Dad, determined to be "useful" - on one of his last visits to Bedlam
The unimaginably sad end of elderly couple, Derrick and Jean Randall, found dead in their Northamptonshire bungalow last week, has triggered a predictable round of: “What is society coming to?” headlines, with an equally noisy backdrop of slamming stable doors and suitably sorrowful sound bites from the relevant authorities.
There is never anything pleasant or easy about the end of anybody’s life, no matter how old, how frail or how ill. Yet even my dear old Dad spent his last three weeks, in a comfortable room, in a slightly scruffy but clean and bright care home, being ministered to by a team of kindly nurses and palliative carers whose professionalism and dedication to their delicate tasks we never doubted for a second. The briefest trip to the dismal parallel universe of geriatric care would convince the hardest cynic that “society” is still alive and very much kicking – and caring.
There are clearly several complex issues surrounding the Randalls’ case but I agree with their MP, Sally Keeble, who raised the tragedy in the Commons earlier this week: “People say: 'Oh, they were reclusive', but I don't really accept that argument”.
What chilled me most about the reports of the Randalls’ death were the interviews with many of the couple’s neighbours, who insisted they had tried to contact both local social services and relevant charities:
“When I said, no, I wasn’t related to the Randalls, they said that it was none of our business. There was nothing they – or we – could do...”
The reason one concerned neighbour, Heather Footitt, and others were unable to get the relevant authorities to take their concerns about the Randalls seriously, or to act on them, is down to the now extremely stringent rules and regulations surrounding data protection in this country.
In this era of cyber-bullying, financial hackery and identity theft, it certainly makes sense to have some sort of data protection in force. Yet the act itself has now become highly complex and social workers and other local authority employees are now in terror of breaching its increasingly convoluted proscriptions. Consequently, there is now no scope whatsoever for the latter individuals to apply a reasonable dose of logic and common sense to individual cases. Surely Mrs Footitt did not have to be next-of-kin to have her very real concerns about the Randalls’ welfare taken seriously? It appears that she did.
I speak from experience. As many of you know, I am unable to go into detail about events during my father’s final months, many of which remain sub judice. So I won’t, for now, be identifying the local authority whose Family Services Department refused, on scores of occasions, to tell me anything at all about the welfare, well-being and often the physical location of my own father, even as his dementia progressed.
Late one Sunday night at the end of July 2008, my mobile went. I saw it was my father, calling from the cell phone we had given him, and answered immediately.
“They are sending me away again, Doh. I don’t know where to. I don’t know when. Tonight or tomorrow. I don’t know when I am coming home. Or if I am coming home. Will you come and get me? Please?”
By this stage, Dad was in the latter stages of Dementia with Lewy Bodies which often made him confused, with vivid, debilitating hallucinations. The DLB had also begun to affect many of his autonomic systems, leading to bouts of bowel and bladder incontinence, which particularly assaulted his natural dignity.
Next morning I called the Social Work team with whom I had been in regular contact regarding our very serious concerns about Dad. I explained about the upsetting phone call, my father’s audible distress and fear and asked if they might let me know to which of their care homes my father had been sent?
“Sorry, Ms Jackson, but we can’t tell you where your father is - as you are not next-of-kin”.
As data protection stands, despite being Dad’s sole, surviving, child, I simply had no rights whatsoever - to be informed about his location, health or indeed survival. Dad’s official next of kin, his spouse, my step-mother, who had left unexpectedly for an unspecified location and an unspecified period of respite – something we never begrudged her – had popped him into an ambulance, with a few pairs of pyjamas and a list of his medication. But the social worker was not going to tell me where my Dad was, or far more importantly, whether he was alright. She was not even prepared to leave a message with the care home, asking Dad to get in touch with us.
“If I told you where Fred was, Ms Jackson, I could well lose my job…”
My mobile rang again; it was my Dad, in tears: “Can you come and get me? I’ve had a few problems with my waterworks and that? I don’t know anybody here and I don’t want to ask them for this kind of help…”
I did finally locate Dad, thanks to Google Earth and to some well-remembered directions from his brother-in-law. In what state I found him is another story which I will definitely be relating, once it is, of course, legally safe to do so…
I would never have wanted that social worker to jeopardise her job; yet how I wish someone in her department might have lifted their eyes from the box-ticking, the protocols and the pathways to see that I was not a serial killer, trying to find out where my next victim was hiding. I was just a loyal daughter, responding to a pitiful and heart-rendingly desperate plea from my sole surviving, frail and ailing parent.
Likewise, if just one person at Northampton Social Services had been able - or indeed brave enough - to join the dots between all the anxious calls about the Randalls from Heather Footitt and other neighbours, perhaps Jean and Derrick would have received the support they clearly so desperately needed – before it was so tragically too late?
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