Unless Labour stand up to the public, we will never have functioning services

[Rainbowsponge]

Which, obviously, will never happen.

Anybody who works in a public service - schools, NHS, any government department - will tell you the public have become more entitled, more aggressive, and are absolutely bombarding them with their rights to complain, have decisions double checked, have their case reviewed again, call meetings, and so on.

You only need to read on here the sort of minor incident a parent will then hop onto their emails and bombard their child’s teacher with messages about. It takes them 2 minutes to fire off an angry email, but this then sparks a chain of events which takes the teacher a long time (in addition to all their other work) to sort out and go through the relevant processes.

So, AIBU to think rather than throwing more money at bloating the systems, the government need to give people in public facing roles more powers to simply refuse to engage with trivial or irrelevant complaints?

It would also have the effect of allowing people to focus on their actual jobs and therefore reduce waiting lists, backlogs and so on. It feels like this culture of expecting instant and endless interaction from public servants is breaking the system as much as the underfunding.

I think the things you describe, the bad behaviour, Is a symptom not a cause though. Tackling underlying issues of demand, it public health, inequality, underfunding of services is the only thing that will really resolve it.

I don’t think it is. I think it’s smartphones (rather than snail mail you can just quickly fire off a message, and consult with others about how to ‘get the right result’ from the system), coupled with a general public entitlement that public services are literally there to give you what you want at any given second. That’s just my personal view though.

In some ways, I think Labour will be more supportive of those working in public services. Think of how Gavin Williamson treated teachers, for example and compare with what will happen.

Though agreeing with you about trivial complaints and the way some people are unreasonable in the way they complain.

Yes, if people are complaining excessively it's because the baseline service is underresourced, which is why people are so unhappy. I agree it's totally unfair that they often 'take it out' on people at the bottom of the chain, but as @Summerhillsquare said, if the services were better resourced in the first place, front-line workers wouldn't have to deal with so many unhappy people misplacing their anger.

But parents never used to email teachers because their child got into a minor scrap. They just didn’t. The expectation has massively increased.

If these services ditched all the dei crap and stuck to delivering their core duties and provide a decent level of service that doesn't come with a woke lecture or snearing contempt of the general public I suspect most complaints would disappear as we wouldn't need to complain just to get a basic level of service

I’m a local government officer and I completely agree OP. However to coin a cliche I think it would be like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, it’s probably too late now and all we can do is manage expectations.

The woke crap is in response to the complaints if anything.

Two things can be true at once. There are those who are complaining because a base level of service isn’t operating properly, and there is also a massive increase in those who feel entitled and are poorly behaved.

Cutting benefits so they only tip you up to minimum wage would be a start. People need to go to work, unless they are signed off with disability. The benefits bill is an absolute joke.

Services also need borrowing and huge investment. Say 10% of GDP to restore them.

Third, build build build to drive growth. The treasury has a study that shows unleashing house building will provide 3-4% growth.

Close the tax loopholes as well, cancel nondoms etc

It's all doable but I agree the government are just wet and won't do what's necessary

I wholeheartedly disagree.

We need complaints and parents to complain and be on the ball to improve systems.

We know our rights more, we can see what other people did to get an achievement.

Eg trying to get ehcp.

If a teacher is struggling to respond to one complaint that's on the teacher.
A great teacher with one complaint should understand its part and parcel of the job and they should be supported by their manager.

Obviously a teacher getting lots of complaints is a problem themselves.

Parents, keep vigilant and keep on top of what's going on and don't be afraid to advocate for your child.

I work in the public sector. We aren't meeting our minimum standards because we are grossly understaffed. That isn't the fault of the families we support, they are absolutely 100% right to complain. Ironically, the cost of not supporting them properly is far far far more expensive for the state. Perhaps if we could get the little things sorted it prevents problems escalating?

Clicked send too soon. We can only take on case work now when it is absolutely crisis point. If we were resourced and meeting our minimum standards we could probably resolve many issues with a meeting at the very start

Your post shows how ignorant you are about benefits. The benefits system is brutal.

Is it Labour's job to tell teachers to grow a backbone and tell the parents to sod off?

I'm afraid that we're going to have to agree to disagree on that 1

It’s their job to enforce legislation to enable teachers to do this without ‘I’ll report you to ofsted’, yes

I agree. The difficulty with the never ending calls for more money is that even if public services greatly improved (they wouldn’t, at least not at a price the country could conceivably afford), the customers would just demand yet more. And any reverse or temporary problem would attract the whingers in droves.

If people don’t pay, they see no reason to do their side of the bargain or accept limitations.

It's difficult isn't it? The public do not respect public servants as they once did. People feel entitled to complain and insult teachers, police and NHS staff. There was no need to have security staff in A and E when I was a child. Parents just didn't go into schools except for parents evening. Teachers didn't get involved with friendship issues. It would be unheard of that a nurse or police officer would be attacked in the course of their duties. But equally we respected our public servants, the low pay doesn't attract the best candidates these days. Years ago, being a teacher, police officer or nurse was seen as a position of respect and authority. It was seen as a good job. No one wants to do these jobs anymore. Trying to change the public's mindset will be difficult. We've got to instill a sense of respect for our public servants but when we see reports of prison officers having sex with inmates, police officers raping women and teachers having relationships with pupils, it's understandable that the public have little respect.

Grow a backbone? 😂
Have you wondered why teachers and public servants in general do not respond the way they surely wish they could?
It is definitely not because they lack a backbone…

It’d because there is no faith or trust in the systems. Rightly so in some cases.

Schools letting down Sen children because they don’t want to pay the first £££ before applying. Schools who excuse all behaviour behind Sen sorry Suzie keeps getting hurt but Sen/child in care 🤷🏻‍♀️

Doctors fobbing people off, took a friend months and many trips before she was taken seriously and refereed and ding ding stage 3 breast cancer.

People don’t trust the professionals or the process because it’s broken and have learnt they have to fight for what they need.

This absolutely makes sense.

This sneering attitude is the reason why people are reacting and voting Reform and in other more fractious ways. Stop with the sanctimonious attitude about what you feel you would deign to allow other people to complain about.

I wonder what you complain about that I would disagree with. Maybe your response about ‘woke’ being a reaction, not a whole load of time wasting nonsense that takes away from people having to actually get results. Let’s have a public service that does that and then let’s see whether or not complaints go down.

I think you are partly right op but others are right too. In some cases, it's understaffing and underpaying that is causing problems; minimum standards not being met, staff quiet quitting etc.In other cases it's entitlement: A kid gets a scratch while playing and a parents asks why she is being told at the end of the day, teacher should have called her immediately the scratch happened etc. Cue emails and admin burdens. This actually happened. The scratch was superficial and no more than an inch or two. In another case, a kid played on equipment in the local park clearly marked for adults only and got injured. Mum wrote lots of emails to LA, demanded equipment be removed and circulated a petition. Am sure it was frustrating for the understaffed LA.

The deep issues with education has been from teachers holding parents at arms length.
If your child is doing well this isn't an issue but if your child is struggling you need that dialogue.

We desperately need teachers to learn sen, we need proper Senco.