Castlebeck and Phone Hacking Lessons For Police Reform?

The Care Quality  Commission has produced a damning report into Castlebeck, the care provider exposed by BBC Panorama.  Actually there is a series of reports at:

http://caredirectory.cqc.org.uk//caredirectory/searchthecaredirectory.cfm?cit_id=1-116865865&widCall1=customWidgets.content_view_1

The real point of interest is that this health care regulator wasn’t doing its job until the Panorama cameras ‘burst’ in.  Without this journalism, which can’t be praised enough, we’d have had the cosy business-as-usual.

When it comes to proper use of ‘learning lessons’ in management, the idea isn’t the standard rolling out of this phrase after dire under-performance, but to be looking around in your own and other areas for what can help maintain standards and aid continuous improvement and potentially radical changes.

Cynthia Bower, CEO of CQC has just filled me with dread with the standard ‘learning lessons’ speech.  She looked like ACPO material.

It’s utterly obvious that both the phone hacking and care scandals would not have come out without journalism.  What the enlightened manager (another for Dickebo’s ‘oxymoron list’) would want to do is bring about a culture that prevents the wrongdoing, not the standard form that prevents the disclosure.

The management question that should arise concerns what would be exposed if the Panorama or Dispatches cameras came in and creating the culture that would not be embarrassed by them.  Instead, we get that paranoid-schizoid response of doing everything to keep out public scrutiny.

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