Can you help .....
Posted by News Editor
Wednesday, May 31, 2006

We have received this request from a sudent

My name is Paul Rees, and I am a 42 year old dual-qualified nurse working in the fields of mental health and learning disability. A few years ago I managed a low-secure unit in the private sector, looking after people with long histories of difficult and challenging behaviour, including a number of people with histories of making false accusations against staff. Having built a strong staff team who, in my opinion, were providing a very effective service, I had to sit back and watch the service disintegrate due to false allegations of physical and sexual abuse made against a number of staff, who were subsequently subjected to a protracted criminal investigation under POVA legislation.

Having moved on from this role, I am currently in the final stages of an MSc in Healthcare Management at the University of Glamorgan, and my dissertation is examining the negative impacts of POVA upon services and individual staff members. While I am obviously looking to gain my academic qualification, my ultimate goals would be to achieve publication, to stimulate further research into the problem, and to highlight to legislators and professional bodies that aspects of the policy are actually having a negative effect upon the lives of people whom the legislation purports to protect.

I was tehrefore wondering if it might be possible to post a message on your website asking for people who have been falsely accused under legislation to contact me, with a view to being interviewed about their experiences. It goes without saying that any information given would remain entirely anonymous, and would be used simply to identify common themes and the scale of the problem.

Many Thanks, Paul Rees.