Saturday 14 October 2023

"There is no excuse for staff, including third-party contractors, in public service to be unaware..."

Indeed so, perhaps it's time it resulted in instant dismissal, then? 

And this was even worse than the usual chain store or high-street restaurant. This was a hospital.

Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, she wrote: 'Tonight a hospital security guard tried to stop me entering urgent care with @GuideDogAva & my poorly baby.
'We kept walking after firmly saying 'this is a guide dog'.
'Very grateful to the members of the public who also shouted him down and the nurse on the reception who had words.
'As a mother with an ill child I should not have to also deal with the additional fear and stress of an access refusal because of my guide dog. The law has existed for over 25 years.'

Well, yes. And what's changed in those 25 years that we are seeing these reports? 

I can't remember seeing them growing up, can anyone else? Everyone knew that guide dogs were an exception. It didn't need to be spelled out to people. 

A spokeswoman for Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said that they had reached out to Dr Kavanagh and the issue had been 'raised at the highest levels' of the trust.
'We are taking this incident seriously, our organisation is fully committed to providing accessible services for everyone in our community, in a safe and welcoming environment,' she said.
'We have contacted the patient to offer our sincere apologies and importantly, to ensure that appropriate action will take place following an immediate internal review.'

Why the need for 'a review'? What, exactly, will you be reviewing? 

4 comments:

Ian J said...

Could this be a religious thing? members of one religion are known to hate all dogs!

Anonymous said...

We all know what religion the security guard will be a part of. It's a perfect storm of incompetence-security and muslim.
Jaded

ivan said...

The question should be 'was the guard one of the ethnics that think dogs are unclean? If so why is the hospital employing him?

JuliaM said...

"Could this be a religious thing? members of one religion are known to hate all dogs!"

I think we all concur with Jaded's assumption here...

"It's a perfect storm of incompetence-security and muslim."

Indeed!

"If so why is the hospital employing him?"

I expect they aren't, it's probably a third party contractor, so they can say 'Oh, it's not us!'...