Del Agua failed to act on shocking treatment of children in care As Gibraltar's healthcare services draw closer to a catastrophic melt-down and the Government continues to ignore allegations of mismanagement in the GHA as well as claims of what amount to instances of medical malpractice, shocking details of the alleged mistreatment of children - and the sexual abuse of two adults - in the care of Social Services employees emerged this week in documents and affidavits handed to VOX.
They are part of evidence which will be heard in the Industrial Tribunal when early next year - after two years of legal wrangling and Government attempts to keep the wraps on the damning material to prevent its public airing - will hear Joanna Hernandez's claim against her wrongful dismissal. And they show that Yvette del Agua, then Minister for Social Services and now Minister of Health with responsibility for the serious shortcomings within the GHA, knew about the allegations AND DID NOTHING.
More than 20 affidavits obtained by Joanna Hernandez, her legal representatives and Joe Bossano who is representing her at tribunal hearings, paint a distressing picture of the treatment of patients at the Giraldi Home and in flats in the community supervised by Social Services staff and "carers" before the expert in child disability took charge.
"When I arrived to take up the reins at the Dr Giraldi Home I found that there was a special dark and windowless room set aside and known as the Punishment Room where children and adults would be locked in and left in the dark...often for hours at a time," Hernandez told VOX yesterday. She also uncovered incidents in which adult and adolescent patients had been left lying in their own excrement on filthy urine-soaked mattresses...again often for hours at a time.
SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS Documents detailing alledged abuse and neglect have been handed to PDP leader Keith Azopardi and to the Opposition spokesmen on Health and Social Services, Neil Costa and Charles Bruzon. None had had time to read the thick file of affidavits and letters when VOX spoke to them yesterday, but the PDP leader told VOX: "If serious allegations are made, particularly in relation to children and the disabled, these need to be thoroughly investigated."
However, in the same way that the Government continues to ignore the crisis in the GHA and among the medical and nursing staff at St Bernard's Hospital, it seems unlikely to respond to the allegations relating to Social Services during Del Agua's tenure as Minister. A Royal Gibraltar Police Investigation into at least one of the more serious allegations when an offence against adults was committed met a blank wall of hostility and the investigators were advised to drop their enquiries, VOX was told. Although the police investigated, no further action was taken.
And although the Social Services Act lays down that any allegations must be investigated immediately, this regulation was never complied with by the authorities, according to Hernandez whose revelations are backed by the relatives of several patients.
Hernandez, who holds a string of qualifications acquired during more than eight years of study both here and in the United Kingdom, worked with Gibraltar's Social Services on a voluntary basis for a year before her appointment.
"I wanted to make a difference, wanted to help raise standards and really cared about what I was doing," she told VOX. "It wasn't just a job, or even a career...It was something that went deeper than that. After all, it's not everyone who can, or would choose to, change an adult's dirty nappy."
And, initially, she did make a difference. Evidence to be submitted to the tribunal by relatives of service users, not only praises the work she did but indicates a ‘climate change' for the better in areas of the department where she had influence. She started up the ‘inclusion' system where children are taught not on their own as incapable pariahs but as part of normal school classes. When she arrived there were no infrastructure, care plans for the patients, substandard fire equipment in the Giraldi buildings and no individual files. She changed all that,too.
But the evidence also paints a bleak, almost Dickensian picture of the treatment of patients before she arrived and after her dismissal. Apart from the alleged ill-treatment of children and others in care, there were incidents of some carers spitting at their charges and an alarmingly casual approach to the supervision of drugs and their administration.
There were instances of overdoses as well as failure to provide necessary medication and the apparent "disappearance" of drugs - later discovered after a hue and cry was raised - which would have had a street value of as much as £30 per pill.
Some of these and similar issues were raised by VOX with the then head of Social Services Elizabeth Tosso more than a year ago, following complaints and allegations made by parents of some of the children in care. Tosso, who has since resigned and left Gibraltar, promised to investigate and act on the allegations, but apparently failed to do so.
CHIEF MINISTER TOLD Details of at least 12 of the allegations which Hernandez learned about were faxed to the Chief Minister Peter Caruana and to Del Agua, who held the portfolio at the time, but seemingly no appropriate action or response came from either.
"On several occasions I asked why no investigation was being carried out - and was told to keep quiet, or I would lose my job," Hernandez told VOX.
Five months later she was given a month's notice.
Following her dismissal on trumped up reasons - in reality a punishment for her whistle-blowing activities - Hernandez took her case to the Industrial Tribunal where the Government's lawyer Mark Isola (also sometimes chairman of the Tribunal) argued unsuccessfully that she could not have a hearing as she had no standing in terms of the Tribunal for she had held her job for less that a year. This, Bossano argued, was mere semantics and relied on faulty definitions of the length of a year and how a week should be calculated. Had the Government's case been upheld, none of the evidence contained in the damning affidavits would have become public. However both the Supreme Court and the Appeal Court ruled in Hernandez's favour.
Nevertheless, when the Tribunal next sits - this is scheduled for November 27 - Isola is to oppose the admission of the affidavits as part of her evidence, Hernandez has been told. The main hearing has been set down for the last week of January and first week of February next year.
Meanwhile, the Gibraltar Medical and Dental Association - which was swift to attempt to soft-pedal allegations about some of its members at St Bernard's - has failed to respond to our call for its support in demanding a full-scale public inquiry.
In an e-mail this week to Dr Nerney, vice president and secretary of the GMDA, the Editor wrote: "Following your letter to VOX last week and our suggestion that the GMDA should join our call for a full public inquiry. I would be interested to hear your response. Surely it would be in the interest of all the medical staff - not only those whose competence is in question - to have the matter and allegations relating to the GHA brought into the open."
There has been no reply.
http://www.vox.gi/Local/Showdown_on_Social_Services-16112007.html?PHPSESSID=5cddf527dc7eaa08f068716da826bc6e 
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