- Salvation Army Clitheroe was chronically short on radios ("walkie-talkies"). A few employees would hide a radio so they would have one every day. People who did not hide a radio often would not have one. I made numerous written comments in the log, about this problem, in the months before the incident below.
- One evening in residential, another assistant counselor and I were sharing one radio. She said that detox had been radioing for me to call them. I called detox, and was asked to go over to the D.D. unit.
- The counselor there had a client who was not doing well.
- The D.D. counselor had been trying, for some time, to get a nurse to come to the client. The supervisor instead wanted to have me bring the client to Detox.
- The D.D. counselor and I decided the counselor would call 911 while I took care of the client's immediate situation. Then, I looked for a radio to call Detox. (I was not familiar with the common hiding places for radios in that building).
- A few days later, the supervisor who had asked me to check on the client said she had been made to look bad, because she had not checked on the client until the ambulance arrived. (The counselor's first call had been to Detox, where the supervisor was.)
- The counselor (rather than the supervisor) was blamed for the slow communication among staff that evening. It got to the point that she felt her job was being threatened.
- Most of the "wasted" time had been caused by me not having a radio. I had made weekly notes in the residential log about the need for radios, but the residential Director had ignored the entries.
Three reports were written by me, about that incident.
- The first report said nobody was to blame. The Director continued blaming the counselor.
- The second report said that the counselor specifically was not to blame. The Director continued blaming the counselor.
- The third report mentioned the many log entries supervisors had ignored. It said: "The lack of any response made it clear that radios are not a priority to supervisors".
- The entries, about a dozen over a three month period, were in the men's Residential log. The Residential Director had completely ignored them.
- After the last report the matter was quietly dropped by Directors.
Days later it rained brand new radios at Clitheroe.
The client never returned to treatment.
Shortly after management discovered this website, the counselor above was fired.
Within days of the incident, the Residential Director was telling other staff that I needed "guidance" with my log entries.
Note: The Dual Diagnosis director has the bad habit of calling clients' physicians and recommending that their medication be changed. She has no medical background or education.
The client above had had her medication changed on the Thursday just before her stroke.
I don't know if the DD director was playing doctor in this case, or if it was the client's physician who changed her meds. There are some other suspicious medical incidents in the recent history of the DD unit that also should be looked into.