Field Lane Reviews 5

Currently living next door to one of their care homes sounds chaotic constant screaming crying and fighting reported several times they don't care.

Avoid!!

Sounds like the vulnerable adults being abused please reconsider AVOID.

This is an update to a previous review.

This is a review of one of Field Lanes supported living houses. Be very careful if you are considering a place in one of these facilities. It does not apply to other parts of the organisations, such as the domiciliary agency, just the supported living accommodation. (SLA)

I'm updating the review in the light of further events that occurred whilst my son was a resident at one of their supported living houses.

1. It emerged that whilst he was there, none of the tenancy agreements were valid. They were all signed in the wrong place by the wrong people. Without valid tenancies, it seems that they are running an unlicensed care home.

2. My son was supposed to pay £100 per week in service charges, which according to the tenancies was 100% eligible for housing benefit. This turned out to be mistaken, as he was left with a charge of @ £50 per week that wasn't elible for a rebate..

3. On closer examination of the headings of expenditure it appeared that the amounts charged were far higher than the actual bills from the suppliers, by up to 100%, eg. the water charges of £1997 were over twice the actual charges from the water company, said to be less than £1000.

4. There were two headings for expenditure that didn't appear to be incurred at all which totalled £4900 p.a. The service charges were much higher than other comparitive organisations.

5. A statutory request to be sent copies of the supplier bills, which were supposed to take no longer than 28 days to receive was ignored.

6. As an approximation, it appeared that around 50% of the total charges were never being incurred. If this was applied across all properties, it seemed there was an annual overcharge of £130,000.

7. In the same week this information emerged, Field Lane served notice on my son. They then abandoned him at an alternative placement, without telling him first what they planned to do. This caused him significant mental and physical trauma.

8. At an emergency placement meeting to which we and his advocate did not receive an invitation a series of allegations about not only him but also his parents were made which thus far they have been unable to substantiate. Unless they can, we intend to seek a legal remedy.

9. During the last four weeks he was there, nine errors were made with his medication, two of which were serious. He was given all his evening meds twice, and given liquid Diazepam which was not prescribed for him in place of Oramorph. Their medicine control policy was not up to standard and fell far below that which was expected of them.

10. Run by a mother and daughter team, there was not the management oversight in place to run the SLA side of the charity safely. Whilst superficially appearing professional and approachable, there was an underlying culture of denial of the truth and concerted efforts made to cover mistakes up, rather than learn from them. This led to a breakdown of trust between residents and their parents v. the middle management.

11. Although my son and the other residents in theory had control over their home, they could not prevent the charity using it as a daycare facility and shipping inappropriate members of the community during the day against their wishes.

12. Although my son has now left, because of a personal feeling of having a duty of care for those residents left behind, I have decided to ensure that all the external agencies they have contact with are notified of my concerns.