Of tiles and bathrooms. and a bit of social work thrown in.

Now there is a certain first day of the holidays feel to it when the children go back to school.

Adults with the responsibilities drastically reduced can wander off and play.

Yesterday we set ourselves schedule for the first day after the children go back, not a terribly grueling one and we missed it anyway.

We struggled manfully and had lunch in the pub where Cerys Mathews got married.

So anyway today being more buisneslike we decided to go off to look at some stuff to redo the bathroom. Since selling is on hold we might as well do something with the house.

You could also argue that we were doing our patriotic duty to spend our way out of recession, you would be wrong but there we go.

Anyway a morning of tile comparing, fainting at the prices of baths, "don't worry thats not a lot" said a voice suspisciously like mine - going to kill that ventriloquist one day....

Anyway plans have been drawn measurements made, and we are ready to make a start on it next week.

Thats good, I have been putting off a few jobs on the Goddess and if she is laying tiles and putting in a bath it will be an admirable time to get on to them....

But I digress this afternoon we had a professional collegue on the phone wanting to discuss an incident that happened over the weekend. Now, you do not need to know what went down but on a scale of 0-10 it was a 6 and on a potential to place people in danger in the future a 7 worst of all, on a scale of things it was something that a SW was going to have to actually do something about and get by saying "Oh dear".

Records are of course the bane of everyone's lives and SW was very keen that we record everything that happened which as a matter of course I do. Further more SW wanted a copy of our exact records.

Now this is an odd one, it strikes me that SW are very careful not to put anything down clearlyand to write nothing at allif they feel they can get away with it.

If I had a pound for every time that I asked for something in writing before I did as they asked or instigated some response only to be met with an embarassed silence or be promised a follow up letter that never actually arrived:
I would be doing very well for myself.

We are apparently required to work in a different way and they wanted everything; chapter and verse including a lot of things that someone might ask to see under the data protection act and get very angry about if they were not historically very stable in the first place.

It is part of the new order that the Data Protection Act allows people to see what is recorded about them and know why. This can be good and helpful but can also be immensly destructive.

Funny thing is though whilst they would have us put in writing this incident this weekend, what about the child in need who was illegally not allocated a social worker, for 11 months. All kinds of legal requirements not met, had that been recorded???

Had they recorded the concerns we expressed in stat reviews and monthly supervision, did they print off and keep the emails that pointed out that their practice was illegal not to mention dangerous?

Silence.....

R