Fear and Loathing in the Public Sector – Or Why I despise Oliver Letwin

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday I read this article about Oliver Letwin, who, according to the Guardian article

..warned that it was only through “some real discipline and some fear” of job losses that excellence would be achieved in the public sector.

Letwin added that some of those running schools and hospitals would not survive the process and that it was an “inevitable and intended” consequence of government policy.

A little background about Oliver Letwin. I’m always a little wary of using Wikipedia as a source but a few choice verifiable ‘quotes’  jump out.

He is the ‘architect of modern Conservative party policy’.

He would rather ‘beg than send his children to an inner city school’

Oh and earlier this year he said did not ‘want more families from Sheffield taking cheap foreign holidays’.

So do we have a picture of the man? The Eton-educated man who would not know the real effects of true fear in the workplace? That encompassing, sleep depriving fear of not knowing if you can afford your next mortgage payment or if your job will be there next week, next month or next year.

Does fear drive excellence?

Let me tell Mr Letwin exactly what it means in the working environment that I am based in.

I work in a Community Mental Health Team – our team has been decimated – actually to use that word literally, it is far worse than decimation – over the past two years. No, I don’t restrict the blame to the current government but include changes under the previous government in my criticism.

We have piles of unallocated ‘virtual’ files while we are pushed to the limits by increasing expectations regarding recording and inputting data which is supposed to ‘prove’ our efficiency.

We have had wards closed at the local hospital such that people who need emergency hospital admissions to psychiatric hospitals are placed away from their communities or on ‘inappropriate’ wards. I have police unable to provide assistance because their services have been cut.

Fear drives efficiency, he says? In our service we have been told there will be job cuts including possibilities of compulsory redundancies. Yes, I’m fearful.

The ‘consultation’ about what will actually be proposed for our jobs will probably be announced soon but we’ve known it has been coming for months. We’ve heard rumours. We’ve heard gossip. We’ve heard absolutely zero from our managers though. Nice. Way to generate lots of fear. All boxes ticked.

So what has this fear done for our efficiency? We are beyond demoralised. We have more people leaving and taking jobs elsewhere and  people are  taking longer periods of sick leave.

I know that Letwin wasn’t referring to the ‘front line’ staff in the public sector – oh no, he meant the managers because he is of a class and a mindset that probably finds it hard to hold a conversation on a human level with anyone who earns under £100,000 per year.

The distinction between ‘frontline’ and ‘backroom’ is a false one though as it is impossible that can operate without the other.

Hospital wards are closing. Cuts are being pushed through. We feel your ‘pressure’ Letwin. We feel your fear. But I could not possibly despise  you any more than I do for your ignorance and self-serving words that for me, epitomise what the Conservative Party and their ideology-driven cuts want to do to this country.

I would like to ask Letwin if he is happy to condone a country of Castlebecks. Well, you see, coming from someone who would ‘rather beg than send his child to an inner city school’ – he would never be in a position to actually know or understand the real concerns of people who are dependent on public services because he can always choose the private course for himself and his family.

I know he wants to ‘make a name for himself’. He likes to garner attention and oh, how clever he is to want to drive ‘fear’ into the public sector but that, to me, sounds close to cruelty.

Efficiency? I think we can do with  fewer MPs who feel the need to make claims for repairs to their tennis courts and to have their Agas serviced.

What kind of society have we become when we feel it is appropriate for a Government ‘Policy Minister’ to drive a disdain and almost bullying approach to a public sector that provides services he will never need?

Oh and the speech he made these remarks in?

It took place

at the London headquarters of KPMG, one of the biggest recipients of government cash, which won the first contract for NHS commissioning following the decision to scrap primary care trusts and further open the health service to private companies.

Nice work, Letwin. Roll on, executive consultancy. You are all in each others’ pockets.

Meanwhile I have work tomorrow.

You enjoy your private tennis court today.

Related articles

• You: Public sector workers need ‘discipline and fear’, says Oliver Letwin (guardian.co.uk)

Weekly Social Work Links 26

After my somewhat truncated break, I’m back (not that I ever went away but that’s another story for another day!).

Nectarine at Going Mental has to deal with too many consent forms. It’s an interesting take on the invasive nature of forms.

The Modern Social Worker has a piece religion and spirituality and their place in understanding cultural competence.

SocialJerk looks at dealing with the present rather than trying to fix the past. For me, that’s one of the keys of my work and the difference in the way I work and the way a psychologist might work with someone. I deal with the ‘now what?’.

Social Worker Mom is weighing up the pros and cons of her job – I really know that feeling – I do it quite frequently regarding career planning and looking at where I am versus where I want to be so can empathise wholeheartedly.

The Diary of a (Not So) Cheap Social Worker weighs up the pros and cons of moving out of her parents and finding an apartment of her own.

Here’s a great post that is from the week before last but it has some really useful links – as always from the Social Work Tech Blog – this post is about digital resources on the web.

And ever at the cutting edge,   Gamer Therapist looks at some specific uses for Google+.  I have to admit, I’m still finding my feet with Google+ – I am not wholly convinced by it yet but as always see potential and reserve a ‘wait and see’ policy – definitely worth reading the post if you want to find out more about it and a context in which it might be better used.

As a case in point, Dorlee publishes a post about evidence-based practice with information sourced from Google+.

And the Masked AMHP has posted a two part story – Part One here and Part Two here – subtitled Lenny : A Life and Death in the Mental Health System – as always with his posts, it is both poignant and valuable.  Very highly recommended and beautifully written.

How Not to Do Social Work looks at the new Advanced Social Work Professional role and whether it will do what is promised namely, keeping good practitioners on the front line.

A Case Manager’s Verse shares a story about the importance (and usefulness) of boundaries.

Peter at Child Protection Lessons draws on a report about links between mental health issues and child protection.

New BSW has been struggling with the heat – and finding it difficult to work. As for air conditioning, I’m glad it isn’t mandatory here! Sometimes I quite like Britain’s temperate climate..

The New Social Worker Blog also has talk of the heat in New York as well as the changes in state legislation which now recognises same sex marriage.

Congratulations to Doris at Hold My Hand who has just had her book – How Sweet Nursing Home -  about stories from working an a nursing home, published. It’s available via Amazon.com  but doesn’t seem to be available direct in the UK – still, quite an impressive achievement!

The last link and in the spirit of This Week in Mentalists ‘wild card’ is a non-social work post but a post from an ClaireOT about MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). I know some OTs are much more involved in this than social workers (judging from my ‘social media’ presence!) but I think it is a fantastic way to share resources and build information.

I am all for creating different kinds of social work/social care MOOCs. Maybe that’s another project for another day but do go and read Claire’s post if you have any interest in the possibilities of technology to create and grow learning collectively.

Castlebeck and CQC – Brief Thoughts

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I don’t have time for a long post today, just a few brief thoughts that came to me as I considered the unsurprisingly critical report on Castlebeck by the CQC.

Of course it’s easy to be wise after the event but it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth when the CQC comes down hard on Castlebeck after it required a TV undercover programme to uncover the widespread abuse at Winterbourne View. Where is our faith in the CQC? Well, personally, I didn’t have any to begin with but this report is not a solution, it smacks of a desperation to gain any kind of public recognition of the CQC itself rather than a real attempt to improve any system of regulation.

Regulation costs. Good regulation costs. In the week that the Ofsted is planning two week, unannounced inspections of childrens’ services, I ask why services for adults have been allowed to be neglected?

Yesterday I heard Paul Burstow on the radio on my way home. Two things struck me, firstly that he didn’t seem to have any understanding of the difference between a hospital such as Winterbourne View and a care home. He  seemed to be happy to blame local commissioners for the quality of the placements that they commissioned in hospitals without an understanding of what had led to this situation – namely chasing the lowest prices.  He still is banging on about his so-called Excellence scheme which, if anything, will make things worse as I wrote here. The Excellence scheme is opt-in and it is for companies to pay to be a part of. That is not about excellence, that is about money-making.

The CQC should be demanding excellence from every single service it inspects. Every day. It doesn’t. It demands sufficient paperwork every couple of years, at most. That is how it inspects. Actually, the CQC doesn’t inspect any more. It does not have enough people to inspect, control and check.

We have allowed companies like Castlebeck to rake in millions of pounds of profits on the back of providing poor care to vulnerable residents and patients. We have allowed this because noone is calling the CQC and the government to account for destroying adult care services.

The CQC criticising Castlebeck – of course it will but remember this is on the back of one television programme with hidden cameras. What about the thousands of homes without hidden cameras? Where are the checks? Where is the scrutiny? Where is the excellence?

Related articles

• Winterbourne View company’s failures at 11 more care homes (telegraph.co.uk)
• Castlebeck care ‘concerns’ raised (bbc.co.uk)

Sadness, Sympathy and Self

Sometimes, some days feel filled with sadness. I had one of those days this week. I don’t like to use the word ‘hardened’ but to put it this way, in over 10 years of frontline social work practice in some of the most deprived areas of the country and in the inner city, I’ve seen a fair bit of what society has to throw in terms of crumbs to those who are some of the most vulnerable members of it.

I look at the high rises that skirt around the cities and I see hundreds of lives being lived, families existing and stories being told. Some with hope and pride. Some with desperation and despair. All different, all a part of this community and society we live in. Poverty is real. Despair is real. The two don’t have to go hand in hand though.

I have a strong stomach and don’t bat an eyelid at all sorts of things when I walk into a house. I’ve probably seen worse.

In some ways, human misery is a part of my trade. Not always, of course, because there are the wonderfully reassuring smatterings of hope but difficult social circumstances and social deprivation run a theme through my career.

Although I often emphasis that mental ill-health is certainly no respecter of social class or financial assets, it is sometimes the level of deprivation and the difficulty and shame of poverty that I see that reminds me of the way that this political class intentionally ignores and isolates some members of the community.

Perhaps the most difficult part of  my job is wrapped up in the AMHP (Approved Mental Health Practitioner) role. It is a mirror into my ethical compass and while I enjoy the aspects that were involved in training and the support and development and even community feeling I have with other AMHPs, the process of making a decision about someone’s forced detention in hospital or a forced medication regime is never one that can be taken lightly and I don’t think it is one that should ever be ‘enjoyed’.  It is power, writ large. It is control.

Sometimes people thank you retrospectively for ‘making the right decision for me at the time’ but more likely that isn’t going to happen.

This week, I carried out a Mental Health Act Assessment in a hospital. That is very far from unusual. When I read the background and the circumstances, when I conducted the assessment and made the application for detention, which I did, I was overcome with a feeling of sadness for the action that I had taken and for the life that it predominantly affected.

For obvious reasons  I won’t go into details – anyway, even if I did they would possibly sound fanciful and unrealistic. To people who think that I have a ‘difficult’ job, I would say I  have had a walk-on part among some fine and very strong people who have had to contend with sickness, pain and family circumstances that have rolled all the dice against them in the lottery of life.

And when I sign the papers and write up the report, I don’t forget. I think, I reflect and I try to learn. What could we have done to prevent this situation from having occurred? Sometimes the answer is nothing but sometimes there might have been a different path, a different action or different guidance that might have led to a different outcome.

Sometimes, some days, I just feel overcome with sadness. Sadness at the injustices that are meted out by life, fate and circumstance. Sadness at the way that this society perpetuates and builds on those injustices of circumstance. Sadness at my role my own complacency in accepting that we have created such an unequal and unfair society.

In a community where people who live on state benefits are treated with an intention to humiliate and scorn and where the government not only condones and supports this, it tries to create further barriers between the ‘haves’ (with ‘have’ meaning working tax-payer) and the ‘have-nots’ (meaning those who depend on the state for income) it sickens me as I know that the rhetoric of ‘choice’ and  ‘community capacity building’  are empty words which mean nothing without the world of privilege. By privilege I don’t mean money, necessarily, but include the privilege of having family or friends around, the privilege of being well enough to build up networks of support, the privilege of being a part of a community. There is so much more to privilege that cash assets or income.

Sometimes I want to shout against the system that I am a part of. The social care system in this country is not ‘fair’ – it reeks desperately of unfairness and the pushing of ‘choice’ in very narrow terms onto a wide range of people who in reality have no choice whatsoever further marginalises and discriminates against poverty, incapacity and isolation.

But I continue in my job. I go into work and ‘buy into’ the system. In my own defence, I fight as hard as I can from the inside and I don’t forget the names, the faces and the stories of those whose lives touch mine.

I remember, I note and I learn and sometimes, that just fills me with sadness – but when I stop feeling that sadness, I stop learning, growing and trying to create a better world. One person at a time. In spite of the system I work in and with rather than because of it.

Why Deaf Awareness?

This is a guest post by Suzie  Jones – @suziejones2010 . Many thanks to her – cb

Why deaf awareness?

When you think about the people you meet and talk to in your everyday life, I wonder if it crosses your mind that one in every six has a hearing loss? That’s 10 million people in the UK and this number is growing steadily with exposure to loud noises at an ever younger age. Over half of people who are 60 or older have a hearing loss. (and one in six has a vision loss, that equates to approximately 2 million who may be partially deafblind).

So, what’s a deaf person? Most of you will think that someone is a deaf person because they use sign language. But you may be mistaken. There are an estimated 50,000 to 75,000 deaf people who use British Sign Language (BSL), the rest will be using hearing aids, cochlear Implants, speech and lipreading.

How would you recognise a deaf person? The most obvious clues are they don’t respond to noises behind them and may be looking at you intently when communicating. They’re lipreading, and some of them probably don’t realise they are doing it. If you see someone wearing a hearing aid, don’t assume they are hearing like you are. The majority of deaf people have what is called a perceptive hearing loss, this is permanent, and it makes sounds not just quieter, but distorted too. Have a listen to this simulation :

Blindness cuts you off from things, but Deafness cuts you off from people says Helen Keller. How true this is. Communication is probably the most important thing to a person. If you can’t communicate you get frustrated, lose your confidence, withdraw from socialising with others and some people become suicidal and think life is over. Friends and colleagues think the person is being rude, ignoring them on purpose, or is simply not interested in them anymore. Yet communication is needed to tell people what you want or need, how you feel and to take and give instructions. It is no surprise, then that deafness is a major cause of mental health issues.

So how can deaf awareness help social workers? The best deaf awareness training will equip you with the knowledge to understand exactly how deafness affects an individual and an understanding of the diversity of people who are deaf and how they react to it.

From those who think being deaf is wonderful, to the point where they celebrate the birth of a deaf baby, to those who literally fall apart when they lose all of their hearing, sometimes overnight. It will also give you skills to speak clearly, know tactics you can use to make yourself understood and show you why deaf people make so many mistakes in lipreading and appear to not understand you.

It’s not just about what you see on the lips, lipreading is only 30% accurate, the rest is intelligent guesswork and can be extremely tiring. Deaf awareness will also teach you about the support that is available to aid communication and access, from registered communication professionals to technological equipment, like loop systems, TextRelay and other aids.

Deaf people really do blossom when they are treated with respect and given the opportunity to partake in things that other people take for granted. Such things are opportunities to go to the local leisure centre, to go to social events, to attend a subtitled screening at the local cinema, or even a tour of the local museum.

If you know how to make these accessible, you’re on a winner. After all deaf people are legally entitled to these things, it’s a fact though that most of them still a luxury or out of arms reach for many of us.

Don’t think that we can “make do” using family or having a sympathetic friend to be with us to do this communication support. It’s not independence, it makes us “needy” and reliant on people. We have a right to make our own choices in life and the freedom to say so without being influenced by the opinion of others. That’s the difference between providing professional communication support or not.

So next time you see an opportunity to go on a course to learn about deafness, do take it up. Don’t think that by learning BSL only is going to make you “deaf aware”. It won’t. You need to know who you’re learning it for before you start. If you would like a course run in your local area, do get in touch with us, we are here to make things better and raise this much needed awareness throughout the UK. The more people who are privy to this valuable knowledge, the better we can all make life for the 10 million people who are living with deafness every day in silence.

Suzie Jones

www.deafcomm.co.uk

Break

In the absence of a summer holiday, I am taking a break from the blog for about a week of so because I have a few more projects I’m working on that I need to devote a bit of concentrated time on!

There will be some guest posts and some posts I’ve been preparing and have written already but they won’t be as related to current events as usual!

(of course, I reserve the right to pop back up at any time.. and will try to get the round-up posts done if I can)

Meanwhile if you would be interested in contributing a guest post, please contact me via fightingmonstersblog@gmail.com  and I’ll be back in about ten days. I’m also around on Facebook here , on Twitter and on Google + 

Enjoy

Selling the NHS – The Beginning

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Yesterday, while most of the media, fixated self-referentially on the Murdoch hearings and Cameron was flying back into the country,  Lansley began to dismantle the National Health Service.

As The Guardian reports

In the first wave, beginning in April, eight NHS areas – including musculoskeletal services for back pain, adult hearing services in the community, wheelchair services for children, and primary care psychological therapies for adults – will be open for “competition on quality not price”. If successful, the “any qualified provider” policy would from 2013 see non-NHS bodies allowed to deliver more complicated clinical services in maternity and “home chemotherapy”.

So we are led to believe that being open for ‘competition on quality not price’ will act to pat us on the head, reassure us, and direct us back to the ‘big media story’.

It worries me and it worries me for a number of reasons. Lansley’s words are couched in the words of ‘choice’ but I wonder exactly whose ‘choice’ it will be to make these commissioning decisions for which, no doubt, large amounts of money will change hands and profit-making publicly listed and private companies will be able to partake.

I admit to a bias having been exposed and having experience in the adult care sector which was subject to a similar rollout of competition which was supposed to increase choice and quality.

I’ve written many times about the end result and how it is one that has inherently favoured larger providers and companies that have been able to deliver on economies of scale rather than the poetic vision of small scale providers delivering local services. Those small scale providers were quickly priced out of the market and I fear this will happen again.

But wait, I hear, ‘quality not price’ Lansley says.. to which I reply, ‘nonsense’.

Why? Because there will probably be minimum standards of ‘quality’ that a service has to reach and beyond those, it will be a price competition. That’s what is supposed to happen in care – but who checks the standards? who will check the standards? How can we have confidence in a well-resourced and well-delivered service when regulators are so weak.

I do not want any private company to make a profit on my potential need for services for my back pain, my hearing or a child’s wheelchair.

Of course, making the publicly delivered service is clearly both too expensive and veering against the government doctrine of handing the healthcare to private companies.

I am sure the first few providers will intersperse local voluntary organisations with large multinational corporations in their delivery methods. Again, I point to the adult social care sector. We started along the path with the NHS and Community Care Act (1990) having a lot of local providers together with a few Southern Crosses and Care UKs. The local providers were eventually priced out.

Of course in the case of podiatry and hearing services as well as primary care psychological therapies, we can see these as almost discreet services. The ones that will potentially be easy to deliver and it will always be possible to find wonderfully successful outcomes for people choosing Boots rather than the local NHS for their podiatry appointments because it is more convenient. And I’m sure it seems to pave the way for Individual Health Budgets where people  are given the money to ‘spend’ on the services that they need. Choice you see. Choice is what it’s all about.

I turn back and look at what has happened in social care. Choice has been extended in wonderful ways to those with the loudest voices but in some ways those with the highest needs have been left behind. That is my main concern about the introduction of private into public.

For some people, the people in the comfortable middle classes of Chipping Norton, this is fantastic news – they can access their IAPT (or equivalent) by a local provider when they are feeling a bit down. They can have their feet checked in a local branch of Boots instead of having to travel into Oxford. All’s well.

Those will be the areas where both competition and choice are the highest.

My concern is that people who experience the degradation of poverty will have quieter voices and less choice because there may be higher multiples of health difficulties and choice is determined through power. I can’t help but think of people who are restricted in their choice by issues of capacity. Will they be given advocates to assist with the process or will they just be ignored? Will the choice by made by GPs who are courted by these private companies, just as they are currently courted by drugs companies?

How equitable will the ‘new’ system be?

If we are extending choice, we have to extend safeguards and checks.

If we are extending choice, we have to extend quality.

It hasn’t happened in social care – there is no reason to believe or trust that it will happen in healthcare.

It does make me wonder – Are we all in this together? Really? With the impact analysis projects that are carried out to ensure equality, I know there are provisions to look at ability and disability, gender etc but are social class and income level also considered?

And think – Lansley considers putting ‘quality’ in as a concession – he was happy to go ahead with the Bill and with a pure ‘cost’ factor. This is his so-called concession but it is no concession at all if we don’t have a definition of what ‘quality’ is. After all, the CQC – too look at the Health Care regulator – defines ‘quality’ on the basis of paper documents and paper inspections given to them by provider services.

If that doesn’t wave any red flags, I don’t know what will.

This is a government of interests rather than representatives. The shame is that the last government was too and likely all the future ones will be as long as we allow our heads to be turned more quickly by celebrity gossip than the tragedies unfolding in our adult care services.

Related articles

• Private sector firms invited to bid for £1bn slice of NHS (independent.co.uk)
• NHS services to be opened up to competition (guardian.co.uk)
• More competition planned for NHS (bbc.co.uk)

Light Touch Inspections, Winterbourne View and the CQC

There was a report on the Community Care website on Friday that the CQC were ‘calling time’ on their so-called light touch inspection ‘regime’ thereby rolling out potentially to annual inspections for adult services and care homes.

As the article emphasises

Bower said that the CQC had favoured a “proportionate, risk-based, light-touch” approach to regulation – in which services were left uninspected for up to two years in the absence of issues coming to light – but service users, providers and staff favoured more inspections.

“What people want, particularly people who use services, is for us to put our boots on the ground,” she said. “Inspections are a really positive quality assurance for providers.”

It’s hard to believe Bower would have been saying this if she had not been forced into the position by the Winterbourne View scandal where substantial abuse was uncovered.

A shame that she did not show more backbone and spirit in protecting the organisation that was handed to her to lead when all the cuts were coming hard and fast. It did not take a genius to work out that the only reason the so-called ‘light touch’ system was implemented in the first place was to save money. The problem is, that it has stripped the CQC of any credibility it might have had as a regulator.

And yesterday, this same CQC criticised Winterbourne View and it’s owners, Castlebeck had misled that self-same regulator about issues that where taking place and abuse that was taking place while they were inspecting the service.

Interesting to see the Independent highlight the issues which the CQC raised as criticisms of Castlebeck

Inspectors said they found people who had no background in care services had been working at the centre, references were not always checked and staff were not trained or supervised properly.

They added Castlebeck failed to meet essential standards, required by law, including:

:: The managers did not ensure that major incidents were reported to the Care Quality Commission as required;

:: Planning and delivery of care did not meet people’s individual needs;

:: They did not have robust systems to assess and monitor the quality of services;

:: They did not identify, and manage, risks relating to the health, welfare and safety of patients;

:: They had not responded to or considered complaints and views of people about the service;

:: Investigations into the conduct of staff were not robust and had not safeguarded people;

:: They did not take reasonable steps to identify the possibility of abuse and prevent it before it occurred;

:: They did not respond appropriately to allegations of abuse;

:: They did not have arrangements in place to protect the people against unlawful or excessive use of restraint;

:: They did not operate effective recruitment procedures or take appropriate steps in relation to persons who were not fit to work in care settings;

:: They failed in their responsibilities to provide appropriate training and supervision to staff.

While there is no excuse for such considerable failures, you’d think that a good regulator worth it’s proverbial salt should have picked up some of these issues through a thorough and robust regulation system.

Remember this is the same Bower who has promoted extensively the use of whistleblowing and family members as a ‘resource’ to augment their inspection processes. And then the organisation feigns upset when things are concealed to it.

How did we come to this? How did we, as a society, allow the organisation that regulates Health and Social Care to be stripped bare due to a resource-led decision and blunt its teeth so incredibly that people who depend on these services can have no confidence in its position to protect?

Money, cost, closed eyes and an ability to discharge responsibility for the care of those in our society who need particular protection has led for this situation to emerge.

Unfortunately I can’t go into details about some of the things I  have seen over the past week that makes me feel  much more strongly about these issues but suffice to say this – which, in itself – could even be too much.

I visited a care home which had an ‘excellent’ star rating. Yes, the stars are outdated but it is an easy way to check and remains so. There had been no inspections over the past year, at least, anyway. Excellent. And it looked it on the outside. My involvement was due to a large scale safeguarding investigation. Let’s just say it was very far from excellent and had been for a number of years, including when the last ‘excellent’ inspection rating had been given.

The inspections depend too heavily on self-reported data and too little on ‘feet on the ground’ and investigations skills. I sometimes wish I could try doing a really thorough, wholesale inspection of any given inspection service. I’ve worked in residential care. I know what I would look for. It angers and upsets me that self-reporting and the ‘light-touch’ were ever permitted for purely cost-related reasons.

But the CQC says it is increasing inspections – still it will not be close to previous levels. To see them criticise Castlebeck – all well and good – but it doesn’t take the responsibility for inspection and regulation away from them. It bears some resemblence to the social workers who are told they are more easily led by parents who conceal information from them. If the social workers are chastised for ‘believing’ why not the regulator.

It makes me angry. Maybe time to invest in regulation and inspection and demand better services that actually protect against, rather than mask poor care. It is ever more important.

Related articles

• Watchdog condemns abuse response (bbc.co.uk)
• Watchdog slams abuse home failings (independent.co.uk)
• Care watchdog denies red tape claim (mirror.co.uk)

Weekly Social Work Links 25

A day late this week (although my original intention which might not have been very clearly stated) was always that it would be a ‘weekend’ project rather than a specifically Saturday project! This was a fairly emotionally trying week for me at work with the shadow of an unexpected news which shook me a fair bit. I couldn’t really face doing a round-up post yesterday but here’s my attempt for today. Apologies to all those wonderful posts that I miss out – please feel free to add them in the comments.

DorleeM has a useful and interesting post/interview which, in its course, define ‘racial microaggressions’.  I think it reflects a lot of issues around self-definitions, respect and empowerment.  It’s interesting to see the different uses of language as well – which is an aspect I’m particularly curious about with the use, in the United States of the term ‘Persons of Color’ (spelling intentional) where we would, in the UK refer to Minority Ethic groups. I have a difficulty with definitions related purely to ‘ethnicity’ as it seems to imply there is an intrinsic difference but am equality uncomfortable with ‘color’ being a sole redefining factor as an extrinsic difference.  Maybe that’s a thought for a post in itself but I think back to the ways that language defines our thought processes.

This post is actually from last week but I am including it because it’s a new blog I found from a Social Work Student (about to qualify) from Australia who is writing about some of the challenges of finding a job – it certainly seems that some issues are international in scope.

And another new blog to ‘turn up’ is Inspired Social Work written by a Hospital Social Worker in Canada – she writes over two posts, some hints for if you ever find yourself in hospital – part one is here – and part two is here. Again, very transferable guidance!

If there’s one post that really riled me this week, it was this one. I don’t want to go into deep explanations as to why as I hope it is obvious but I think it is a poor indication of the expectations of students in the UK if they downplay theories and want to be solely taught how to process and complete tasks. As I said on Twitter, the training is a degree not an apprenticeship. Tasks can and should be taught by employers and we have too little genericism as it is.  It also makes me think about the purpose of university degrees. Are they to educate or to roll out ‘ready to employ’ graduates? There is an element of giving the rod rather than the fish here and we all have to take responsibility for our own learning but the theories give the profession important boundaries and guidelines – otherwise we just complete task after task without a wider context and that becomes dangerous.

How not to do Social Work expounds on the difficulties of keeping work fresh and the importance of training, reflection and resources.

S.Wangene  on ‘A Social Workers View’ writes about the moves to revise the international definition of Social Work.

Social Worker Mom identifies a problem and issue I’ve seen so many times but it never gets easier – Exercising the Right to Make a Bad Decision  . Although she has put it in the context of service users, I find myself doing it as well from time to time..

Meanwhile in Studentland – From Media to Social Work takes another step on the road towards her career change with her resignation from her job and  at a Deck of Many Things, thought turns towards Dissertation subjects – along with a useful analysis – coming from someone who is trained and worked as a scientist – on the differences between ‘research’ in science and social science.

Malcolm Payne poses an interesting question ‘Why do we expect the truth from case records?’  As I’ve had to do a lot of case recording analysis this week, it certainly rang some bells with me about assumptions and again, the language we sometimes use. Interesting.

Adventures of a (not so) cheap Social Worker comments on news that Charlie Sheen is going to be playing a Social Worker in a new TV show.

And Social Jerk in a timely fashion, spreads a bit of social work magic into Harry Potter’s obviously too prosaic world.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

A Lament for Lost Genericism in Social Work

It was reported over the week that the Government is to appoint a Chief Social Worker.  This is apparently a response to recommendations in the Munro Report and pressure from BASW (British Association of Social Workers). I have previously mentioned by concerns about the appointment of a Chief Social Worker. I think the obsession with professionalism and status doesn’t help social work practice and what will actually help practice is a wider and broader input in education and research roles, higher ethical conduct and a greater role as advocates for those who may not have the louder voices so we can support and assist as well as control and dominate.

The idea of the appointment of a ‘chief’ makes me uneasy. It makes me uneasy that the impetus for change in social work started in Childrens’ Services and remains in Childrens’ Services. The information comes from the Department of Education. Munro was a lost opportunity for the social work profession as a whole because the changes that take place in childrens’ services will likely have a knock on effect as adult services are ignored and proverbially hung out to dry as we can’t pull the heartstrings in the same way.  The issues are not the same but poor delivery, training and systems can have equally tragic results. While it might not be obvious to most people, a dysfunctional social work profession leads to increased managerialism and bureaucracy and a quieter voice for those who do need support and assistance through difficult periods of their lives.

People are not ‘children’ or ‘adults’. They don’t have ‘learning disabilities’ or ‘physical disabilities’ in isolation of the families,societies and communities they live in. By specialising, I fear that we, as a profession, have lost too much and have narrowed our collective focus to become less professionally and more functionaries of our employers.  Divide and rule. Drip feed our professional knowledge and awareness and we become more malleable tools.

Programmes like ‘Step Up To Social Work’ seem to ignore any kind of genericism in the degree and in the profession and are placed in the ‘Children’s Workforce Development Council’.  I think it offers and presents social work poorly as a profession in its entirely which has one facet when in fact there is so much richness that is lost by having just one focus.

Placements in Childrens’ services are often seen as the ‘gold standard’ and certainly in our local authority, the pay is higher on exactly the same grade between a social worker in adult services and one working in childrens’ services.  This is a demand/supply issue, I suspect. It’s harder to retain social workers in childrens services or at least in child protection teams.

I truly think that my practice would be enhanced by a broader brief. I have a particular specialism, working in mental health, but I think that there are so many issues that I work with that would be valuable if I worked in a less siloed manner – if I could get more experience in childrens services.

The tide has been rolled out too far now and we are being increasingly compartmentalised as professionals. Children and Adults. Physical Disabilities and Mental Health. Academics and Practitioners.

Someone asked me a while back, via Twitter, I think, why they should be ‘forced’ to do a placement in adult services when they KNEW they wanted to work with children. They seemed to resent any part of the course which wasn’t wholly focused on the needs of children.

Is that really the kind of training and profession that society wants? I think it is. I hear about universities increasingly forcing social work students to specialise and I think that they those universities have lost the ethos of the profession and the reasons that the course is in place. The courses should not need to spit out ready-to-practice social workers,  but it is the first step along a long journey of professional education. We become ‘the system’ that we are fighting if we follow the narrow career paths that it defines.

Equally, with people who move from University, to NQSW, to Consolidation Module to Advanced Practitioner (or whatever the equivalent Post Qualification Framework is called now) without any break – one PQ course after another without pause for work experience and reflection – lose the entire purpose of a post-qualifying framework but because local authorities tie post-qualification modules to pay and to ‘status’, it forces people through these courses without any hint of consideration for professional development over a career.

It’s just a race to who can get their PQ award quickest.   Picking up qualifications and being marked and scored on everything seems to have an overemphasised value in this society. These kinds of processes damage practitioners who become moulded too quickly without the time to gain experience and practice knowledge. Everything has to be examined and assessed and reflection becomes something to be resented as it is always assessed, rather than a part of a practitioners personal toolkit to use to inwardly build practice without ‘reward’.

I feel quite resentful that the current framework has forced me to choose between modules on the Adult Services path and those on the Mental Health path. As for childrens services, I’d never get a look in. So my specialisms narrow further and further and the ability to move between services also diminishes.

Back to the Chief though. This ‘Chief’ will only have one ‘path’ that they have taken ‘to the top’ or maybe, they were fortunate to have worked in a generic manner as was before I qualified. Maybe they will have just moved between different management and executive posts on their way ‘to the top’.

I worry that there are already too many attempting to be Chiefs and this is just a way for the government to absolve itself from political responsibility for decisions made in social work.  We will have a Head of the College of Social Work, a CEO of BASW. Why would what a ‘Chief Social Worker’ have any relevance to me, as a front line social work practitioner? It is bound to be someone who last saw front-line practice at least a decade ago if not longer – maybe was involved in some kind of management or academic ‘get out’ clause so they didn’t have to get their ‘hands dirty’ with the real work and systems that are currently in place.

I don’t understand BASWs promotion of the idea  above all the other issues that affect social work.

If someone can explain to me how having an English Chief Social Worker will help me and the people I work for, I’ll be happy to concede  but currently it seems to make absolutely no different apart from the ego and salary of the person appointed.

As for a lament for lost genericism, I know it is a call into the wild that will never be answered. We have travelled too far along that path and seem to be specialising more and more rather than broadening our knowledge bases and our briefs. I think we have lost a part of our collective voices in the process though.

Chief or no Chief, I can’t see that being regained easily.