Outsourcing Governance and Oversight in Social Services: Why CRB decision by Court of Appeal is a landmark decision for common sense.

Lord Dyson’s Court of Appeal decision this week on CRB checking is a landmark decision for common sense and proportionality.

When I qualified as a social worker CRB checks had not yet come in. Over the course of my career I have seen CRB checking become a vast industry consuming large amounts of time and money and in my opinion doing very little to protect vulnerable people.

Just to give a sense of how ridiculous the situation has become I will relay an anecdote from my own experience. A number of years ago I was teaching a social sciences subject at a University. This is not a job that requires a CRB check (not yet anyway) and students on the course do not automatically need to be police checked. One of my third year students was going to do a dissertation on respite care for a vulnerable client group. The participants in her study were going to be residents of a respite care facility where she already worked part time. As part of the condition of ethical approval for the study the University  (not my current employer) insisted that the student be Police checked even though she had already been Police checked to work in the respite care centre. Not only that, but because I would potentially have access to data about vulnerable people( though this was largely of the nature of whether they were enjoying respite) I would have to be Police checked too. This was despite the fact that I would never set foot in the respite centre or learn the real names of any of the participants on the study.

 At the time it did not worry me unduly because I have no history of any type of convictions or cautions. However, what if I had? Supposing I had committed some sort of indiscretion as a young man such as being drunk or disorderly or possessing cannabis? If this had been the case then I would have had the embarrassment of having this revealed to colleagues in my organisation- albeit that they would be expected to keep it confidential.

Over the last few years I have changed jobs several times and had to be Police checked every time, even though none of the PBS would involve me having direct, unsupervised contact with social work service users. If I had had a minor offence then I would have had the embarrassment of having to disclose it every time I applied for a on for the rest of my life and having to pray that people made sensible judgements about its significance.

I can't imagine what that feels like. The right to have a job is a very fundamental human right. Many will say that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. They also argue that most employers will make fair decisions about the significance of spent convictions. But what is a fair decision about an old conviction and how do employers make a fair decision. When Police checks were introduced they were only for workers who had substantial unsupervised access to children. This was based on strong evidence that offenders with a sexual interest in children were likely to reoffend and would seek jobs which would allow them to get access to children.  However, what is the evidence that people seek jobs working with adults to re-offend? Do reformed shoplifters look for jobs as personal assistants to rob the people they care for and if they do then how many cases are there of something like that actually happening? How many people are we actually protecting by the amount of time and resources which are put into Police checking. Would that money be better spent on supervision of staff or advocacy for service users?

Then there is the issue of how individual employers try to make sense of previous convictions. Nobody would put someone with a serious sex offence in a job in personal social services- but what about a fraud conviction from 10 years ago or a minor shoplifting case from 3 years ago? Is Anthony Worrell Thompson a danger to all vulnerable people because he stole something from Tescos a couple of years ago? Does this reveal a brief episode of psychological distress leading to a very bad decision or does it reveal a tendency towards other criminal behaviour. I don't know the answer to these questions because I am not a criminologist. I don't know the criminal profile of people who go on from minor offending to serious exploitation of others. Neither do HR staff in employers all over the country. They will try to come to common sense decisions but their decisions will also be based in part on their predisposition to giving others second chances, or on their prejudices about certain kinds of offenders. They will also be mindful of the fact that if one of their employees does commit an offence on the job or some sort of malpractice then the media may slate them for employing someone of ‘bad character’ even if what they have done is unrelated to the previous offence. There is therefore pressure in a rick aversive culture to not take chances on people.  

I really feel for young people who have or explain when they apply for a place on a social work course how they got into some scrape outside a pub after high jinks with their friends years ago and ended up getting arrested. They will have to go on explaining such an incident for the rest of their career.

There is also the issue that social work ought to be a profession in which we welcome people who have turned their life around. People who have been in care as young people are disproportionately likely to have convictions as children due to the fact that Police are often called to events at assessment centres in situations where they would not be called to a family home.

We also need to remember that the criminal justice system does not treat all types of people equally. There is evidence of women being sentenced more severely than men for the same types of offences. Institutional racism in Police forces is well documented in literature. There are also potential class differences in outcomes. Working class children may not realise that a caution will go on their record. Children from richer backgrounds may realise, or be advised, that the Police may decide not to prosecute a minor offense and that they are better off refusing a caution.

As social workers and social work educators we are aware of the imbalance in how people are treated in the criminal justice system though we judge information from the Police database as though no biases or prejudices exist.

Then there is of course the issue of what a Police check does not reveal. The person who got caught shoplifting  10 years ago may have learned their lesson and reformed or they may just have got better at stealing and not been caught again. Many people who are sexual predators go on offending for years without a single conviction. CRB information can give a false sense of security about a candidate for a job. It only reveals convictions. The usual response to this point is that people say that we need better Police checks and we need to include intelligence and suspicions which the authorities or employers had about people. A sort of Minority Report situation where we can spot the offenders in advance using Police data.

People point to the Ian Huntley case or Jimmy Saville as people who might have been stopped with better use of Police data. Actually there are much more efficient and simple ways of dealing with such situations which don't involve computers. Ian Huntley would not have been employed as a caretaker if his employer had taken the simple step of asking for a reference from his previous employer. As for Jimmy Saville we can ask why a Disc Jockey ( albeit one with a clean record) was given unlimited access to children's hospitals, psychiatric units and hospital morgues.

The real keys to keeping service users safe are proper supervision and oversight of staff, good whistle blowing procedures and advocacy for service users to ensure that their concerns and complaints are listened to and investigated properly.

I suspect that the real appeal of Police checking lies in people's faith in computers as a magical source of information and insight. Just as Willow, in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer who could google all sorts of arcane information about demons, many of us think that Police computers will issue forth all sorts of secret data on suspicious characters. It is actually a way of outsourcing responsibility for good selection processes and the ongoing safety of service users.

The real path to safe practice I feel lies in how we supervise staff while they are working. There is a role for CRB checks but the present level of Police checking is neither necessary nor sufficient to the role which most of the sector thinks it ought to play at present.

Selection and supervision of staff who work with sensitive clients is a complex and ongoing process. It cannot be outsourced to a police computer.

Let’s reform this process, get some sense of proportion and stop outsourcing our responsibilities.

Why the Truth Behind Rotherham Makes the Council's Public Behaviour Even more Deplorable

Earlier last night there was an article published on Guardian website which revealed that there was a great deal more to the Ukip fostering story than the couple's membership of Ukip. A number of tweeters are now using this as justification for why it was not right to condemn the intial decision. In fact, many people replied to my original blog post and tweets with a similar view. I had apparently taken a view based on limited information while they chose to refrain from judgements based on their trust of fellow social workers to make sound judgements. No doubt they now think that my views in my earlier blog are now refuted.
Well, I actually feel even more justified than before for my original blog and I think the truth which is emerging makes me feel even more justified in my anger about how Rotherham has handled this. If you want to know what the bigger picture is then read the Guardian article before what follows.

1. Saying that we should trust council officials to make sound judgements without scrutiny and oversight flies in the face of many experiences where people int he public trust made very unsound judgements. It was public officials who gave Jimmy Saville ( an entertainer) a set of keys to Broadmoor and unlimited access to children's hospitals. It was public officials who lied about the victims of the Hillsborough disaster to cover their own bad practice. These are not isolated incidents. Anyone on the public service needs to be accountable and should always tell the truth or as much of it as they can to the press which is a legitimate vehicle for public discussion in a democracy. This is the only way we can ensure oversight, accountability and good practice.
I suspected that there would be other reasons for the Rotherham decision. However, I made my judgement about their practice based on what answers they gave to the media because that is the only way I, or anyione else could form a judgement. I accept that I can't know all the details of private matters but I should at least be told that the type of factors which would have influenced the decision.

2. It is important to note that the foster parent couple are partners of the council in their care of children. As such they should be treated with respect. I think if they had been told that the decision was to made due to cultural sensitivities with the community and as a result of fears that the placement was not secure then they would have probably accepted what the council said and not gone to the media.

3. Accepting that the issue had gone into the public domain, it is important that the public are given enough of the real story that they can form a judgment about he validity of the decision. The Guardian has now published enough details of the story to help the public form a judgement without betraying confidentiality or risking the children. The council could easily have done the same and in the process informed the public about fostering and it's complexity.

4. Some commentators have complained about 'political interference in social work decisions' or that the story has been spun for political purposes. These are often the very same people who normally argue that social work is a political activity and that social workers should pursue political goals in their work.
Social work is a political activity, but I think that should be pursued within openness, and with respect for the public and the democratic processes of this country. An important tool the political debate is the media. Social workers need to communicate what they do and how they do it in a non- elitist way which accepts that ordinary people CAN engage with complex ideas if given the opportunity to do so. Some people think it is about them enforcing their idea of what the right politics are on other people and closing down access to debates. Using jargon and saying that issues are too complicated is patronising and excluding of ordinary people.

5. Social work only exists as a paid activity because politicians were convinced that this was worthwhile and the public has supported the idea. It's continued existence as a state activity is dependent on the public accepting that social workers do a worthwhile job in a fair and transparent way. The profession would do well to remember that.

Stop Defending the Indefensible

 

I have been a social worker for over 20 years. Over the years I hear my colleagues complaining about the bad media image which social work  has. I almost never agree with these views. I take the view that it is up to social work to put forward a positive image. The ‘media’(or at least the quality media) is not made up of people who have it in for social work. It is made up if people who have to fill column inches with stories which are of legitimate public interest. They can only give two sides of a story of they are given two sides. Even the much vilified banking industry can get its act together to put forward a positive spin. Often apologists for the poor image presence of the profession will say that social work departments cannot reply to adverse accusations in the media because of ‘confidentiality’. This is a lame excuse. It is always possible to reply to a story in general terms of reply and state general principles. If people have gone to the media then it is at the very least possible to refute false statements that people have made. In fact, it is essential that this is done from the point of view of accountability and public interest. Imagine a situation where members of the public made untrue accusations about  being falsely arrested or held without trial by the Police. If the Police refused to respond to these accusations then the public trust in them would be undermined.

Social work services including fostering are public services paid for through taxes. It is entirely appropriate that the public should have an interest in how and why decisions relating to how services are provided. If we cant defend our practice then the public will make judgements in the informaation which they have and the democratic process will translate these judgements into policies and law.

Case in point the Rotherham fostering case. Some social work tweeters have made comments such as ‘They can’t respond because of confidentiality’ or ‘There must be more to it than that’. A few people have even said to me that they think  that UKIP members shouldn’t foster because the party is against multiculturalism.

 

Lets examine these ideas:

1. Ukip is against multi-culturalism. This does not automatically mean that everyone in the party takes this view. I have yet to meet a member of the Labour party who agrees with the decision to invade Iraq. Membership of the labour party does not automatically indicate that someone is in favour of carrying out illegal wars on trumped up reasons or joining in a neoconservative crusade in the middle east. I imagine the couple were asked about their views in their fostering assessment.

2. The story has been invented by the media. The Rotherham head of childrens services was interviewed by The Sunday Times and other media. She herself said that the decision to remove the children was based on the couples membership of UKIP. Unless she was hypnotised to say this by Rupert Murdoch then it is difficult to see how the story has been trumped up by the media.

3. There are other reasons and they council cant reveal them without compromising confidentiality. If this was the case then why tell the media a reason that is not true or at least only partially true without saying that there are other reasons. If there are good reasons for the decision then why mention one that is spurious. It would have been better to say nothing at all or say that they are prevented from speaking at this time.

4. The council cant respond to what the couple is saying. Nonsense. They can at the very least say that couple is not telling the truth if the reasons the couple is giving to the media are incorrect. In fact they have done the opposite and verified the couple’s version on the media- quite unashamedly I think.

5. The couple are bigoted. I have just seen them on BBC News saying that they joined UKIP because they disliked sovereignty being ceded to Europe. I tend to believe them. I think that is probably the case for many members of this party-thats why its called UK Independence party. Why could the council not just have checked this out with them.

This is a major faux pas for social work. The public have heard social work representatives in the media saying that someone can be prevented from  fostering eastern European children just because they belong to a certain political party. Whatever Guardian reading social workers might think this is not a fair reasonable point of view in the minds of most members of the public. It does not seem fair or reasonable to me as someone who believes in freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

Foster parents should be evaluated on the quality of their care and on their stated values and beliefs in so far as these are pertinent to the role. They should not be judged on assumptions about what they think or on mindreading. I have recently consulted service users about what they want from social workers. They are interested in the values and behaviours of workers- not on who they vote for.

Rotherham has made us all look ridiculous. They have let the profession down. They are either incompetent as a fostering authority or incompetent at PR or most likely both. The winners in this will be UKIP. The losers will be social work. The profession has handed its enemies another reason to exclude them from decisions about fostering and adoption policy. Yesterday's Times claimed that the situation will lead to a change in the law.

Stop defending the indefensible.  If you value the profession stand up for fairness and common sense.

Social Media and the Future of Higher Education

Social media are not going to enhance higher education- they are going to completely transform the relationship between student and teacher and shift the balance of power in the education system.
Social media such as Facebook have already changed many of the aspects of how we relate to other people, who we can form relationships with and the types of things we share with them. Many businesses are now using social media to interact with their customers in different ways and use them as brand ambassadors or answer their concerns and complaints in a much more direct way. Entertainers and writers are also using social media to interact with their public in more direct ways. The other day I got a direct tweet from an author whose books I read in repsonse to a tweet I made about the work of another author. That type of interaction would have been highly unlikely a few years ago.
The education industry ought to be at the forefront of embracing new technologies. Sadly this has not been the case and I think the reason for this is fear about how transformative and disruptive the technology is. However, HE institutions will have to use social media or suffer serious consequnces.
To illustrate why I think this will happen I will give the example of downloads and the music industry. In 1994 I participate in an amazing concert in London by the artist Todd Rundren. The concert tied in to his No World Order album, an interactive piece of music released on a computer disc and an interactive cd which aloowed the listener to make their own remixes of the material and control the mood tempo etc of the music. For those of you are, like me, social work professionals this could be looked at as a form of personalisation- the listener being in control rather the artist. Rundgren figured that new technology would completely change the balance of power and control between the producer and consumer and that neither artist nor publisher would be able to control how people experienced or distributed music. Rather than fight this, he embraced its potential. The concert itself was completely interactive with members of the audience being allowed on stage to dance and play instruments. At one of the shows in America he apparently decided to leave the stage for a while and be partof the audience while audience members ran the show- playing his songs.A little later before the emergence of Napster, he tried to interest record companies in releasing legal downloads. They refused point blank stating that it would interfere with their CD sales. Now of course there are no CD sales and most of these record companies are in bankrupcy or liquidation.
A similar fate faces many HE institutions if they do not start modernising now.
Two forces are currently facing HE in the UK. One is the threat of competition from the private sector who are going to be able to offer degrees. The other is a fall off of student numbers because of the high tuition fees which will be charged as a result of these fees being moved from a loan/taxpayer split to being completely financed by loans to the student. Social media can either offer a vehicle for the first threat or a way for Universities to stave off the second threat if they embrace it.
Currently higher edication is one of the few industries which operate in much the same way as it did in ancient Greece. Certainly, new technologies such as Blackboard have been introduced. However, they are always considered to be in support of traditional forms of learning rather than a replacement for them. Furthermore, the quality of the technology used in education is inferior to that which people enjoy in other areas of their lives. I know of lecturers who have successfully carried out much more lively debates with their students on Twitter than they have managed to in the discussuion forums on Blackboard. People are used to frictionless connectivity and so an interface which requires people to navigate through about 6 pages before finding that nobody is online is not going to be very popular.
Social media have the opportunity to connect educators instantly with their students and also connect them and their students to a wider body of authors, educators, students in other institutions and (for social workcourses) the wider public and people who use social services. They also have the ability to connect HE instituions with all of their former allumni and other partners such as employers, providers of placements etc. If a tool like Facebook or Twitter was offered to HE institutions for the first time they would proabably be willing to pay a lot of money for it. And yet these tools are available now and are completely free. Why are they not being taken advantage of?
The issue for many educators is the lack of control which they will have in these debates and discussions or what ultimately is done with the content if it is available to outside parties. However all of these outside parties are stakeholders of education and they have a legitimate right to take part in debates about good poractice without their participation being stagemanaged and controlled. Students also have the right to take advantage of the educational opportunities available to them through free interaction with others.
Certainly, there will be risks assocated with embracing new media. However, these risks are overwhelmingly trumped by the lost opportunities from not engaging with them.
For HE providers the greatest risk in the next 10 years will come from new private competitors. These competitors will not have the overheads which Universities currently have. They will be lean operations using high quality syndicated material delivered by podcasts and backed up with instant contact to tutors through mobiles and skype. Students will connect with and meet each other through social media. These institutions will focus their resources on aspects of the student experience which add value (flexibility, accessibility, interactivity) and ignore those aspects which are not perceived as adding value.
If you think this sounds far fetched then I suggest that you read the article 'Disrupting Higher Education' which appeared in Harvard Business Review July/August 2011 issue. It states: "State institutions are gradually being defunded by taxpayers. Liberal Arts Colleges are struggling for survival. Upstart for-profit colleges are, despite mis-steps on the rise." Essentially, the changes I am describing are already ocuring in the USA. Prestigious Ivy League Universities are able to retain their traditional approach but HE institutions which do not have their USPs are being overtaken by ditital-savvy alternatives. According to the article tuition fees are on a downward trajectory as these new hi- tech forms of education are much cheaper. I would suggest that the coalition Govt in the U.K. has deliberately transferred the burden of fees onto students so that they will drive prices down. This change is partnered with a liberalisation of who can actually provide HE. While fees remain high this will provide opportunities for private institutions to come in under existing market prices and still make profits.
Existing HE providers cannot afford to look on at social media and tut tut about loss of control,loss of privacy etc. Young people have already weighed up these issues and concluded that benefits outweigh the disadvantages. Consumers made a similar calculation in relation to music downloads and decided that they did not want their choice restricted, even though this often meant breaking the law before the advent of legal downloads.
It need not be a bad outcome, however, for our 'non-Ivy League' Universities. They do have real strengths in terms of their engagement with local communities and local industries, and in their reputation for social inclusion and expanding opportunities. However, they will need to build on these strengths by modernising how they do business, reducing costs, and embravcing technologoies which will enhance their students' experience of HE.
Social media will radically transform the relationship between lecturer and student. They will blur the boundary of where the classroom starts and finishes, who takes part in a student's educational experience and who holds the expertise and power. This is its stength and a challenge to engage with rather than something to fear.
I am very excited about this. I did, after all, go into education to help people to think for themselves and continue my own experience as a learner.
Every other aspect of our lives has changed radically as a result of technology-education just has some catching up to do-but the psychological changes and the change in power relationships will be more profound than the changes in technology.

Mutualisation and Privitisation of the Public Services

David Cameron is quoted on the Independent website today as stating that he wants to take 1 million workers out of the public sector and into employee owned mutuals. Should we be afraid-very afraid- or is this a wonderful opportunity?
Well, in better times, under different circumstances it might be a good opportunity- However, in the present climate I am very skeptical.
The theory behind mutuals is that if workers are independent of large scale public bodies then they can be freed uo to be more creative and less cautious. Also, since the workers are essentially working for themselves they will be more committed and more willing to pitch in to get things done- relationships with service users will improve and sickness absence will go down. There are, apparently, examples of this happening.
However,there are a number of issues which should, rightly make employees cautious about any transfer of their employment rights.

1. Trust. The present Govt has been hostile towards the public sector-rhetoric about dependency cultures and gold-plated pensions reveal a cynicism about the public sector and the work which people in the public sector do.

2. Previous form on privitisation. Previous bouts of privitisation under the conservatives and new labour have been ways of achieving wage reductions by the back door. Services which are contracted out by local authorities such as home care are done so at hourly rates so low that they could only be achieved by paying the workers very low wages. By contracting out these services local Govt can avoid being accused of paying low wages since the workers are not on their payroll. The cost of human services is largely made up of labor costs so the only way of significantly reducing the cost of services is by paying workers less. Workers have some grounds for being suspicious that any transfer in employment will involve cutting back their pay and conditions.

3. The present economic situation. This is not a good time to be launching any type of business, mutual or otherwise whose main customer is the Government or customers who are paid for by the Government. In times of expansion, we might have confidence that there would be continued and/or increasing demand for our services. A period of contraction in the public sector as a result of swingeing cuts is not the best time to be starting any new venture- even if it is a continuation of an ecisting service. At the moment many voluntary sector and private sector providers are going to the wall. Not because they are inefficient or bloated but simply because public services are being pared back to the bone and then cut even more. The present eurozone crisis can only make things worse. The Government is making progress on the deficit and as it is still committed to deficit reduction worse cuts lie ahead.

4. Lack of security. Mutuals may intially win contracts to provide services but there is no guarantee that they will these contracts again when they come uo for renegotiation several years later. Workers may find that these lose out to another mutual or a private provider and find themselves forced to work for a new employer under poorer conditions. They could be moving into privitisation by the back door.

5. Lack of incentives. Running a private business such as a restaurant, a shop or samll manufacturing business involves high risk. A large percentage of businesses close down often with their owners losing everything they own. The only reason that people take on such a high risk is that if they are successful then they (and/or their shareholders)will reap large rewards. Public sector employment, by contrast is normally a low risk undertaking. The worst that can happen is that you are made redundant and hopefully you will find another job quickly. The only downside is that you are not paid very much. Social enterprises and mutuals offer the worst of both types of endeavour. They offer the high risks of private enterprise with the low returns of public sector employment. Owners of public interest companies (social enterprises) are not allowed to sell the business which they have built up at a profit or take out more than a certain amout out of the business relative to the turnover. I don't know what restrictions exist for mutuals but I doubt very much that they will receive any additional recompense for shouldering the added risk and responsibility or the worry and strain it will put on their families. Bankers get obscene profits for taking risks with other people's money. Public sector workers are expected to accept a pat on the back as reward for putting their own careers and finances on the line.

6. Lack of flexibility. If people in a public service form a mutual what do they do if they see a new way to grow their services or invest to improve how they deliver their services? I read a story recently about an employee owned mutual provider in the health service. The article suggested that they only had one months salary for all the workers in the bank at any one time. How can such an oirganisation invest in improving its business model to cope with change or expand what it offers? Private businesses can borrow money from banks or the stock market to expand or change their focus. What opportunities will there be for mutuals to raise money to grow and change? Will they be frozen in time, forced to continue in the same form as they were when they were first spun off, until the service they offer is no longer appropriate to the times? Maybe I don't fully understand mutuals but nothing I have read so far has answerted these questions for me.

7. Are mutuals and social enterprises the right business models for public services? I suspect the Government is pushing these models forward becuse they are considered more politically acceptable than outright privitisation. In taking this path the Government could be headed for even more trouble in the long term. Most people who work in health and social care have no aspiration to be business owners of any kind. They come to work because they enjoy working with people and there is nothing wrong with that.
Ministers are constantly trotting the example of the John Lewis partnership. The reason for this is that there are few co-operatives who are market leaders in their field. There are a growing number of successful companies who have more level structures and more democrative and participative types of management- but that is not the same as being employee owned.
I strongly suspect the mutualism agenda is a fig leaf of repectability for privitisation rather than a genuine belief that it is the best way forward.

Anyway- that was my slighly jaded take on mutuals and social enterprises. Its only a personal opinion and perhaps there is a lot I just don't know aboiut mutuals and social enterprises. I supect I probably know, more, however, than many of the poor public sector workers who will have to make decvisons about mocving their employment if Cameron gets his way.

Maybe I will be proved wrong and there will be lots of very happy people celebrating the day they got spun off from the council/NHS.What do you think?

Are you Part of the 'Dependency Culture'?

I read an interesting article in today's Financial Times. I am probably one of the few social workers who regularly reads this esteemed publication. My interest probably stems from two factors. Firstly, my background in accountancy and economics in a former existence. Secondly, I don't like reading newspapers that tell me what I ought to be thinking even if I might generally agree with what they are saying. This is the main reason why I don't tend to read the Guardian unless I have to.The FT sticks to the facts and when it does give an opinion it is based on logical analysis- not prejudice, preconceived ideas, or a desire to please a particular crowd.
Please read it sometime-you might be surpised.
Anyway the piece today is 'Benefit cuts set to carve a divisive path.' The article concerns the potential damage to local economies in the north by the Government's decision to cut back on incapacity benefit. It look at the system of medical testing, cuts to benefit and also the meagre chances of people whom have been on benefits for years of actually getting a job in hard pressed northern cities.The article is reasonably sympathetic and addresses some important elements of the incapacity benefit issue.
What I want to draw attention to specifically in this post is a comment by the Leader of Barnsley council in the article. He is paraphrased as saying that it is vital that the town 'moves away from a dependency culture where half the working population rely on the state, either as public sector workers or benfits claimants.'
Since the article uses parapharasing rather than direct quotes I can't be sure exactly how this was expressed by the council leader. However, the sentiment- that working for the public sector is equivalent to claiming benefits and that both are a form of dependency is one which I hear increasingly and one which makes me very angry. I don't just hear it from conservative politicians- I even hear people from the north who work for the public sector saying that we are too 'dependent' on the public sector for employment. Taking up a public sector job ought to be seen as a way of serving one's community- and indeed many people in public service very much see it that way. However, within this particular discourse it is seen as sign of fecklessness at best and moral turpitude at worst. The reason there are/were a lot of public sector jobs in the north partly came as a result of the previous Government deciding to relocate jobs out of London to save money and to provide employment in areas devastated by the loss of traditional industries at the hands of previous Tory governments. People who took up these posts did so in good faith and with an intention of doing a worthwhile job well. Working long hours as a nurse, a social worker or a civil servant is not a form of dependency.
We curently have a form of rhetoric which suggests that only people who work in the private sector represent the real economy. This is a distortion of the truth. From this point of view a barman is doing a worthwhile job whereas a nurse is a drain on the economy. The discourse which suggests that public sector employment is a form of dependency serves the political purpose of greasing the wheels for attacking people's pensions and conditions of employment. Advocates of discourse analysis regard speech as a form of action- it has a purpose beyond the actual surface meaning of the words.
With regard to benefit claimants- many people on incapacity benefit ended up on this benefit as a result of attempts by earlier governments to reduce unemployment figures by having them declared unfit for work. Having them now declared fit for work fits the new political purpose of reducing spending on benefits. Many very vulnerable people will experience a great deal of distress as they are treated as political footballs.
We can't control the messages that politicians send out in their rhetoric. We might want to challenge them, however, through letters pages and social media. What we certainly should not do is swallow the rhetoric and start using it ourselves.
Serving the public is something to be proud of and people who claim beneiofts ought ot be the subject of persecution. Neither deserve to be labelled as part of a 'dependency culture'.

Access to Social Networking is a Human Rights Issue

In my job as a social work lecturer I had a conversation the other day about Facebook and employment. Several of the students told me they had become aware of problems associated with use of Facebook and people's employment. One was a situation in which someone had made a comment which might have been seen to be critical of the persons employer. In this case the employer had not been mentioned on Facebook. I think the employer had a legitimate issue about it not being appropriate to put info about one's employment on Facebook. However, I think their response was disproportionate to the employee's error oif judgement. More concerning, was the fact that a number of people who work in social care are apparently being told that they should not have Facebbok accounts at all. A certain amount of caution and use of privacy settings is appropriate due to the nature of social work and the fact that making too much of one's own information publicly accessible is a potential risk for employees. There is also the fact that people should not discuss details of their work or their attitudes to it in a forum where they (and by extension their employer and/or service users) can be identified.
However, nothwithstanding the above, banning people from using Facebook and social networking is a serious violation of people's civil liberties and could have serious negative consequences for their ability to socialise and have a normal life outside work., As the number of people with Facebbok accounts mushrooms it is becoming a mainstream way of communicating with people. Facebook is a faster, easier and more effective way of communicating with friends than email, telephone or amy other communication platform. It allows people to talk in real time, share photos, share one's present location, arrange outings, share photos,inform large numbers of people news at the same time, share conversations and leave comments,and act as a portal to other platforms such as this blog. Even more importantly it allows all these things to be done at the same time with minimal hassle. It is genuinely frictionless communication. It has great potential for business and professional networking which so far has hardly been exploited. It is a better vehicle for sharing examples of good practice and promoting collaboration than any alternative conduits available in most businesses. On the commercial front many businesses are considering scaling down their websites in favour of using Facebook as main platform for building rlationships with their customers. For purely social purposes it allows people with similar interests to make new friends across countries and time zones and develop new communities electonically.
Much of the moral panic and technophobia surrounding Facebook relates to the perceived lack of privacy. These comments miss the point completely. Facebook is like any other form of communication- it can be as private or as public as you like. If you are standing in a busy street you can shout a message to everyone on the street or whisper a message to the person beside you. The analogy with a street, is I think very appropriate. Banning people from Facebook is like forbidding them to walk out on the street or go to the local pub. It is a form of digital house arrest. I find myself building closer links with people who use Facebook and find it more difficult to keep up with people who aren't. When people ask me about a trip or something I have been doing I find it slightly irritating that they haven't accessed the information I have put up electronically. The divide between people who use it and people who don't is going to become a new digital divide- with people who don't use social networking being more and more excluded. Being banned from social networking is a form of digital house arrest- you are banned from taking part in an important part of the social environment. It is in fact a denial of human rights to take part in the life of one's community.
Of course, eventually these social work/social care employers will have to capitulate- just as they had to in relation to accessing the internet at work. It is a shame, however, that parts of the sector has to start from a position of Luddism and fear- rather than a willingness to embrace the potential of powerful technologies.
Meanwhile I think it is just a matter of time before someone challenges the issue on a human rights basis.