I dont know about the administrative stuff, I was just a dogsbody.
I do appreciate your concerns, and I understand they're well-meant.
I don't know much about social service protocol, but I can give you an anecdote:
I was waiting in the office where my mum works, waiting for her to finish, and I got chatting to one of her subordinates.

HER: You're [Mum's Name]'s son then?
Me: Yeah.
HER: I was just wondering...does she give you a checklist for tidying your room?
ME: Umm...yeah. how did you know?
HER: Just a lucky guess.

My mum does not mess about when it comes to her job. Her eye for detail is legendary. What needs to be done will have been done, and it will have been done with the best possible outcome for the client in mind. I say that with absolute certainty.
(universalpsykopath loves what you've done with your hair., Fri 3 Feb 2012, 12:32, 1 reply)

I'm really glad that
you're sticking up for your mum, and I really hope you have left off all the stuff any decent OT would have done.

The idea that any OT would willingly fail to record, or pass on, severe evidence of care needs - much less willfully set about destroying it - is something that has me in conniptions.

I've seen more than a few users of LD services that have been clearly let down by other services for little other reason than lack of self-advocation or lack of evidence of care needs.

I really do hope your mum passed all the evidence on to the appropriate people, and that the help the client received wasn't merely short term. Short term help isn't really that much help if it's instead of better, longer term help.

I'm really trying to get my head around why people here can't grasp that idea.
(TheThinMan, Sat 4 Feb 2012, 17:27, closed)

I understand what you are saying there,
he clearly needed a long term solution to his situation. Cleaning him up and leaving him to get in the same situation again is only a short term fix.

However, no decent human being, faith aside, could knowingly leave a man to quite literally wallow in his own shit due to bureaucracy.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sat 4 Feb 2012, 23:11, closed)

The problem is,
the exact same ethical argument 'No decent human being', could be made to justify any behaviour that is taken when placed under an extreme circumstance (although if you've ever worked in LD or MH, or older persons services, filthy homes are atypical yet are still common enough to hardly qualify as 'extreme'), even if that behaviour is neither the best available in term of short or long term outcome, or is detrimental or exposes the client to needlessly elevated risk.

The point of using professional reasoning is to evaluate which option is best long term, given the situation, and then implement it. The 'decent human being' option is the most tempting (and often the most emotionally rewarding), but it's not always the best. Thankfully, the 'decent human being' option and the 'professional' option often coincide.

I'm not sure why you said "However, no decent human being, faith aside, could knowingly leave a man to quite literally wallow in his own shit due to bureaucracy.". No one here is asserting that the options are either:

do what UPP's mum did, or,
leave him to live in the house whilst he gets a standard referral to environmental health.

The possibility of emergency housing, or an expediated referral was mentioned above.
(TheThinMan, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 20:58, closed)