John Gogarty

The MATTER OF CONCERN is as follows. –

Your Trust was solely concerned with the care of . During that care your patient was associating with who had a very considerable history and was under the supervision of the National Probation Service following a sentence for murder. Although original efforts were made to contact the Probation Service to pass on information, these came to nothing because insufficient details about the male were known. However, within a relatively short time further information to identify this male became apparent but there was no further follow up with the Probation Service.

No specific criticism is made of the member of staff involved at that time, it might very well be that many staff might have assumed that there was nothing to be gained. However, in reality, if the Probation Service had been aware of your patients background they would have at least had the opportunity to consider the conditions of the parole afresh, potentially putting in place further safeguards.

It is respectfully suggested that the lesson here is that small pieces of information properly shared on an inter-agency basis might well add up to a bigger picture for other organisations.