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Whistleblowing History

Recently I had a brief e mail conversation with Martin Rathfelder, the Director of the Socialist Health Association (http://www.sochealth.co.uk) about whistleblowing and I pointed him towards my pages on the subject (http://www.ppeyes.org.uk/whistleindex.html)

Martin then sent me an URL in exchange, suggesting that I include it in my pages but this really is too important in all its factors relating to whistleblowing - pertinent to the recent Margaret Heywood case and many others, to bury amongst my churnings.

The URL is:
http://www.sochealth.co.uk/history/Ely.htm

It is the Inquiry into alleged malpractice at Ely Hospital Cardiff in 1969. Of special interest to me as it was published at the time of my entry into social work as a “Trainee Child Care Worker” in what was a child psychiatric facility which was termed a “Residential Clinic for Maladjusted Children.” This Clinic was itself to be one of the many subjects of the North Wales child abuse Inquiry in the mid 1990s.

Not so far back at the end of the ‘swinging sixtees.’ Yet look at the Ely Inquiry at the time around the Beatles break up and marvel at the almost archaic language of its text and the horrors underlying the conditions at Ely then. And sadly, I know of psychiatric hospital cultures that are still pretty close to those in the Ely report.



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