Lousia Ovington independent investigation report ... - NHS North East

their procedures for formal contact and sharing information. They should
ensure that when they are supervising a client with known mental
health or drug and alcohol problems, there is a formal system in place for
communication with the mental health services, so that information can
be shared both ways.
• No CO with a condition of psychiatric supervision should be made unless
the probation service has (after consultation with him/her) identified the
supervisor and informed the court of his/her identity. The court service
should be invited by the probation service to consider revising its form to
include the name and professional details (address and discipline) of the
supervisor in the order and the probation service locally should amend
its procedures to ensure that the probation officer understands that it is
his/her responsibility to manage that condition and establish procedures
by which this is done in every case.
vii. Policies and procedures
Several policies and procedure documents were received which helped the panel
to understand the remit and workings of the numerous teams with which Louisa
Ovington came into contact. The standard of the content and presentation varied
considerably and it was not always possible to ascertain when they were produced, by
whom, for which organisation and on what date they should be reviewed. It may be
that as a result of the recent trust mergers many documents have eluded the archives
and therefore were not retrieved.
• Recommendation 27. Trusts should ensure that all policies include the
production and review dates; the author; the organisation to whom it
relates and are archived in a system, preferably electronic, where easy
access is available.
viii. Records
CHAPTER 9 – CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The panel found that most of the health records examined were reasonably
comprehensive, some more than others. However there was much more variation in
the standard of organisation of the hospital records: those from Edinburgh, Winterton,
the Tony White Unit, St Nicholas’ Hospital and Kneesworth were well organised and
easy to follow, (although Kneesworth had no section covering the hospital social work
department’s involvement), whereas the records from Hartlepool General Hospital
and Darlington Memorial Hospital were not: little logic or method seemed to have
been applied to how they were set out and this made it hard to see clearly what had
happened during Louisa Ovington’s periods as inpatient.
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