Social care / control

I often wonder about the words 'social care' and what they imply. For me after 22 years working in 'social care' they suggest a world where people are made to conform, where people have no freedom, no choice or control. Why? Because people living within it have been assessed by professionals as not being able, or indeed incapable, lacking capacity. Therefore society needs to create, monitor and manage a system within which people live / exist. A form of dictatorship if you like, where policy and procedure take precedent over choice, freedom and control.

Once you enter this system your life is never the same, you become a case reference number, to which pounds and pence are assigned; those pounds and pence control the rest of your being. Your life will never be the same.......

Now many professionals will argue that those individuals who find themselves requiring support, are supported in a way that ensures they can maximise their life, independence, choice and control. I would suggest that this is naive at the very least.

The way the system is designed is one which is based upon providing the cheapest option. Most councils will put you out to tender to the cheapest bidder, for between £11 & £12 per hour, if you break this down, by the time an organisation pays their costs to break even (not making a profit), they can only afford to pay minimum wage, this is without having to police check, provide mandatory training each year, supervise and appraise, to ensure quality services are delivered. So where is this choice and control for individuals whom society deems as the most vulnerable? There is no choice when the cheapest will do!

This is why I see social care as a system which creates a reliance to sustain its own existence, to ensure people continue to need and rely upon services, to fulfil the need of others, satisfying their own altruistic needs.

Just look at the reversal of thinking in learning disability services if you need proof - going from promoting and supporting independent supported living, to seeing local authorities now going back 15 years and heralding the rebuilding residential care units / villages as the future - to coin a well known phrase from the book 'asylum' - '........where a large number of like situated individuals, cut off from wider society....together, lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life....'  it is CONTROL!

The only time this will ever change is when so called professionals remove their heads from their dark excrement filled passages and stop controlling people's lives!