Citation
Penhale, B. and Flynn, M. (2015), "Editorial", The Journal of Adult Protection, Vol. 17 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAP-06-2015-0015
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: The Journal of Adult Protection, Volume 17, Issue 4.
Bridget Penhale and Margaret Flynn
The “black-box” confirmed that on 24 March the co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings flight 9525 accelerated the plane as he descended into the Alps killing all 150 people on board. Black-boxes have two components: flight data recording and a cockpit voice recorder. As Archie Bland[1] noted, the cause of the accident was appallingly simple […] the sounds tell the whole story […] you can hear the commanding pilot ask for access to the cockpit several times. He identifies himself but the co-pilot does not answer. The knocking becomes more insistent, and louder, increasingly anxious messages from air traffic control go unanswered. Alarms from the cabin are audible through the reinforced door, as are the increasingly frantic efforts to break it down, and then the screams of the passengers outside. One other sound persists: the breath of Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot, steady and controlled until the end.
There are few equivalents to black-boxes in learning after an event. Certainly, the former judge who conducted the inquiry into the Bradford City stadium's fire disaster of May 1985 could have done with one. Martin Fletcher's (2015) book about the tragedy which killed 56 people, including his brother, father, uncle and grandfather poses a critical question: why was it not made known to Inquiry Judge Oliver Popplewell that the inferno of May 1985 was the ninth major fire at business premises associated with the Chairman Stafford Heginbotham? Over a period of 18 years Mr Heginbotham was connected to other fires at business premises for which insurance payouts were received amounting to £27m in today's terms. It turns out that the late Mr Heginbotham's nickname locally was “central heating”[2]. The bleak saga brings to mind the 26 years of campaigning of Hillsborough families in seeking a truthful account of how and why their relatives died. The Warrington Inquest heard that David Duckenfield, the chief superintendent in command of the FA Cup semi-final in April 1989, admitted that he was inexperienced, that he should not have been in charge of the match and that his decision making was the direct cause of the deaths of 96 people. Critically, he admitted that he had lied and he apologised to the families[3].
So before we leap to a reflection on the human condition, here is a lesson: victims of an intention to deceive rarely accept that there is any justification for the lie told to them. There are two associated lessons: cover-ups and re-interpretations backfire, postpone and inhibit justice; and nicknames and rumours, just occasionally, contain truths, most particularly when they are associated with old secrets.
The Care Act 2014 was enacted in April; just seven years after the Law Commission reviewed the mosaic of statutes governing social care. Think promoting well-being (defining this during sustained austerity should keep us all busy), the provision of advice and information, preventing, reducing or delaying the need for intensive support and care, the development of the local care market, promoting integrated services, meeting the needs of family carers and protecting adults from neglect and abuse. Necessarily there is a heady agenda for adult protection/safeguarding including a statutory requirement for Safeguarding Adults Boards and new expectations concerning self-neglect, for example.
It is only now that the Vatican has undertaken to open its files on Argentina's military junta[4]. Lita Boitano, the 83-year-old mother of two “disappeared” sons met with Pope Francis in April to request access to the Vatican's archive. Between 1976 and 1983, 20,000 people were “disappeared” by the Argentinian authorities and the Vatican's then ambassador to Buenos Aires, Monsignor Pio Laghi, met regularly with the military chiefs and socialised with them. His office kept files on the “disappeared” because their families turned to him and the church for help.
The churches' moral monopoly continues to get a kicking. The former leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, is to retain his title but play no further part in the life of the church[5]. In his belated resignation Cardinal O'Brien repeated his apology of 2013, that is, there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me. For that I am deeply sorry . More apologies are anticipated from the Catholic Church since Father Tony McSweeney was sentenced to three years at Southwark Crown Court for abusing a boy at a children's home[6]. There are wretched parallels with the claim of former police officers who investigated sex abuse allegations against Cyril Smith who believe that he was protected by friends misappropriating state power[7]. Thus far, neither those describing assaults in a BBC Newsnight report aired in March, nor even Simon Danczuk's book, Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith has delivered what it is that the former residents of Cambridge House Care Home and Knowl View are seeking.
The apology of the Methodist Church stands out[8]. The church's general secretary, the Reverend Doctor Martyn Atkins, apologised for the grief and shame arising from the church's response to complaints and allegations dating back to the 1950s. The law firm representing some of the victims welcomed the church's three-year review and apology.
A senior A&E nurse was jailed for 18 years for raping two patients who were unconscious[9]. Andrew Hutchinson's behaviour was not confined to the John Radcliffe Hospital where he worked, but also occurred while volunteering in the medical tent of a music festival. His capture after filming young girls at a leisure centre led to a search of his phone and computer equipment. Significantly, the victims were unaware of what had happened to them until detectives traced them. Not all of his victims have yet been identified and traced. While necessarily the hospital is reviewing its procedures to consider if more could have been done to stop this nurse, it is striking that only he possessed the evidence of his crimes.
Also in April, 800 people drowned in the Mediterranean's worst contemporary shipwreck. Deaths attributable to dangerous overcrowding and barely seaworthy vessels do not deter people from attempting the crossing from north Africa. The United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, has brought a welcome halt to the verbiage of Katie Hopkins via The Sun and in particular her description of fleeing migrants as “cockroaches”. The noun has a track record in anti-foreigner abuse: it was used by the Nazis as well as those responsible for the genocide in Rwanda. The High Commissioner noted that This vicious verbal assault on migrants and asylum seekers in the UK tabloid press has continued unchallenged under the law for far too long.
It's with mixed gratitude that the fog of scripted soundbites, the trashing of opponents and double-speak of the election race are over. Just when we thought headway had been made, there is a new Conservative government and a keen interest in scrapping the Human Rights Act 1998 for a British Bill of Rights. That way, we won't have to listen to foreign judges and we might return to the heady and blissful days of the Citizens Charter. A particular favourite of those times was the traffic cones hotline much loved and lamented by comedians.
Did you hear the one about the unicyclist who was struck by a double decker bus in Walthamstow in London?[10] The bus driver was unable to move the bus and more than 50 people, including diners from a nearby Pizza Express plus staff at a launderette and an estate agents managed to move the bus off him so that he could be rescued. A stunning and humanitarian response, which adds hope to our future.
In this issue of the journal there are four papers that between them cover many different aspects of safeguarding. In the first paper of this issue, Hutchison and Stenfert Kroese discuss findings from a systematic review of the possible causes of abuse and neglect in residential care for adults. Results from the review indicate that research in this area has used a diverse range of methods to explore abuse and/or neglect in the context of residential services for adults with learning disabilities and older adults. The possible causal and risk factors identified from the review were divided into those that work at a cultural or organisational/environmental level and those that operate at an individual or interpersonal level. The paper provides a helpful synthesis of the empirical data on causal and risk factors linked to the abuse and neglect of adults in care, which may contribute to the development of further research and service improvement in this area.
This is followed by a thought-provoking paper by Mackay and Godwin that explores convictions in Scotland relating to ill-treatment and neglect. The paper explores the perceived low number of Scottish criminal convictions in cases of ill-treatment or wilful neglect of adults in situations where the victims experienced mental disorder, and/or incapacity. Human rights and anti-discrimination legislation are considered to try and determine whether victims gain equality of access to justice through the charging and conviction of those who commit these offences. However, although the legal framework appears to promote equality of access to justice, little is known about how it is working in practice and this paper provides useful exploration of the issues relating to such convictions (and the apparent lack of them).
The following contribution, from Madoc-Jones and colleagues considers the issue of Victim Services in England and Wales and discusses issues relating to the possible development of support services in future, following the transfer of responsibility for funding of Victim Services local Police and Crime Commissioners in October 2014. The paper is based on findings from interviews held with a number of individuals who work with victims of crime in one area of the country. The final paper of this issue is provided by Emma Stevens and reports the findings of a review that was undertaken concerning the issue of leadership and its role (actual and potential) in adult safeguarding within healthcare organisations. Aspects of leadership that were identified within the review included organisational culture, implementation of policies, procedures and frameworks, and reinforcing strong values and ethics related to empowering individuals and delivering person-centred care. Through a meta-synthesis of findings from the review, a framework for a leadership model emerged, with plans for this to be tested further.
We hope that you will find this issue of the journal both interesting and useful and that those of you working in an English context are continuing to meet the requirements of the Care Act implementation without these being too troublesome for you. Those of us who are not in such a context continue to watch developments with interest and hope that some experiences of the developments that are occurring will be reflected in future submissions to the journal. And for those of you in other countries and jurisdictions we welcome your submissions too, of course!
Notes
2. www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/27/bradford-fire-inquiry-oliver-popplewell
3. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31928476
4. www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/29/pope-francis-argentina-orders-vatican-open-files-dictatorship
5. www.catholicherald.co.uk/tag/cardinal-keith-obrien/
6. http://caaccew.blogspot.co.uk/
7. http://news.sky.com/story/1446722/ex-officer-smith-would-have-named-others
8. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32909444
9. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-32486188
10. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/29/unicyclist-in-hospital-after-collision-with-bus-in-london
Reference
Fletcher, M. (2015), Fifty-Six: The Story of the Bradford Fire, Bloomsbury Sport, London