ALL Swindon Council staff have been blocked from logging on to the anti-council website set up by social services whistle-blower, Deborah Rees.
Within hours of the Adver-tiser's front-page story hitting the streets on Friday, the council's senior managers had set up a firewall to stop Civic Offices staff from accessing her site, swindonboroughcouncil. com.
But in spite of their obvious displeasure at her actions in telling her story to the paper, nobody at the council spoke to Ms Rees on Friday as she worked through her 10am to 5.45pm shift as normal in the council's learning disabilities department.
Ms Rees spoke out last week after five years of working at the social services department in Swindon, which she claims is ruled by a culture of arrogance.
She claimed that she spotted serious problems with the care services the council was provid-ing soon after joining the new unitary authority from Wiltshire County Council.
But when she told senior managers of her fears, she claimed they failed to act upon her warnings and labelled her a troublemaker.
What followed was years of being shunted from one job to another, despite being told her work was of high quality. She felt victimised and suffered bouts of stress as a result.
She also told the Adver how she had grave fears for the future of the service in Swindon, as she claimed the department is racked by in-fighting, an inability to collect reliable data, high staff turnover and a poor attitude to users and carers.
Ms Rees has told her story in even greater detail on her website, which includes sections on The Swindon Story, My Story, and gives a forum for others to add complaints or tell their stories.
It also includes the depart-ment's dreadful report from the Audit Commission and Social Services Inspectorate, which backs up much of what Ms Rees claims. The report, published in June, said the department was not receptive to listening, could not learn from its mistakes and needed to change its culture.
It said there was widespread buck-passing among managers, a culture of jobs for the boys and that staff had raised issues about discrimination.
The website even gives the council an opportunity to a right to reply, but the section currently remains empty.
Ian Thompson, the council's director of resources, who is ultimately responsible for personnel, said that the firewall had been set up to prevent staff from logging on to the site from their council computers.
He said: "We felt it was appropriate to do that given the content of the website.
"There are criticisms of the council and issues there that we wouldn't necessarily agree with and we didn't think it was appropriate for staff to be accessing it from the council's PCs.
"There is nothing to stop staff accessing it from home, obviously."
He said the council was "holding its counsel" on speaking about Ms Rees' story until internal matters were resolved.
"We are still considering our position with regard to this lady," he said.
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