I felt sick reading of top-ups for John of God bosses
Mother’s son died in care
FIVE St John of God executives who shared millions in secret payments from the charity were involved in the tragic case of a child who died in respite care.
Angela Neiland’s six-year-old son Tristan died after falling unconscious at Angels Quest respite centre in January 2013 and the family received an apology and a confidential sum after settling a High Court case last week.
Yesterday, our sister paper the Irish Mail on Sunday revealed that five St John of God executives who were involved in Tristan’s case were among the 14 who received clandestine payments totalling some €1.8million in November 2013. These were paid in the same month that three out of six internal reports into the incident were completed.
Mrs Neiland told the MoS she was shocked when she read of the secret top-ups especially considering the impact cutbacks were having. ‘I felt really sick reading that,’ she said. ‘That was disturbing.’
There is no suggestion that these people were directly involved in any care failures or misrepresentation related to Tristan’s death. But confidential reports point to apparent deficits in governance standards at St John of Gods as a ‘key contributory factor’ in Tristan’s death.
Tristan’s brave mother also alleged that there had been an attempt made by staff to say she had said it was okay not to use his SATS oxygen monitor, an item vital for his care while he slept.
Yesterday, the MoS reported that the detailed care plan Mrs Neiland had provided appeared to be misrepresented in the wake of little Tristan’s death and in the subsequent investigations.
She told investigators that this ‘apparent misrepresentation began with a conversation with an employee over the open coffin of her son during his wake’.
According to Mrs Neiland, a staff member told her that a monitor that would have alerted staff to Tristan’s distress had not been used.
The staff member contended that Mrs Neiland had agreed the monitor need not be used if Tristan was checked every 15 minutes – a contention Mrs Neiland says is completely false.
However, it was found that Tristan – who was sleeping 32 feet from the nurses’ station – had not been checked for at least 56 minutes before he fell unconscious after having a seizure and that the monitor in question was not used.
Investigators determined that there were four ‘contributory factors which had an effect on the tragic outcome for Tristan Neiland’, according to the MoS.
This included: ‘Written instructions given by the family for Tristan’s care were not followed.
‘Risk-assessment was not carried out, no risk plan was devised in advance of taking Tristan into the centre. Observation and monitoring were inadequate on that night. It was not noticed that the boy’s condition was deteriorating.
‘Management of risk by senior staff was inadequate, no system was in place to analyse risks or adverse events. It appears that no clinical incident form was filed for the night he died.’
Tristan’s parents Andrew and Angela last week received a letter of apology from St John of God and a spokesman for the organisation reiterated its apology, adding the organisation was ‘fully engaged’ with the HSE in response to a review into payments to managers.
‘Instructions were not followed’