IDEA Services taken to human rights body
It began with four pills down the side of a teenager’s wheelchair.
It ended with a complaint being lodged with the Human Rights Review Tribunal involving New Zealand’s largest provider of health services for disabled people. IDEA Services, which has been responsible for the foster care of Eamon Marshall, 14, since 2004, has allegedly been involved in a cover-up and one family wants to make an example out of the company. Eamon’s parents, Glenn and Fran Marshall from Napier, say their youngest son suffered neglect while in foster care.
Eamon has cerebral palsy, tuberous sclerosis, visual impairment, profound intellectual disability and epilepsy. He needs support for all his needs including feeding, bathing, turning in the bed at night. He needs to be watched and medication for his frequent and severe seizures.
The Marshalls couldn’t provide the level of care he needed and from the age of 18 months he was put in the care of IDEA, which placed him with foster parents.
In late 2015 Fran started discovering pills that had fallen down the side of Eamon’s wheelchair. Over five weeks, she found four pills that were likely to have fallen from his mouth. The pills were found at the same time Eamon’s school, Fairhaven, near Napier, noticed an increase in his seizures. The Marshalls took their concerns to IDEA in November, 2015. On December 10, Eamon was uplifted from his foster mother by IDEA and placed in its residential facility in Hastings. The Marshalls and IDEA staff discovered his medication sheets were missing.
IDEA’s Hawke’s Bay area manager carried out an investigation. The Marshall’s were not interviewed, and they were not told the findings. The following month, they asked for them.
They were given a one-page ‘summary report’. Unsatisfied, they used the Privacy Act, and sought more information.
They eventually got the full four-page internal investigation report. It wrongly stated the Marshalls had been interviewed. They complained to the Privacy Commissioner and the Health and Disability Commissioner. ‘‘IDEA Services [was] viewed as a part of Eamon’s extended family. We were really upset at the fact [it] had withheld pertinent and important information. That led to a deep sense of betrayal,’’ Glenn said. In late 2016, the Ministry of Health stepped in to investigate.
In a recently finalised report, the ministry said there was ‘‘no question that Eamon’s medication had been badly managed’’.
According to the review, the foster mother failed to complete medication sheets, IDEA failed to collect the sheets or provide adequate oversight.
The review found that in mid-2016, IDEA’s family services manager told Eamon’s needs assessment service coordinator that information provided by the foster mother couldn’t be relied upon and that ‘‘no-one should be under her care. She’s nuttier than a fruit cake’’. The ministry also found there had been inadequate oversight by the area manager, who failed to notice the family services manager had not made regular visits to Eamon’s home for five months between 2014 and 2015. The review noted that when the Marshalls asked for Eamon’s medication charts for 2015 the area manager told them IDEA didn’t have any, but a few days later she rang them to say the charts had been found.
They included signed sheets for three days after Eamon and his medication had left the premises.
The foster mother admitted retrospectively signing the sheets and said the family service manager and the area manager knew she had done that. The managers deny this and the ministry says ’’it is hard to establish where the balance of probabilities lies here’’. As a result of the review, the ministry ordered the area manager to review the placement of another man still being cared for by Eamon’s former foster mother. It also recommended the agreement with the foster mother be reviewed.
IDEA was not happy with the way the ministry ran its investigation, and wrote to the ministry via its lawyers.
The lawyers’ letters, obtained under the Official Information Act, reveal that IDEA felt the investigation had not been fair, open or impartial. IDEA was unhappy the draft was shared with the Marshalls, and asked for all drafts to be recalled.
After the final report was released by the ministry, IDEA wrote to say it did not accept the report. It was finally agreed that IDEA Services could write an addendum that would be attached to the report.
In the addendum IDEA said it had not had ‘‘a full opportunity to engage in a thorough or robust review process, meaning some of the material in the report remains inaccurate, factually incorrect or inadequate’’.
It acknowledged the investigation findings and an apology was not conveyed to the Marshalls in a timely manner in response to the concerns they had raised. IDEA had apologised to them for this in April last year.
Before the ministry’s review was started, the Health and Disability Commissioner had begun its own investigation. Responding to the commissioner’s request for information in July last year, IDEA’s chief executive Ralph Jones sent a five-page letter.
That letter, also obtained by the Marshalls, said the foster mother had provided ‘‘compassionate and competent care for Eamon’’.
The Commissioner is still investigating.
This month, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner reported back to the Marshalls, informing them that IDEA had breached the Health Information Privacy Code.
By failing to provide the complete investigation report to the ministry, and failing to interview the Marshalls before completing the report, IDEA Services had failed to take reasonable steps to check it was accurate and not misleading.
The office findings have been included in a complaint lodged with the Human Rights Review Tribunal.
Eamon is now living in Napier with another provider named NZ Care and ‘‘doing really well,’’ Glenn says.
IDEA Services declined to answer questions when contacted.