Posts by Sacha
-
She is such a damn idealogue
Worse, a dim ideologue.
-
Here's one that I'm sure will feed action by Tony Ryall early next year and should concern anyone with relatives who depend on residential support services.
The Auditor General reports limp enforcement of failed rest home audits including medicine management issues.
Provost said rest homes sent the reports to their auditing agency, which forwarded them to the ministry, but progress was rarely independently verified.
"Our reviews showed that [auditing agencies] largely rely on rest homes reporting their own progress," she said. "In the files we reviewed, the ministry accepted most progress reports and did not require the rest home to take any more action."
This type of reporting was not always effective in ensuring that improvements were made, and rest homes were often continually failing in the same or closely related criteria, she said.
...Canterbury District Health Board member Andrew Dickerson said it was concerning to see the same homes turning up in complaints.
While most performed well, about 10 per cent had a pattern of complaints that required investigation, follow-up and monitoring, but this did not always happen, he said.
"Not always effective"? This is the same performance 'system' applied by wimpy health sector bureaucrats to contracted disability support services. Favouring of ongoing supplier relationships over the duty of care to protect service recipients is part of what necessitated the 2008 select committee inquiry into quality of care.
Good to see some substandard operators actually closed down recently. That's the type of accountability that has been sorely lacking.
The source report is summarised and downloadable at the Auditor General's site, and the linked page gives a good overview of relevant arrangements.
The Ministry [of Health] uses eight designated auditing agencies (DAAs) to carry out audits of rest homes.
The Ministry has known since 2004 that auditing by DAAs is inconsistent and sometimes of a poor quality. Notwithstanding its recent efforts, and evidence that DAAs are improving some aspects of their work, the Ministry did not respond to these problems quickly enough or with enough effect.
There are examples from 2008 and 2009 where DAAs have failed to find or report instances where rest homes have not met the criteria in the Standards. Serious failures in the care of residents have been identified later by other regulatory bodies. The frequency of these events may have been low, but they are significant because the failings are serious.
Progress reporting is a mechanism that is supposed to ensure that rest homes take action to fix problems identified by DAAs. Progress reporting is not always effective and is not leading to sustained improvements. Our file reviews showed that DAAs mostly rely on rest homes to report on their own progress and rarely make follow-up visits to verify that action has been taken. Some rest homes are repeatedly failing to meet the same or closely related criteria in the Standards, and some DAAs are behind in submitting progress reports to the Ministry.
-
This might be something to sink yr teeth into while listening to supergroup rawk.
None of the previous education "standards" threads seem worth reactivating, but the Minister gets a fair spanking from Prof Warwick Elley, drawing on his experience during implementation of similar testing 20 years ago in England:
Mrs Tolley has been told repeatedly about the serious flaws in the scheme, about how these schemes have been tried in Britain and the United States without any reduction in the tales of underachievement.
She has been warned about the distortions that occur when young children are exposed to "high-stakes assessments", whether properly standardised or not. She has ignored the logic of the professionals' arguments that the standards, if intelligible at all, will be too low for some and too high for others.
If she were to study the profiles of the 20 per cent she claims are failing to learn, she would find, as we have, that many are Esol (English as a second language) pupils, many have disabilities of one form or another, and many are disturbed children from dysfunctional families. All Western countries with diverse cultures and wide variations in economic status suffer from these problems.
Teachers know who the struggling children are, and they are frequently concentrated in low-decile schools without the benefits of reading recovery or other remedial programmes. Such schools need material support, not more and more assessments.
I'll keep an eye out for anything more.. contentious.
-
Say about 55 copies?
Hang on, wrong shop. Easy on the egg nog.. -
It was indeed a most lovely version of ApplePieBed and a privilege to see performed at that range.
And thank you all for wonderful company both online and off this year.
-
I think you may have your holes confused
Likely. Although there was an easy consensus about Mr Milne's sniggerworthiness.
And cheers, 3410
-
Well, okay, not quite as bad
Nowhere near the talent, I assure you
-
They had a Winnie the Pooh reading at Canterbury's orientation one year. Shocked at how much innuendo was buried in those innocent childhood stories, presumably to entertain parental readers. A passage about Pooh being stuck in Eeyore's hole made a particular impact on the young adult audience.
-
Hope Sandoval & the Warm Intentions is great. Her latest with Massive Attack is also mind numbingly good. NSFW Video here, for those who missed it elsewhere.
Fuck me that's beautiful. Ta for that.
-
Our friend Mr Matthews has similar thoughts about McGann's adaptation.
You can also go away without leaving, which is escapism or imagination. In the novel, Paul Prior, who as a teacher becomes a sort of father figure to the intellectual outcast Celia, escaped into books as a teenager: Gee uses Paul’s reading of Dostoevsky to signal his wilful opposition to dreary New Zealand conformism and the religious fundamentalism of his mother, a tragic figure in both book and film.
McGann’s innovation is to replace Dostoevsky with Patti Smith, whose best music has all the romantic defiance and yearning of teenagers who want to be anywhere but here – and, heard again as an adult, the same songs are suggestive of dreams that weren’t fulfilled, promises that weren’t kept (the songs are “Free Money” and “Land” from Horses).
...
Grafting Smith’s Horses onto Gee’s novel was hugely inspired – a creative risk that really paid off – and I’d love to know how McGann came up with the idea. His film was one seriously impressive achievement.