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.

However, parents advocating for their children mean that about 14% are now identified as having special educational needs, many more than in the past.

On a thread not long ago there many teachers saying that it’s not uncommon for 50% or more of a class to be SEN. Something’s gone badly wrong.

Your example is about an EHCP, but the extra workload that brings you think is 'on the teacher'. They alone are not equipped with the time to deal with this. And they're not responsible for the issues.

Complaints aren't always about the individual and therefore a problem with them, just they're the ones being expected to deal with your problem when they're actually employed to do something else that already takes longer than the time they're given to do it!

It's hardly surprising though is it that after 14 years of imposing resource scarcity on public services, that a hunger games mentality takes hold in service users, making sure that they get their ration. Call me cynical, but it's part of the tactic in some right wing circles, because once it gets to this point, they imagine that the argument to dissolve or privatise the service can gain traction. Hard lesson never learned by right wingers is though that people want their public services to work, and not to have to think about it. They want to be able to take it for granted, and not to have to pay for it outside of general taxes. So rhetorical cycle begins again. Labour will try to repair the services and rhetorical Tories will then dismantle them again when they get into power. It's in their blood to do it.

When you see the responses from organisations and private businesses like retail for example, to unhinged and unreasonable complaints, its all placating them and making changes in the light of that ONE unreasonable complaint,,,, I just wish that companies and organisations would have the balls to say no. We werent in the wrong, sorry you were disattisifed but we're confident we did the right thing

The example above about A+E is a classic. OK, go to the media then, but you're not staying here when its not warranted.

I manage a service and we get more compliments than complaints. The few people that do complain often have issues of their own, are under a lot of stress and are people that can read but not perhaps fully understand often quite complex information about health and social care. They can take up a lot of time. People who should complain, often don’t complain.

Absolutely this! I have two children with ASD in two different mainstream schools. One has a dedicated SENCO, the other does not. The difference is like night and day in terms of clear communications, understanding individual needs, triangulation between school/parent/teachers. I am wholly supportive of teachers (the ones with boots to ground, less so SLT), I understand the absolute clusterfuck education is in. But I’ve also had to deal with the most awful, ignorant, ‘pretend it’s not a problem and when it is we’ll make it your problem’ attitudes from one child’s school because they refuse to remodel for SEN.

I don't want to live in a society where I am legally not able to hold someone to account if I feel it's necessary.

Well I want to live in a society where there has to be a "reasonableness" test before you get to make someone else's life hell by trying to hold them to account.

👏🏻

The deep issues with education has been from teachers holding parents at arms length.

Give over! Parents get way more communication from schools now than ever before. No way you can blame teachers not sharing info as a cause for the very recent loss of trust.

I agree. This is simply an example of how giving people more just results in higher expectations and more focus on what they’re not getting.

Complaints procedures are often just a way of kicking the can down the road and fobbing the person because its easier in the moment than addressing their issue. I took time off recently to attend an appointment. When I got there I'd been double booked. I was immediately handed a complaints leaflet. No attempt made to come to a solution. So I think rather than issue a blanket 'stop complaining' message to the public, services need to get better at coming up with informal resolutions to more trivial concerns, rather than the constant signposting to procedures that are unnecessarily clunky and time consuming for both the public and the agency.

From what position are you claiming this? As I said above, I have two children in two different mainstreams. The communication from one has been non existent. My child had a severe meltdown one day, was trying to self harm and in a full panic. The school didn’t once speak to me about it - they told the after school club to tell me he’d had a bad day, and when I tried to speak to them myself they wouldn’t reply. As a parent of a sen child, I am meant to have a handful of meetings a year about termly targets - again a triangulation between student, parent and teacher about the best way to meet the child’s needs. I’ve not had one, not one single meeting about this in the last three years. They eventually give me their targeted plan which is often poorly written about half way through each term with no offer to discuss it. Enough communication my absolute arse.

@LostTheMarble it's because they don't get taught sen, no strategy for helping, no understanding of over stimulation, need for self regulation or help for adhd. Many think dyslexia is coloured paper and have no understanding of executive function working memory issues and so on.

The teeniest bit of knowledge on these areas would make a huge difference. They don't have to diagnose, treat or make massive changes.

They’re probably swamped with the kind of thing I’m talking about.

Equally pre-covid teachers were often more available in person. So the emails have replaced the quick chat at the school gate but as it’s in writing it looks more formal.

My child went to a school I didn’t get to visit for his first 18 months due to covid, I have had no in person meetings with his teachers in the last 3 years. It’s no surprise that any communication I send is impersonal - I have literally no idea which teacher is which at the current school. The teachers love their parents evenings on Zoom as they cut off automatically and never overrun , but it makes me feel like they don’t know which one he is and are reading from notes.

I work in public service and like pp I think what we should be doing better is managing expectations. Being really clear about service standards and what our responsibilities are. I think if we set clear expectations and then meet those expectations consistently, complaints handling would be a lot more straightforward.

It feels like SEN has never been more prominent than it is now, and the ever increasing influx of complex information about new symptoms, new strategies, new diagnoses is frankly overpowering people. Add to that ‘if you’ve met one person with X you’ve met one person with X’ and not only do they have to learn about the diagnosis generally but in very specific terms to each student. It sounds like a nightmare to keep up with.

Children shouldn't be calling each other names and s teacher swamped with issues like this is reflective on the teacher.
A good teacher also needs backup from slt.

Poo poo head is an age appropriate insult, as they get older that will turn into adult insults. No insults are appropriate.

I think your suggestion (in your original post) would just cause more frustration and resentment tbh OP. I feel like people get like this once they’ve had one bad experience and lose trust in a service. They feel they need to advocate for themselves to get anything done.

Agree this is also coupled with a consumer mindset towards public services, which is part of a much bigger change in culture and would probably take a book to examine.

Oh please this is laughable!

Well the really frightening thing is op is that many small changes would have a massive impact on everyone in a good way.
Unfortunately it's the genuine lack of knowledge around sen that is causing the issues because teachers don't know

Choosing to not make appropriate changes to meet increasing sen needs is the choice of the school. All children, sen or otherwise suffer for the schools who choose to be so ridged about how they communicate with parents. As I said, schools who have dedicated SENCOs seem to manage this issue better. It’s the schools fault when they give the title to a member of SLT who’s workload is too high to also communicate with parents.

There should be a point where threatening to sue or report someone to a regulatory body becomes threatening words or behaviour. Saying once or twice 'I'll report you to Ofsted' and doing nothing even to complain formally to the governors, maybe OK, but not repeatedly.

People (think Robert Maxwell as an example) used threatening to sue as a bullying tactic.

What is meant by ‘genuine knowledge’? They seem more clued up than they ever were - a child having a meltdown would’ve been forcibly removed when I was little. Most of the conditions which seem common now ‘didn’t exist’ (as in they did but they weren’t considered special needs, just naughtiness).

I think freedom of information is particularly abused by some people with an axe to grind, who want more and more information and still complain they haven't got what they want, so every request is followed up by an appeal against the reasons why some things were excluded and on and on, ad infinitum.