The Elegant Simplicity of Total Transformation

When people ask me what I do for a living I say I'm a social worker, I am a social worker and proud of it.  This cartoon pretty much echoes a conversation I was part of the other day. Poor social workers!

When I was registering the birth of my son I wrote Social Worker in the 'occupation' box.   I left the registry office and kicked myself, I thought of future generations of Keiltys researching the family tree and wished I had written 'Renegade Priest' 'Gold Miner' or 'International Man of Mystery' something exotic.

I hope when future generations stumble upon the 2010 census they are amazed that their ancestor was a social worker during the 'golden age' of social work..........hmm..


Next week inkybinkybonkdaddyboughtadonkey
donkeydieddaddycriedinkybinkybonky or something equally puerile.

It's family allowance day!

 

 

We're all middle class now....I used to joke that my mam spent our family allowance on gin and cigarettes, she didn't she spent it on bibles and Val Doonican records.  Thankfully we do still have a tiny trace of universal benefits to spend on gin - and we still place so many conditions on the money that people need for support to get them to the gin shop.....

 

Next week - whydoesn'tvaldoonicanstandup?becausehe'lljustvaldoonican or something slightly less funny than that.





Chocolate Fireguards

It's a right laugh making these tales from serviceland.  The process for me is - what absurdities have I carried out as a result of the clutches of serviceland? Do I think other people might do it as well? Is it vaguely amusing? 

I've done some useless stuff, not what people wanted or needed.

Hopefully, this process is reversed for the reader - Ha Ha Ha.....Hang on that's true.......shit I've done that.......

Next week chocolate teapots or something like that.

The Insidious Genius of Capitalism

I don't really remember how the title fits; but the insidious genius of capitalism and partnership boards are inextricably linked in my memory from one of the the very early Valuing People conferences. I remember talking to a fantastic woman called Simone Aspis who said that Valuing People and it's associated 'involvement' was just a 'mechanism to control a movement' - her fear being that instead of a strong self advocacy movement taking what ever action they saw fit, people were being welcomed in to become part of the excuses.  Something good enters the big clunky sausage machine of government and comes out looking and feeling very different.  

I reckon there is a lot of truth in that prediction, when I supported a People First Group I remember making banners and trooping off to the Civic Centre uninvited, we felt liberated, powerful, active.  At the partnership board, I recall feeling important - seduced by the gleaming stainless steel of the sausage machine. What a load of old shit, you silly man.

I've been part of a few Partnership Boards and seen a few Powerpoints and colluded with  some discussions like this;

"What do you think of this decision we've made?"  

"Ooh that's a good point we'll take it to the executive board who make the decisions" 

"Who wants to join the Impenetrable PowerPoint Slide Accessibilty Forum?" 

"We need some volunteers to join our Emploment Workstream Stategic Plan Development Forum Sub Group (EWSPDFSG) - what? No we can't pay you, it'll mess up your benefits....."

Happy Health and Wellbeing Board and all the best for a co-produced New Year.

Next week some more self-righteous codswallop.

A Midweek Special - More Tools Than B&Q

It's quite liberating this blogging lark.  This post is a difficult one.  I am passionate about person centred planning, but sometimes it's used, by me as well, as a kind of stalling mechanism or can deflect us from the real work, blind us to the real issues, we've got some tools and we are going to use them!

One day, a few years ago in my job as a person centred planning coordinator, I googled 'WHAT IS THE POINT OF PERSON CENTRED PLANNING' It wasn't a good day.  The first google sponsored link was Castlebeck Care.  Top of the page.  Oh my word.

In a world of SNQs, HAPs, TLAP etc even person centred planning developed it's own alienating language, illustrated by this lazy cut and paste from an email to a friend a few years ago, on another bad day! 

.....Don't get me started - I knew about the 4+1 questions, then somebody mentioned the 4+2 questions and being the true professional I am, I decided to find out. To my relief - it was just the 4+1 plus another question. Perhaps it should really be called the 4+1+1 questions. Which of course adds up to 6. Then I saw that there were another set of questions called the 3+3 questions - I thought momentarily "I must find out what they are (other than the obvious answer of 6)" - that thought passed while I carried on with the almost superfluous work of trying to help people rally their allies and struggle towards an equitable life in the community....anyway then I discovered the '5 whys and the what' and just thought FECK IT.
Maths never was my strong point. I think the 5 whys just means asking why, a lot, to get to the heart of the problem.....Tom Jones would be quite good at it, although that particular 'thinking tool' would be called the '3 Whys and a Delilah'....

There I've said it.  Better Now.  Next week a little corker about something or other.

Using a Nut to Crack a Sledgehammer

Here’s another tale from serviceland. A funny picture, but like a lot of these tales not that funny really.   We do weird things, absurd things – they often follow a familiar pattern.  An injustice is uncovered, in this case people not getting equal health treatment.  So the well intentioned wheels of serviceland grind painfully into action.  Everyday solutions are considered but then quickly brushed aside.  We come up with a neat alternative;

We set up a working group which eats up months of people’s time, we invite some self advocates and family carers to give their time for free,  and spend the next year deciding on the best template to use for Health Action Plans, which we call HAPs (get in the bag).  11 months in we end up stealing one from the neighbouring local authority and changing the logo on the bottom. We’ve got a template, but who’s going to fill it in? Better employ a HAPs Co-ordinator........over lunch we leaf through ‘Death by Indifference’

Outside of serviceland we'd go to the General Medical Council, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and the European Courts of Human Rights but sometimes in serviceland they are eerily quiet......

That was a bit preachy, I’ve certainly played my part in building this weird land, and I’m not dismissing the changes brought about by health action plans.   Perhaps I shouldn’t write this on a Sunday.

Well the pressure is on! One a week, that’s 52 a year.  At least when I made my infamous ‘Sweary Poster Alphabet’ there were only 26........Next week the insidious genius of capitalism, or something like that.

The CQC series

Here we are again with another tale, a double header!  Poking gentle fun at the futility of regulating people's lives with a set of minimum standards, often too minimum in my opinion. Regulation didn't uncover the horror of Winterbourne and neither will it solve it - people caring enough to act uncovered it and perhaps there lies the solution.

Next week, who knows, I'll rummage around in the old hard drive and blow the dust off another cartoon - perhaps something about; 

personcentred14+outcomefocussedsingleplanwholelifelearningforlivingtransitionplanningonepageprofiles

or something like that.