GUEST BLOG: Dave Macpherson – Open Letter to Board of Waikato DHB re: Nicky Stevens

Dear Board members

We have not heard from the Waikato DHB for many months in relation to the ‘serious incident review’ your organisation is required to undertake into the death of our family member Nicky Stevens, while he was in your care as a compulsory inpatient under the Mental Health Act.

Your delay in starting any investigation is appalling, and has added to our family’s distress; worse, your communication to us from anyone in a leadership position is non-existent.

Your attitude and actions are in stark contrast to those of the NZ Police, who similarly made serious mistakes in regard to Nicky and his death, but who have ‘owned’ their part of the problem, and have communicated appropriately and frequently with us.

It appears you are relying on senior management advice in your stonewalling; if so, that advice, and your inaction, is as flawed as your care for Nicky was.

Below is a link to a media article and video footage, fairly reporting the findings against Police by the IPCA in relation to Nicky. You would do well to read the article, and to watch the Police on video owning up to their part of the problem:.

There are many other examples of media coverage of Nicky’s case in recent days.

As Board members, you are charged not with blindly accepting the advice of managers intent on keeping a bureaucratic ‘lid’ on bad news, but on acting fairly on behalf of the whole community to ensure good provision of public health services.

There has been no fairness shown to our family by the Waikato DHB.

To claim, as your Chair has, that your Chief Executive has got the “delegated authority” to ignore and deny our requests for action and answers, over 14 months after Nicky’s death, is a/. cowardly, and b/. misleading, in that at any time you could remove such ‘delegated authority’ if indeed it exists. It is time you stopped hiding behind bureaucracy and delivered us some answers.