Institutional abuse and Evictions of Care Home Residents

Dear Enquirer,

Your message has been received and will be dealt with as soon as possible.
Our standard is to reply within ten working days.
Should you need to make contact with us again on this matter, it helps us
if you quote reference number: 16646

Kind Regards
Dan at HertsDirect

Click here: http://www.hertsdirect.org/interactive/h... to
subscribe to the council's new email alert service. Help us by forwarding
this email to friends who may also want to subscribe.

Doug Paulley To FOI requests at
<[FOI #39615 email]> Hertfordshire County Council
<[Hertfordshire County Council request email]>
25/06/2010 13:45 cc
Subject Freedom of Information
request - Institutional
abuse and Evictions of Care
Home Residents

Dear Hertfordshire County Council,

1) Please supply information relating to the incidence of attempts
by care providers to evict residents in care homes - that is, care
providers giving residents notice to leave or otherwise attempting
to get them to leave without their involvement in the decision or
against their wishes.

Please indicate the number of cases you are aware of for the last 3
years, also indicating if and how your council responded to the
situation, and what was the ultimate result of the sitaution, i.e.
if and how the situation was resolved.

2) Please provide me with the number of instances your council is
aware of where either CQC or local authority safeguarding
procedures have substantiated allegations of insitutional abuse of
a Leonard Cheshire social care service user over the past 3 years.

Further, please provide anonymised information on the alleged
behaviour by Leonard Cheshire resulting in the conclusion.

Yours faithfully,

Doug Paulley

show quoted sections

Reference number: FOI/ACS/06/10/2227

Dear Doug Paulley,

Thank you for your correspondence of 25th June 2010 requesting the
following information:

' 1) Please supply information relating to the incidence of attempts
by care providers to evict residents in care homes - that is, care
providers giving residents notice to leave or otherwise attempting
to get them to leave without their involvement in the decision or
against their wishes.

Please indicate the number of cases you are aware of for the last 3
years, also indicating if and how your council responded to the
situation, and what was the ultimate result of the sitaution, i.e.
if and how the situation was resolved.

2) Please provide me with the number of instances your council is
aware of where either CQC or local authority safeguarding
procedures have substantiated allegations of insitutional abuse of
a Leonard Cheshire social care service user over the past 3 years.

Further, please provide anonymised information on the alleged
behaviour by Leonard Cheshire resulting in the conclusion.'

Your request for information is being considered under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. We will respond to your request as quickly as
possible, and by 23rd July 2010 at the latest.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, quoting
the reference number on this email. To find out more about Freedom of
Information, please visit www.hertsdirect.org/foi.

Yours sincerely,

________________________________________
Information Governance Unit
Hertfordshire County Council
Telephone: 01992 555848
Fax: 01992 588117
Email: [email address]

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Paulley,

Ref: FOI/ACS/06/10/2227

Further to our e-mail of acknowledgment dated 25th June 2010.
Hertfordshire County Council is processing your request for information
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The 20 working day deadline, as outlined by the Act, is 23rd July 2010.

Unfortunately, we are still processing your request and will therefore be
unable to meet this deadline. As a result we would like to extend the
deadline by 10 working days to 6th August 2010.

We apologise for the delay in responding to your request and will
endeavour to provide the requested information before 6th August 2010 if
at all possible.

Yours sincerely,
________________________________________
Information Governance Unit
Hertfordshire County Council
Telephone: 01992 555848
Fax: 01992 588117
Email: [email address]

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Paulley,

Thank you for your e-mail dated, 27th July 2010. Please see our e-mail to
you dated 21st July 2010 requesting an extension of 10 working days,
making the new deadline of 6th August 2010.

Yours sincerely,
________________________________________
Information Governance Unit
Hertfordshire County Council
Telephone: 01992 555848
Fax: 01992 588117
Email: [email address]

show quoted sections

Dear Enquirer,

Your message has been received and will be dealt with as soon as possible.
Our standard is to reply within ten working days.
Should you need to make contact with us again on this matter, it helps us
if you quote reference number: 99571

Kind Regards
Dan at HertsDirect
Click here: http://www.hertsdirect.org/interactive/h... to
subscribe to the council's new email alert service. Help us by forwarding
this email to friends who may also want to subscribe.

Doug Paulley To FOI requests at
<[FOI #39615 email]> Hertfordshire County Council
<[Hertfordshire County Council request email]>
25/08/2010 09:33 cc
Subject Internal review of Freedom
of Information request -
Institutional abuse and
Evictions of Care Home
Residents

Dear Hertfordshire County Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Hertfordshire County
Council's handling of my FOI request 'Institutional abuse and
Evictions of Care Home Residents'.

The response is very late.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in...

Yours faithfully,

Doug Paulley

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Paulley,

Reference number: FOI/ACS/06/10/2227

On 25th June 2010 we received the following request for information from
you:

1) Please supply information relating to the incidence of attempts by care
providers to evict residents in care homes - that is, care providers
giving residents notice to leave or otherwise attempting to get them to
leave without their involvement in the decision or against their wishes.

Please indicate the number of cases you are aware of for the last 3 years,
also indicating if and how your council responded to the situation, and
what was the ultimate result of the sitaution, i.e. if and how the
situation was resolved.

2) Please provide me with the number of instances your council is aware of
where either CQC or local authority safeguarding procedures have
substantiated allegations of insitutional abuse of a Leonard Cheshire
social care service user over the past 3 years.

Further, please provide anonymised information on the alleged behaviour by
Leonard Cheshire resulting in the conclusion.

Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to your request.

Your request for information has been considered under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000, and I can confirm that Hertfordshire County Council
does hold some of the information you have requested and can respond as
follows:

1. We do not hold the requested information in an easily reportable
format. In order for us to provide this information it would be necessary
to review each client file to
determine whether any instances, such as you have described above, have
occurred.

We estimate that the cost of carrying out this work to provide this
information would exceed the appropriate limit of £450, which has been
specified under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and associated
regulations. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 2½
working days in determining whether Hertfordshire County Council holds the
information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

We have estimated that this work would take 416 hours (calculated at 5000
individual records at 5 minutes to review each record). Under Section 12
of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 we are not obliged to comply with
requests for information which exceed this appropriate limit, and will not
be undertaking this additional work.

2. In order for us to provide a definitive answer your second question,
it would be necessary to review each individual client file. As explained
in our response to your first question, we have estimated that this work
would take 416 hours (calculated at 5000 individual records at 5 minutes
to review each record). Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information
Act 2000 we are not obliged to comply with requests for information which
exceed this appropriate limit, and will not be undertaking this additional
work.

However, we have reviewed our Safeguarding records and can confirm that
they contain no recorded instances where the Care Quality Commission or
the Hertfordshire County Council's Safeguarding procedures have
substantiated allegations of institutional abuse from a Leonard Cheshire
social care service user over the past 3 years.

However, if you have concerns regarding any potential instances of abuse
which you believe Hertfordshire County Council should be made aware of,
our Adult Care Services department can be contacted on 0300 123 4042.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us, quoting
the reference number on this email. To find out more about Freedom of
Information, please visit www.hertsdirect.org/foi.

We understand you have already requested an internal review of the
handling of your request for information. If you are unhappy with any
aspect of the way the County Council has handled your request for
information, you may complain through the County Council's complaints
procedure which is available at www.hertsdirect.org/complaints.

If you are unhappy with the outcome of the complaints procedure you are
entitled to ask the Information Commissioner to investigate your
complaint. You should write to:

FOI/EIR Complaints Resolution
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF

Once again, we sincerely apologise for the delay in responding to your
request for information.

Yours sincerely,

Information Governance Unit
Hertfordshire County Council
Telephone: 01992 555848
Fax: 01992 588117
Email: [email address]

show quoted sections

Thank you for your further enquiry.

This has been forwarded to the relevant department for their attention. We
will contact you once we have received a reply.

Kind Regards
Danat HertsDirect
Click here: http://www.hertsdirect.org/interactive/h... to
subscribe to the council's new email alert service. Help us by forwarding
this email to friends who may also want to subscribe.

Doug Paulley To FOI requests at
<[FOI #39615 email]> Hertfordshire County Council
<[Hertfordshire County Council request email]>
05/09/2010 09:01 cc
Subject Internal review of Freedom
of Information request -
Institutional abuse and
Evictions of Care Home
Residents

Dear Hertfordshire County Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Hertfordshire County
Council's handling of my FOI request 'Institutional abuse and
Evictions of Care Home Residents'.

I wish to appeal the first part, where you say that providing
information on people in care homes given notice or subjected to
attempted eviction without their will over the last 3 years would
be too expensive to provide.

I dispute this on two grounds.

1) The request has been refused on the basis that it would take too
long to extract information from records. I dispute that this would
be necessary.

Where attempts are made to evict residents in care homes against
their will, it is an event that is likely to escalate and to stick
in peoples' minds. Indeed it tends to make the news, for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6599155.stm

A simple query to the head of adult social services for each area
would therefore likely yield the required results without a manual
search. For the avoidance of doubt, the results of such an informal
information gathering exercise would be more than satisfactory to
me in answering my question.

To assist in narrowing down my request, I am not interested in
cases where homes have closed or changed registration, or where
residents are moved on with their agreement or with support of
family due to increased needs that the home can't meet. I'm much
more interested in "unreasonable" evictions or termination
attempts.

2) I have made the same Freedom of Information Request to every
council in the country. Whilst not all results are yet in, lots of
councils have provided the same information for their area very
promptly and without any apparent difficulty.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in...

Yours faithfully,

Doug Paulley

show quoted sections

Reference number: FOI/ACS/06/10/2227

Dear Mr Paulley,

Thank you for your correspondence of the 5th September 2010 requesting the
following information:

' Dear Hertfordshire County Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Hertfordshire County
Council's handling of my FOI request 'Institutional abuse and
Evictions of Care Home Residents'.

I wish to appeal the first part, where you say that providing
information on people in care homes given notice or subjected to
attempted eviction without their will over the last 3 years would
be too expensive to provide.

I dispute this on two grounds.

1) The request has been refused on the basis that it would take too
long to extract information from records. I dispute that this would
be necessary.

Where attempts are made to evict residents in care homes against
their will, it is an event that is likely to escalate and to stick
in peoples' minds. Indeed it tends to make the news, for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6599155.stm

A simple query to the head of adult social services for each area
would therefore likely yield the required results without a manual
search. For the avoidance of doubt, the results of such an informal
information gathering exercise would be more than satisfactory to
me in answering my question.

To assist in narrowing down my request, I am not interested in
cases where homes have closed or changed registration, or where
residents are moved on with their agreement or with support of
family due to increased needs that the home can't meet. I'm much
more interested in "unreasonable" evictions or termination
attempts.

2) I have made the same Freedom of Information Request to every
council in the country. Whilst not all results are yet in, lots of
councils have provided the same information for their area very
promptly and without any apparent difficulty.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in...

Yours faithfully,

Doug Paulley '

Your request is under an internal review, for both issues that you have
outlined. You will recieve a response from Hertfordshire County Council by
the end of this week.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, quoting
the reference number on this email.

Yours sincerely,
________________________________________
Information Governance Unit
Hertfordshire County Council
Telephone: 01992 555848
Fax: 01992 588117
Email: [email address]

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Paulley,
Please find attached a copy of the County Council's internal review of
your request FOI/ACS/06/10/2227.

Yours sincerely,
Information Governance Unit
Hertfordshire County Council
Telephone: 01992 555848
Fax: 01992 588117
Email: [email address]

show quoted sections