it is true, if this is what the social worker did say to her during the course of that meeting, it is ethically very, very dubious to say in the least. And, it would, yet again, be further neglect of a teenage girl who was at that point in time suicidal. She made several more attempts on her life. That though, to her mind, talking to Maggie, isn’t as grave an insult as just not being believed.

Maggie: “When we got talking about it, she literally was saying that she didn’t believe me but didn’t actually say it, that she was questioning me again and making me think ‘wait, did this actually happen?’ like ‘am I actually, maybe I’m over thinking things’. She got me starting to nearly go with what she was saying.”

Boucher-Hayes: “There is no doubt in your mind though, you were raped by this man and on a number of occasions?”

Maggie: “Yeah, I was. No doubt in my mind.”

Boucher-Hayes: “How does it feel to say that?”

Maggie: “It’s weird to finally admit it out loud and it does hurt a bit when I talk about it but it’s better to talk about it. I realise now it’s better to talk about it then keep it in. I suppose now I want to actually try and get everything sorted and try and talk by myself and, because I’ve gotten older and looking into it more, I’ve realised maybe I should just talk by myself and be able to get over it instead of just bottling it all up.”

Wilson: “Philip, what does the HSE have to say about all of this?”

Boucher-Hayes: “Nothing. Obviously we wanted to ask them questions specifically about the areas of neglect, of which Maggie suffered but also I wanted to ask them why was it that it would, that I understand that 40 pages of this report were removed at the instigation of the HSE before the Ombudsman had completed the report. It may be that these are issues that the HSE feels had been answered and don’t need to be included in the report but, in the interests of completeness, it would be interesting to know what it was that those pages dealt with.”

Listen here (Go to 52.40)

Previously: Of the 36 Who Died In Care

Electronic data held by the Health Service Executive is not adequately secure and could be at risk of theft or misuse, an external audit has found.

The audit which was carried out by external consultants and completed in March 2012, found the organisation’s overall information and communications technology (ICT) security framework was “inadequate”.

It said the absence of an effective security framework across the organisation meant the HSE, its staff and the data held by it “may not be adequately protected from attack, compromise, theft or misuse”.

The finding was one of 14 high-level risks and medium-level weaknesses identified across the HSE’s ICT security framework at a national and regional level by Mazars.

The audit report also found one in every five laptops on the HSE South East’s asset register was unencrypted at the time of the audit. Although all laptops are required to be encrypted under HSE policy, it found 292 of the 1,475 laptops in the region appeared to be unencrypted.

Well that’s good to know.

Electronic data held by HSE not secure, audit finds (Pamela Duncan, Martin Wall, Irish Times)

(Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

The Government was subjected to an intense lobbying campaign by the pharmaceutical industry earlier this year over a HSE decision not to approve for payment new drugs and medicine.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny was warned the decision could have implications for 25,000 jobs and future investment.
Early this year, the HSE decided not to reimburse new drugs that had passed all regulatory stages and were becoming available for use in patients. They included drugs for treating skin cancer and cost up to €85,000.
In correspondence with Mr Kenny, up to 20 multinational drug firms claimed that the HSE move was portraying Ireland negatively and could have “unintended consequences” for Ireland.

“Unintended consequences”

Ah sure that’s just the drugs talking.

Major drug companies lobbied Kenny over HSE scheme (Martin Wall, Irish Times)

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The husband of Savita Halappanavar is considering lodging a complaint to the Ombudsman to assert his ownership of his wife’s medical notes, his solicitor has said.

Gerard O’Donnell said he had taken instructions from Praveen Halappanavar to seek direction from the Ombudsman on whether he or Galway University Hospital owns her medical records.

Mr Halappanavar has objected to the use of his wife’s notes in a HSE inquiry into her death. He has said he has no faith in a HSE-run inquiry and does not want her notes used in it.

Mr O’Donnell had asked that the hospital, where Ms Halappanavar died last month, hand over the original medical notes. However, the HSE has said it owns them.

Husband may lodge complaint with Ombudsman (Kitty Holland, Paul Cullen, Irish Times)

(Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

TWO LOCATIONS in Minister for Health James Reilly’s north Dublin constituency were added to a list of places chosen for primary care centres after the final list drawn up by the HSE was passed to his department, The Irish Times has learned.

Swords and Balbriggan were among five locations added to the priority list for building new primary care centres announced by the Minister last July. Neither featured in lists of the top 30 locations which the HSE recommended should receive priority in the development of new centres by public-private partnerships, documents obtained under freedom of information show.

The decision to change the list was challenged by Minister of State for Primary Care Róisín Shortall, who told Dr Reilly she found it “hard to understand”.

Have you been in politics long, Róisín?

Two sites in Reilly’s constituency added to primary care centre list (Paul Cullen/Martin Wall, Irish Times)

(Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland)

THE PROMISED provision of free GP care for 60,000 people with long-term illnesses is likely to be delayed by at least a year because of legal issues.

Successive deadlines for implementing one of the key promises in the Fine Gael/Labour programme for government, the rolling out of free GP care, have been missed.

The first phase of this process would have seen free primary care extended to people with long-term illnesses such as diabetes and epilepsy.

However, complex issues that have arisen during the drafting of the primary legislation required for this change have caused significant delays, according to an informed source. In the meantime, most of the €15 million allocated for this purpose in 2012 has been used to offset the HSE’s deficit.

Legal issues delay free GP care for long-term ill (Paul Cullen, Irish Times)

(Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

THE DEPARTMENT of Health and drug manufacturers are close to a deal that could cut the State’s drugs bill by up to €400 million.

Yay!

Although the deal will save the HSE significant sums of money, its impact for consumers will be limited. This is because the prices of most generic drugs, which can range up to 94 per cent of those of their branded equivalents, are not affected.
The mark-up charged by pharmacists to private patients also remains unaffected. The prices Irish consumers pay for their medicines are among the highest in the world.

Oh.

Why trust one drug and not the other? That’s politics, innit?

State’s drug bill could fall by up to €400m under new deal (Paul Cullen, Irish Times)

Hysterical, Terry-Prone-trained James Reilly back in the day.

Reeling in the broken promises

“…the day that we don’t keep that promise, the day that we let you down, the day when we let your local services go when there’s nothing to replace it, that’s the day I’ll walk away, I’ll retire.”

Lol.

Missing Minister: €130m Cuts But No Answers From Reilly ( Fiach Kelly, Irish Independent)

Thanks Mr Worf