'Vindictive Cow' Voicemail For Grieving Mum

A voicemail left for the mother of a teenager who died while under the care of a heavily-criticised NHS trust is being investigated.

The message calling Dr Sara Ryan a "vindictive cow" was left on 29 April at her workplace voicemail by a woman who said she worked for Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Ryan's son, Connor Sparrowhawk, who was an in-patient at Slade House care home in Headington, Oxfordshire, died as a result of drowning after an epileptic seizure in the bath.

Connor - affectionately nicknamed Laughing Boy or LB for short - died on 4 July 2013 and his mother has continued to campaign for a change in the system which, she says, let her 18-year-old son down.

The message said: "I work for Southern Health and I feel awful that you lost him. I'm so sorry that you have done, it's tragic, and I hope you find some closure after the report, the issue of the GM CQC report today, but I do think you are being very vindictive.

"I think you are a vindictive cow, on TV all the time, slating the NHS and Southern Health.

"With your intelligent background you know as much as anybody else knows that Southern Health only took over those units in Oxfordshire recent, you know the recent months before your son died.

"You know, with your background, it takes a while to make changes in anywhere and I think now you've just become a (inaudible) and you want some attention but you are vindictive and you are unpleasant and you are a nasty cow."

Responding through her online blog, Dr Ryan said: "The call is vitriolic, nasty and beyond inappropriate. But it's simply part of a set of improbably, inappropriate, nasty and worse responses we've endured since LB died.

"Evidence of a system in which defensiveness, bullying and family crushing flourishes."

A Southern Health spokesman said the call was being investigated and asked anyone with information to come forward.

A report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) published last week found the trust was still not protecting patients from the risk of harm.

That follows on from an independent investigation published in December that the trust had failed to investigate hundreds of deaths since 2011.

Health Minister Alistair Burt admitted the report made for "disturbing reading".