Been a few interesting thought provoking developments this week.
The head of the local government association carping on about how the death of baby P should not be taken as a reason to bring lots of children into care and of course strain the budgets. Now children should stay home as the evidence is that children in care fare badly, out came the stats about poor educational attainment and outcome. Interesting things in words, it was not framed in an action framework with a commitment to improve service, rather, the angle was, the service is crap so we must not use it.
Some people have accused the Sun of simplistic reductionism but that is a breath taker.
We are back to the; don't expect us to divert money from roads and leisure centres (not to mention CEO salaries) to fund front line services and make them work just because people are killing children.
And the Sun wants to blame the social workers when their boss says that...
Then we had the guy who went across Britain, fathering children by his own daughters. The technique was a recognised one - team hoping. Go and live somewhere, stay until services start to notice you exist and then jump ship to somewhere up the road. Assuming anyone works out where you went they will probably not bother to phone the team in your new area and say they were worried and if they did no one would pay much attention as social workers don't seem to trust each others judgement.
This was more common than you might think when we started out, it's harder to do today thanks to one of the recommendations of the Climbie enquiry
But there has been nothing like the noise generated by the Baby P case. Presumably killing a child over a couple of months is less serious than subjecting them to years of sexual abuse.
Saturday, 29 November 2008
The games people play......
Last night it was very interesting.
All computers off children round the table playing board games.
All together.
Playing a 80's game of "blockbuster" with Branwen adjusting the question levels to keep it all equal.
Three quid well spend in anyones money.
Of course today is a construction day, Tallie down in the field building his shed, me watching the rugby and management off buying stuff for her and Bethan to make a ball gown.
R
All computers off children round the table playing board games.
All together.
Playing a 80's game of "blockbuster" with Branwen adjusting the question levels to keep it all equal.
Three quid well spend in anyones money.
Of course today is a construction day, Tallie down in the field building his shed, me watching the rugby and management off buying stuff for her and Bethan to make a ball gown.
R
Friday, 28 November 2008
Another month another auction.
The direction of wind is a remarkable thing. It can switch from a balmy Southern draft to an icy northern blast within a tiny time interval.
So it is also with the management, last weeks expensive dinosaur IVECO is this weeks highly useful long wheel base high top van.
This would of course have nothing to do with the imminent arrival of the date of another auction of course, not a bit of it.
So anyway off we went in convoy this morning, her roaring off in a cloud of gravel that had a xantia somewhere in the middle and me following on in somewhat more sedate fashion in the IVECO.
Of course today was a bit different, an auction with a stat review in the middle, does no harm to let SW know that your whole life does not revolve about their every whim and desire.
But I digress, she had spent a pound here a fiver there and with the credit crunch in full swing she was buying us in to all sorts of things and ornaments. Gwion is on an inset day, for reasons I did not really fathom we bid five pounds on a fish tank for him. Another five pounds bought a big box of games and a pound bought a box of original magazines from the 50's.
Auctions are strange places and rules such as they are can be hard to fathom.
Management had decided she needed a new sofa, now with 9 kids on the plot it does not pay to spend out hundreds of pounds so management was looking for good second hand. A couple were on offer, a rather nice three seater went for a mind boggling 160 pounds. Declining that one, management opted for the one next to it, a two seater for a whole pound now, it was hard to see 159 pounds between them. Both were newish both perfectly serviceable, yet one went for a mountain one went for an anthill.
Similarly G plan stuff seems out of fashion, now you would have paid a fortune for this back in the 80's and it's built like a built thing, yet we got a whole bedroom full of the stuff last auction for 3 pound. I could not see any possible need for any more so I let it go 2 quid.
This brought us up to lunchtime and time for the stat R. Left to my own devices and with strict instructions from the management I carried on with the bidding which is where things started to unravel.
Some little while later, returning to the auction management somehow missed me and, with lots coming up she quickly got herself a new buyers number. This was all very well when she bought an immaculate 1960's era push bike for 5 pounds but of course when the carpentry tools came up she was sitting at the front of the auction whilst I was acting on her instructions, at the back.
I shan't say exactly what happened next, I'll leave it to your imagination....
But anyway the day wore on and our little pile of goodies grew into something altogether bigger. By the end we had an impressive pile and a wee bit of a dilemma.
You see yesterday I picked up 4 sleepers for Tallies shed and these were still in the van begging the minor question of how it was to be transported home.
Now lets see a drop leaf table (pound) sofa (pound) an adult bike and several large boxes of woodworking tools added to the four sleepers and of course this all had to be safe so 4 kids could travel in there too.
Not a big problem then....
Being of a managerial disposition she delegated, well, buggered off is another way of describing it.
Anyway pooling our resources we managed to shoe horn everything in.
Well we did after we had paid for it all, ahh yes paid. Now this is the sort of local auction where you pay on the day, cash being preferred though cheques are also OK. Plastic is simply that, plastic.
So of course where was our cheque book? Safely with management in the Xantia which was at that moment screeching it's way across the county. I had a slight dilemma then, fortunately there was a cash point, about 15 miles away....
Fortunately pooling all our cash the kids and I managed to come up with enough money, well we had about 75 p left over..
It meant we could not bid the pound it would have cost for her last few items, a couple of wicker baskets to hold fire wood for the best really, we would have had to leave a child behind to bring them home....
But all is well, the box of comics contains a number of 1950's and 1970's originals which management assures me will make us unbelievably wealthy when they hit eBay. Well OK maybe we will not be buying a yacht in the Bahamas but they should realise more than a pound we bid on them, if all else fails she says they will be cheaper than buying newspaper to light the fire...
Five box games for three pounds. Oh and there is a deluxe corkscrew brand new in it's box, hmm I think I might try that out later on today.
Management is over the moon, she has found one just like it on eBay for 15 pounds she says she has decided what she is giving me for Xmas....
R
So it is also with the management, last weeks expensive dinosaur IVECO is this weeks highly useful long wheel base high top van.
This would of course have nothing to do with the imminent arrival of the date of another auction of course, not a bit of it.
So anyway off we went in convoy this morning, her roaring off in a cloud of gravel that had a xantia somewhere in the middle and me following on in somewhat more sedate fashion in the IVECO.
Of course today was a bit different, an auction with a stat review in the middle, does no harm to let SW know that your whole life does not revolve about their every whim and desire.
But I digress, she had spent a pound here a fiver there and with the credit crunch in full swing she was buying us in to all sorts of things and ornaments. Gwion is on an inset day, for reasons I did not really fathom we bid five pounds on a fish tank for him. Another five pounds bought a big box of games and a pound bought a box of original magazines from the 50's.
Auctions are strange places and rules such as they are can be hard to fathom.
Management had decided she needed a new sofa, now with 9 kids on the plot it does not pay to spend out hundreds of pounds so management was looking for good second hand. A couple were on offer, a rather nice three seater went for a mind boggling 160 pounds. Declining that one, management opted for the one next to it, a two seater for a whole pound now, it was hard to see 159 pounds between them. Both were newish both perfectly serviceable, yet one went for a mountain one went for an anthill.
Similarly G plan stuff seems out of fashion, now you would have paid a fortune for this back in the 80's and it's built like a built thing, yet we got a whole bedroom full of the stuff last auction for 3 pound. I could not see any possible need for any more so I let it go 2 quid.
This brought us up to lunchtime and time for the stat R. Left to my own devices and with strict instructions from the management I carried on with the bidding which is where things started to unravel.
Some little while later, returning to the auction management somehow missed me and, with lots coming up she quickly got herself a new buyers number. This was all very well when she bought an immaculate 1960's era push bike for 5 pounds but of course when the carpentry tools came up she was sitting at the front of the auction whilst I was acting on her instructions, at the back.
I shan't say exactly what happened next, I'll leave it to your imagination....
But anyway the day wore on and our little pile of goodies grew into something altogether bigger. By the end we had an impressive pile and a wee bit of a dilemma.
You see yesterday I picked up 4 sleepers for Tallies shed and these were still in the van begging the minor question of how it was to be transported home.
Now lets see a drop leaf table (pound) sofa (pound) an adult bike and several large boxes of woodworking tools added to the four sleepers and of course this all had to be safe so 4 kids could travel in there too.
Not a big problem then....
Being of a managerial disposition she delegated, well, buggered off is another way of describing it.
Anyway pooling our resources we managed to shoe horn everything in.
Well we did after we had paid for it all, ahh yes paid. Now this is the sort of local auction where you pay on the day, cash being preferred though cheques are also OK. Plastic is simply that, plastic.
So of course where was our cheque book? Safely with management in the Xantia which was at that moment screeching it's way across the county. I had a slight dilemma then, fortunately there was a cash point, about 15 miles away....
Fortunately pooling all our cash the kids and I managed to come up with enough money, well we had about 75 p left over..
It meant we could not bid the pound it would have cost for her last few items, a couple of wicker baskets to hold fire wood for the best really, we would have had to leave a child behind to bring them home....
But all is well, the box of comics contains a number of 1950's and 1970's originals which management assures me will make us unbelievably wealthy when they hit eBay. Well OK maybe we will not be buying a yacht in the Bahamas but they should realise more than a pound we bid on them, if all else fails she says they will be cheaper than buying newspaper to light the fire...
Five box games for three pounds. Oh and there is a deluxe corkscrew brand new in it's box, hmm I think I might try that out later on today.
Management is over the moon, she has found one just like it on eBay for 15 pounds she says she has decided what she is giving me for Xmas....
R
Thursday, 27 November 2008
Oh my blog.....
Somebody said to me that to have a successfull blog you need a theme. There needs to be a thread that runs thorough it all.
Well I'm bucking that trend; sometimes I have serious issues and views and other times I am just being plain silly, you will have to read the subtext to find the clues.
Today has been brainbendingly boring trip out to Tesco and noting that the downward trend in prices of the last few weeks has stoped and even gone into reverse. one wonders if the decision to stay out of the euro was one of our better ones as a country, would not half make my life easier if we were in and i think in 20 years time the euro will be a proper currency and the pound a nothing bit of paper.
Still it's a real news day, odd how the BBC repeats the same old mantra though. People have attacked hotels in India and it's serious because there were Brits there. If 100 people died thats 100 families thrown into turmoil, it matters not where theses people were born nor what passport they carried they are people first.
Well I'm bucking that trend; sometimes I have serious issues and views and other times I am just being plain silly, you will have to read the subtext to find the clues.
Today has been brainbendingly boring trip out to Tesco and noting that the downward trend in prices of the last few weeks has stoped and even gone into reverse. one wonders if the decision to stay out of the euro was one of our better ones as a country, would not half make my life easier if we were in and i think in 20 years time the euro will be a proper currency and the pound a nothing bit of paper.
Still it's a real news day, odd how the BBC repeats the same old mantra though. People have attacked hotels in India and it's serious because there were Brits there. If 100 people died thats 100 families thrown into turmoil, it matters not where theses people were born nor what passport they carried they are people first.
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Festering - a dying job??
Interesting day, speaking to an English foster carer. It seems that qualification and registration are on the way. Altogether a good thing. But lets looks at this in detail.
Qualification has been an issue in social work for a while, recognition that social work has a workforce that is woefully undertrained for the job in hand. The response was welcome; introduction of a proper degree level course combined with the introduction of central registration linked to a code of practice.
One thing that has been absent retrospective qualification, that is making those who are currently in practice go back to qualify at a higher level.
Now it seems in England the plan will be to make every foster carer qualify within two years or be barred from the profession.
So a social worker with 5 years under their belt will be deemed competent and a foster carer with 20 years will be automatically incompetent.
This kind of thing can in large part be placed at the door of the Fostering Network a national charity that pretends to represent foster carers but had historically done very little for them.
But I wonder, how many doctors, suddenly told they had to requalify all over again, would go and do it or would they just walk away.
Make them people who do not earn the kind of money that a GP earns rather put them close to benefits level income and I wonder how joined up this thinking really is.
I wonder if many people will simply walk away.
For me fostering was a way of being home when my own children needed me. They are growing up now and I could easily go off and do something else.
I am, I hope, quite good at what I do, I wonder if I am as expendible as I feel.
Qualification has been an issue in social work for a while, recognition that social work has a workforce that is woefully undertrained for the job in hand. The response was welcome; introduction of a proper degree level course combined with the introduction of central registration linked to a code of practice.
One thing that has been absent retrospective qualification, that is making those who are currently in practice go back to qualify at a higher level.
Now it seems in England the plan will be to make every foster carer qualify within two years or be barred from the profession.
So a social worker with 5 years under their belt will be deemed competent and a foster carer with 20 years will be automatically incompetent.
This kind of thing can in large part be placed at the door of the Fostering Network a national charity that pretends to represent foster carers but had historically done very little for them.
But I wonder, how many doctors, suddenly told they had to requalify all over again, would go and do it or would they just walk away.
Make them people who do not earn the kind of money that a GP earns rather put them close to benefits level income and I wonder how joined up this thinking really is.
I wonder if many people will simply walk away.
For me fostering was a way of being home when my own children needed me. They are growing up now and I could easily go off and do something else.
I am, I hope, quite good at what I do, I wonder if I am as expendible as I feel.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
On the tiles again....
So the great project goes on.
This morning we hit a snag; the toilets not for moving. Having been screwed and siliconed in by yours truly in 1998 the heads of the screws are a bit beyond unscrewing. This could be resolved using the hearth kit and a chisel. Of course the danger being that there might be a slip and a shattered pan.
So management set herself the task of tiling around it. To an expert this might be nothing as challenges go but in managements case this was the real deal. As the profanity rose to tusnami levels I decided that now was an ideal eBay moment and went into town to do some posting.
Back just in time to be handed flat pack boxes and set to work building the base to take the sink. Tomorrow, she announced, I can plumb in the sink. Oh goodie....
Whats more, she informed me brightly, there were enough "spare" tiles to do the downstairs shower. I mentioned earlier that her maths was suspect, but now I am not so sure...
Taliesin who is home ill has spent much of the day scanning the horizon and wistfully hoping for snow.
This morning we hit a snag; the toilets not for moving. Having been screwed and siliconed in by yours truly in 1998 the heads of the screws are a bit beyond unscrewing. This could be resolved using the hearth kit and a chisel. Of course the danger being that there might be a slip and a shattered pan.
So management set herself the task of tiling around it. To an expert this might be nothing as challenges go but in managements case this was the real deal. As the profanity rose to tusnami levels I decided that now was an ideal eBay moment and went into town to do some posting.
Back just in time to be handed flat pack boxes and set to work building the base to take the sink. Tomorrow, she announced, I can plumb in the sink. Oh goodie....
Whats more, she informed me brightly, there were enough "spare" tiles to do the downstairs shower. I mentioned earlier that her maths was suspect, but now I am not so sure...
Taliesin who is home ill has spent much of the day scanning the horizon and wistfully hoping for snow.
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Meet the borgias....
There is nothing like a family and family dynamics.
Yesterday, as the rugby loomed on the telly Bethan decided it would be nice to make sure her Xmas pressie was bought before the Xmas rush. Of course timing it with the rugby meant the only sensible thing to do was to let the girls and their mother go into town, so off they went whilst I did important things.
Hours passed and back they came with a state of the art sewing machine, which was to be duly wrapped for Xmas.
Well no, apparently not. Beth just slipped into the conversation how there would be a 6 th form Xmas ball which would of course require a ball gown. By sheer good fortune we had just bought the very tool for making a ball gown. Well for her mother to make one anyway...
Her mother of course is still basking in happiness. She got an early Xmas present herself, I whisked into town on Friday and bought her an industrial grade tile cutter. wrapped in Xmasy brown paper, festive baler twine completed the ensemble.
Management is really good at hiding her delight. Her eyes did not light up in exited anticipation as she realised she had a surprise gift. There was almost a stoicism as she unwrapped the string. When she realised what it was, she concealed her feelings behind a sigh and swiveling eyeballs, but I know she was delighted really.
She was so happy with me that she brought me breakfast in bed this morning with several cups of coffee. "It's nice to be loved" I mused as I pushed my thick roll of notes, the proceeds of Green Goddess parts sales into my pocket.
"We can go to IKEA tomorrow" she said with a smile.
R
Yesterday, as the rugby loomed on the telly Bethan decided it would be nice to make sure her Xmas pressie was bought before the Xmas rush. Of course timing it with the rugby meant the only sensible thing to do was to let the girls and their mother go into town, so off they went whilst I did important things.
Hours passed and back they came with a state of the art sewing machine, which was to be duly wrapped for Xmas.
Well no, apparently not. Beth just slipped into the conversation how there would be a 6 th form Xmas ball which would of course require a ball gown. By sheer good fortune we had just bought the very tool for making a ball gown. Well for her mother to make one anyway...
Her mother of course is still basking in happiness. She got an early Xmas present herself, I whisked into town on Friday and bought her an industrial grade tile cutter. wrapped in Xmasy brown paper, festive baler twine completed the ensemble.
Management is really good at hiding her delight. Her eyes did not light up in exited anticipation as she realised she had a surprise gift. There was almost a stoicism as she unwrapped the string. When she realised what it was, she concealed her feelings behind a sigh and swiveling eyeballs, but I know she was delighted really.
She was so happy with me that she brought me breakfast in bed this morning with several cups of coffee. "It's nice to be loved" I mused as I pushed my thick roll of notes, the proceeds of Green Goddess parts sales into my pocket.
"We can go to IKEA tomorrow" she said with a smile.
R
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