No wonder child protection in Haringay is such a mess when this kind of gobbledigook passes for English

[mabanana]

From the Guardian:
A conference in January will focus on improving child protection.
Sharon Shoesmith will be a key speaker. Her topic: 'Breaking Down Silos: Inspiring Ownership and Sharing Responsibility For Measuring Impacts and Outcomes Across Partnerships.'

Now, wtf is that supposed to mean? It actually makes me quite angry that this kind of doublespeak is being used. It cannot help people think clearly about what must be done. It is the kind of language that makes it OK to sack and legally silence whistleblowers who want to say, in plain English, something is wrong here and we are failing children.

...but it is complex and this is shorthand.

For example the silo reference could be explained as: The responsibility for the five outcomes rests across the children's trust and partner agencies such as the Police, but the 'stay safe' component is often too narrowly interpreted as relating to child abuse and therefore the province of Social Services, when the wider issue of safeguarding is everyone's responsibility....blah blah

See what i mean?

why does breaking down silos make me think of shit spreading.

thats pretty much what it does mean bronze

"but the alternative to that Snowleapard/JJ is that they/we all work as individuals and no one lets anyone else know what information they have."

Not true Mamazon. As I said, why can't departments simply share information - they can do that without all the endless initiatives and conferences and pointless bureaucracy and jargon - can't they?

The silos thing is really irritating. You end up with a publishing company banging on about how editorial Farmers' Weekly should be interacting with sales on Cosmetics Business. What the hell would be gained from completely different departments with NOTHING in common wasting time holding joint meetings?

I guess it must have emerged from all those MBA courses so people think it's big and clever.

(Confession - I did understand the conference blurb but I'm vaguely involved in similar stuff. But you are right, jargon is used to obscure, not inform. And people in local govt. and health get lots of brownie points for 'partnership working' without ever having to demonstrate that it has actually changed anything real.)

I think the link made between 'gobbledigook' language used in a training event and infering this is related to failing children is almost hilarious in its ignorance.

Should we be insisting that the medical profession rewrite their diagnostic manuals or maybe lobby horticulturalists to refrain from using the latin name for daisies?

As nonsocialworker said it is expedient to use certain abbreviations/ language for complex issues/policies. If you are keen to find out what it all means google it or go to the library.

I'm all for plain talking and despise it when people hide behind jargon as a means of excluding others. Still not sure how the OP made the assumption that this was happening in this case

jellypop, ignorance is exactly what the use of jargon is designed to enforce.

Comparison with doctors does not hold water - of course they need a technical language. 'Breaking Down Silos...' etc. is not technical language, it's jargon. And it has an effect on thinking and behaviour.

Edam

Don't disagree how language is used to exclude, confuse and cloud issues that have relevance to everyone.

If you read the complex, technical, contradictory and incomphrehensible (at times) legislation and policies enforced on us by the government you may understand the need to use abbreviations/jargon.

Still unsure how this is directly related to 'failing children' though. I think having sufficent skilled staff and resources is possibly more important

TBH - I'll find SS useful the day they return my calls and answer my emails/letters.

I find that they can be at my house within 24 hours of me putting in a complaint. Shouldn't have to.

Yes of course information has to be shared and SW's have to keep up with training, but at the moment the system seems to get in the way of doing the actual job.

jimjam I doubt many social workers with disagree with that, really - but how to get the balance?

Or even 'Encouraging partnership agencies, families, members of the public and other 'concerned' individuals to share information and take responsibility for their part in child abuse tragedies '

I'm sure social services badly messed up but they were surely not the only ones. Oh and Dittany could you suggest any courses that would enable us to spot a liar at 50 paces. Get real

So the OP has gone to the trouble of finding something 'wrong' in a professional conference topic and wants to use it against a social worker who she feels is to blame for a child's death?

SAD!

the child died primarily because his parent covered up what was happening and allowed it to happen. Stop making this the social worker's fault. It's not!

My mum was a social worker, a large part of her career was in child protection. As a child every time there was a witch hunt I was terrified for my mum. When something like this happens social workers within child protection are very vunerable. They work hard in difficult situations and whatever they do or don't do it seems they can't win.

beanie - do you not think that SWs (and the blinking paediatrician and HVs) should be held accountable for missing 50 or 60 opportunities to spot what was happening to the poor child?

It was not impossible to save this child - his injuries and suffering were under their nose. They saw him, repeatedly. And then knowing what was done to him, they insisted his mother should have access to her next child. Amazing.

It's not about 'winning' for heaven's sake, it's about spotting when a child is being abused.

Were those 50 - 60 opportunities due to the fact that the mother was deceitful?

The people to blame here ultimately are the people who battered the baby and then hid the fact. The social work team did not do that.

I am sure they will have to review their ways of working and this will mean that all child protection cases will change but it doesn't mean that another parent won't behave in a similar way and another child won't die in circumstances like this.

The social work team put the child on the child protection register, saw the child and family regularly - do you really think they had no responsibility at all for his death? They were charged with protecting him, FGS. And this is Haringey, where the had already had Victoria Climbie - don't you think they should have been paying attention?

Dittany

You are wrong. I'm a social worker and of course we are trained to be skeptical and spot discrepancies and inconsistencies in people accounts.Doh! However we cannot detect lies to the degree you seem to think-neither can the police otherwise wouldn't we have easy jobs!

Social Services are the lead agency in Child Protection work which mean they co-ordinate multi agency responses/interventions (unless a crime has been committed in which case it is the police). Of course they rely on legal advice but also on the evidence of other professionals,family and friends etc. Its so easy for others such as yourself to say it has nothing to do with them.

All I can suggest is that you don't believe everything you read in the papers. You know no more than me about what actually happened and don't kid yourself otherwise

Regardless of the Baby P stuff, aren't most public organisations supposed to be using Plain English now anyway?

I am in the civil service and we are supposed to use Plain English both internally and externally, especially as FOI legislation means 'ordinary' people may have the right to read internal documents anyway.