professional standards.....

So anyway off I went in the wind tunnel to Berkshire.

The vehicular aspects of day went really well.

But of course there was plenty going on back at the ranch.....

Yesterday was young P's birthday making him the centre of attention.

Something that little D has found very difficult to cope with.

But anyway young D's social worker phoned yesterday to discuss increasing the duration of contact. He sounded guarded, turns out of course that a manager had been speaking to D's mum and had already agreed this, so this was involving us in the decision making process by phoning us after the event and telling us about it.

Crucially though the manager had agreed to contact this Saturday, not a problem if they fancied a bit of driving on a Saturday, but no, manager had agreed that we would drive the man in question.

This is exactly the reason we have standards guidelines and code of practice.

It's hardly mum's fault well not entirely true, she would probably have browbeaten manager into agreeing contact this weekend having announced to her son that he was going home for the whole weekend, she probably compromised on a days contact for an extra couple of hours.

So when she phoned to tell management how management was going to be meeting her on Saturday you can hardly blame her for getting angry when management said no she wasn't.

There are few excuses for being rude and abusive mind, but you can sort of see where mum was coming from.

It didn't help that D had taken his phone to school and broken their phone rules and had it confiscated, she had a bit of a rail about that too. Trying to explain to mum that he knew the rules, chose to break them and had to learn to live with the consequences was probably a bit difficult for her to grasp riding as she was a tidal wave of rage.

The man himself had been repeatedly told by mum that he was spending the night at mum's over the weekend, and by us that it wasn't happening as far as we knew. He does not cope with other kid getting attention so you can hardly blame him for getting very angry when he got told that he was not going to mums on Saturday because we had already arranged a birthday trip out for young P on that day.

No this whole sorry mess came about because someone senior did not follow best practice or even minimum standards of politeness.

Mum can expect to be blamed for her behaviour, young D will doubtless be held to account for messing up young P's birthday. There will be a drive to cast us as the bad guys for not being available on Saturday, though the heat will be less than it could have been. To take D we would have to cancel a party for a looked after child, whereas canceling a party for one of our own would be obligatory.

There is of course one person who will walk away with no stain on their character. The alleged professional whose actions precipitated it all.

R