Thanks for the last two messages. Heartwarming to say the least.
The third person back (sorry can't see the page now so can't remember your name) seemed to be saying she didn't believe there were parents who didn't want me to have a life of my own, because she personally doesn't care what her SLT does outside work. Firstly, that's your own experience. I've never met you and as far as I can tell you aren't one of my patients, I've no doubt from what you say that this is your attitude to your SLT, but that doesn't mean I haven't dealt with parents who are very very demanding, just that you are not one of them.
Parents do become selfish about their own children, that's human nature, but some of the parents I've worked with have been beyond the pale. It's typical to find that parents expect you will work with their child ad infinitum until the difficulty is resolved. The reality is that we see children for "blocks" of therapy, partly so that they can consolidate the skills they have acquired and partly so they can have a rest from us, but also because we need to free up the appointment slot to see another child. So many parents fail to recognise this. The irony is that, in order for their child to get the appointment in the first place, another child had to have a break from therapy and free up that slot.
Some parents become absolutely renowned in the local SLT department (one threatened legal action because I would not buy her a laminator to help her make resources for a treatment she was funding privately and which I hadn't recommended. She ignored all my advice but would telephone me at 4.30 on a Friday evening demanding I make her XY and Z resource by Monday morning).
Another complained about a report I had written because she didn't agree with my diagnosis or my concern about her child going into mainstream school. This led to my boss sending an apology on my behalf, which I was really fed up about. The rest of the department was then told to be very careful what to write in reports and never to offer much of an opinion. Incidentally my original diagnosis was later confirmed, the mother came to accept it and she is now fighting for the LEA to recognise her child's problem and provide an appropriate SEN place in school because he's drowning in mainstream. I am convinced he would have been in SEN provision in the first place if other professionals had voiced their concern and I hadn't seemed like I was alone in my worries.
I have since left that department and taken up a post elsewhere. The said department has been trying to recruit to my post for over eighteen months without success and many children with a very specific problem have been left with no SLT. Ironically the lady who made that specific complaint is not one of the people left without SLT.
So yes, difficult parents are very much in existence and they make professionals lives very difficult. I'm not talking about parents who have the usual amount of concern, I'm talking really really difficult. Unfortunately they are also the parents who try to pull out all the stops, queue jumping, hassling, phoning every day, making complaints, writing letters, turning up at clinic demanding to see you immediately, demanding immediate therapy, complaining if you take annual leave, complaining if you are sick, complaining about you having maternity leave. Yadda yadda yadda. The problem with seeing posts on these boards advocating others give their SLT the same amount of hassle is that, as a professional, it just reminds you of all the tactics in the book and you've seen them all before.
The sad thing is, sometimes their children really need your help, but you just dread their appointments, you know nothing you have to offer will be good enough, so in turn, you can't summon up the enthusiasm to do your very best job. Before I was an SLT I was a nurse. We used to get very difficult relatives who set up armed guard around their loved one and watched everything we did with such suspicion. Actually our patients were cared for very well, we were a good team and took pride in delivering really loving care from the point of view of "that could be my relative in that bed". As a result, we felt aggreived when we weren't trusted to do the best we could. Invariably those patients would be put in a side room where their relatives could not watch us like a hawk (so stressful). It meant that the patient got much less nursing attention, because we used to avoid going into their room. So whereas other patients would get a natter or maybe you'd give them a foot massage if they were feeling shitty, the poor patient with the "good" relatives would miss out and instead, they'd get the basic care they required with none of the trimmings. Exactly the same principle applies in my own job. It's human nature to avoid the parts of your job that you don't like, so it's counterproductive to become a nuisance to the professionals you work with.
The parents who get the most out of me are not the ones who bring me christmas presents, they're the ones who meet me halfway, as I said, and who can be pleased for me on a personal level about my pregnancy, whilst enquiring about what sort of cover there might be and where they can turn for help during the months I'm away. To be honest, these are the parents I'm likely to phone up from home during these months, just to check how their children are progressing and see if I can offer some short term advice. There's so much to be said for trying to be reasonable.
I do accept that sometimes you might lose your rag when you are not getting any service at all and feel you need to go private. I can't say I've ever worked anywhere where service provision was that dire but I know there are problems with recruitment in some areas. Unfortunately the problems with retention of staff are at least as bad again, pretty much everywhere, but it's no surprise really. The reality of working within the limits of a publicly funded healthcare system rarely match up to the expectations we have at university, where we are fed the illusion of having few patients and endless time. It's also quite hard to swallow when I read posts saying that their private SLT is much better than their NHS SLT. It's difficult not to react to that. Of course you are getting a better service, because you are paying for it and because the private therapist can limit the number of children she has on her books. She can also pick and choose who to take. I have to take every referral that comes my way. I have no problem with any SLT who wants to give up her NHS job and work privately or any parent who wants to pay privately, but I cannot agree that this therapist is somehow better at their job. I could leave the NHS tomorrow and set up a lucrative private practice as I am one of only a few specialising in my chosen field, but I stick with the NHS because I believe that healthcare should be based on clinical need rather than ability to pay. If we all did the same, children with real need would miss out entirely. What we offer may not be what we would like to offer, but when it works, I think it works well. I do appreciate that mums need to let off steam, and we are trained to expect that, but joining mumsnet has taught me that there are parents out there who view us as some sort of beligerent species, not doing the job to the best of our ability.
I'm going to stand up for my profession, on the whole.