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David Southall made many untrue claims in his BBC Radio Four Today Prog inteview yesterday, one of which was that the panel at the GMC "didn't have sufficient training" with regard to child protection matters and were "not qualified to understand how child protection works". I think the questions the panel asked speak for themselves. For the benefit of the ignorant who have fallen for that ploy, which is nothing more than a smoke screen, I am now placing bite size pieces of the panel's questions to David Southall so that the less well informed can understand just what David Southall claimed the SC Files were! Day 15 Pge 56 Dr Sarkar Forensic Psychiatrist panellist questioning Southall Q Moving on to a slightly more general point, this relates to the creation and holding of special case files. Do you use the term departmental notes and special case notes interchangeably? I saw the term “departmental note” written somewhere in one of the documents. A Possibly, yes, it could be. I think we usually called them special case notes. Q I am just curious, why did you call them special? A Special investigations. Q You said it was created for audit. A Yes, one of the reasons. Ms LLoyd Lay Person Day 16 questioning David Southall MRS LLOYD: Good morning. Dr Southall, some of your evidence I have difficulty understanding so the questions that I am going to ask you will be for clarification purposes. A Fine. Q Can you clarify which social services departments you had an SEF policy with, a special case file policy? A With the social worker at the Royal Brompton Hospital, she knew that we were keeping our records separately and she represented the hospital, and, I think, Kensington Social Services, and the hospital social worker at the North Staffordshire until – actually, she did not stay for ever, she eventually had to leave but she represented the hospital and Staffordshire Social Services. Q You have said that most of your referrals, the tertiary referrals, were from all over the country. A Yes. Q Did you develop a policy with social services departments in these boroughs? A About the material, no. Q That is the difficulty I have in understanding this, because if the majority of your referrals were tertiary referrals and you were therefore dealing with patients from all over the country, the key worker for the patient would be in the boroughs that these patients lived, so the difficulty I have understanding is what was the benefit of a special case file policy. What was the benefit for the key workers who were primarily monitoring and being responsible for the patients when they left your hospital after such a short stay? A Okay, so if we take as an example Child D, who came from near London to Stoke, that is that case: when the child was discharged the social services department I contacted was Staffordshire, initially – that is local to our hospital in Stoke on Trent. Remember, Martin Banks I contacted him and wrote a report and suggested a strategy planning meeting. Subsequently, after more discussions with Great Ormond Street and Southampton, eventually contact was made with Jonathan Haverson who was looking after the child locally, but not on a child protection level, on a welfare level: it was a child in need rather than a child in need of protection. So all the time I was amassing data, child protection related data in the special case files, in a confidential way, and every time I needed to do something I went straight to the file – I did not have to get the hospital records out to try and look at them, sometimes that being a problem, so we had it immediately in the office and I could look at it whenever I wanted to. Q That is the other part of your evidence I do not understand and I would like further clarification on. A Sure. Q You were amassing data – actually, if you could just run through the key elements of the information you were keeping because what I am trying to understand is, is this information of more benefit to you? I am trying to see how it is going to benefit social workers from the very many different boroughs who were working with these children. A First of all, what did we collect? What data did we put into the special case file? As I said, we are talking now about the tiny proportion who are child protection related only, yes, the rest of the 4,000, about 4,450 were non-child protection, so in the child protection related ones would go strategy planning minutes, case conference minutes, correspondence with other doctors involved, or social workers. With regard therefore to your question about the social worker’s involvement in the periphery, in the area where the child lives, they would have all these documents already, themselves; they were originating from them. They would not have, necessarily, all the medical to and from correspondence but they would certainly have the social correspondence.
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