Do you remember the nurse from CTPLD Kettering who reported me for allegedly making my sons’ money disappear?

Had the meeting today with her and one of her bosses, it went well.

She might have got off lighter had she kept her mouth shut but she is one of these power women who has to assert her authority. Me and my amazing friend Helen were able to convince her boss that safeguarding needs to be as a last resort, after all other measures have been taken and failed. That despite what they think, which is that it’s just an admin thing, the very word ‘safeguarding’ doesn’t sound anything like ‘admin’ to a family member or carer getting the call from them.

The Care Quality Commission say this of ‘safeguarding’:

“Safeguarding means protecting people’s health, wellbeing and human rights, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect”

Doesn’t sound like admin at all really put in that context!

So when someone gets a call telling them they are being investigated with regard to their son, it’s not just dotting the ‘i’ and crossing the ‘t’.

I gave an analogy to them which I hoped might help them get in the zone of the first few seconds of a conversation like that, this is it:

Imagine you just go to school to pick up little Sally or Jonny and the head approaches you and quietly suggests you should have a conversation about a bruise they observed earlier. Now, as the parent you know they got it acting the fool and running into a door but, you know that’s not what the school think and your stomach turns over that they could ever imagine such a thing of you.

Well, that one seemed to make sense to the boss, she clearly connected with it.

Anyway, me and Helen probably enjoyed a little too much the chance to slap down an errant official.

I gave them a tip on how to run meetings in future, discuss, agree, assign a task to a named individual and give a date by which the task must be completed. On that note I suggested to boss lady that the lesser employee be afforded the task of going through the meetings of previous years and finally addressed all those things which recur each time yet never get done.

I was happy with the outcome, I don’t expect this lady to actually do it, I suspect she will ask to be moved elsewhere and someone else assigned to Jermaine but, let’s see.