2007-11-05
workplace blues
Last year the place where I work was "visited" by the US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. A year later they issued a report that, to be polite, found the facility lacking.
The document, known as the CRIPA Investigation of the Connecticut Valley Hospital,Middletown, Connecticut, reported that the facility did not do enough to prevent suicides [there had been 4 in three years] and maintained that restraints ans seclusion were used routinely for the convenience of staff.
Since I am the facility's senior grievance investigator, there has been a focus on what is presented to the grievance officers, and how the problems identified get addressed.
Since then, I have observed another, equally disturbing phenomenon. This includes suddenly hearing from family members who have not bothered to visit their "loved ones" for at least a decade racing in crying 'lawsuit' and 'abuse'.
It has resulted in some individuals, quite possibly more interested in publicity than problem solving, writing to high level government officials about everything from kosher meals to the woes of incarceration [roughly half the facility has forensics clients] and valuable property never entered on property lists suddenly getting lost.
Of late, there is a push to hire lost more staff, but I question the state's belated response given that, during the Rowland Administration, the state government founded its policies on drastically cutting back the staff who were here at the time.
Short version, the hospital takes the heat for the state government's indifference to human suffering in the first place.
Who loses? Everybody except the wealthy who don't pay their proportionate share in taxes. But the patients, and the staff, take the heat.
¶ 09:49
Last year the place where I work was "visited" by the US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. A year later they issued a report that, to be polite, found the facility lacking. The document, known as the CRIPA Investigation of the Connecticut Valley Hospital,Middletown, Connecticut, reported that the facility did not do enough to prevent suicides [there had been 4 in three years] and maintained that restraints ans seclusion were used routinely for the convenience of staff.
Since I am the facility's senior grievance investigator, there has been a focus on what is presented to the grievance officers, and how the problems identified get addressed.
Since then, I have observed another, equally disturbing phenomenon. This includes suddenly hearing from family members who have not bothered to visit their "loved ones" for at least a decade racing in crying 'lawsuit' and 'abuse'.
It has resulted in some individuals, quite possibly more interested in publicity than problem solving, writing to high level government officials about everything from kosher meals to the woes of incarceration [roughly half the facility has forensics clients] and valuable property never entered on property lists suddenly getting lost.
Of late, there is a push to hire lost more staff, but I question the state's belated response given that, during the Rowland Administration, the state government founded its policies on drastically cutting back the staff who were here at the time.
Short version, the hospital takes the heat for the state government's indifference to human suffering in the first place.
Who loses? Everybody except the wealthy who don't pay their proportionate share in taxes. But the patients, and the staff, take the heat.
¶ 09:49
