Glimpsing the obvious 18: Support should be banned

If you work in social care or health care then let me make a suggestion. Stop saying ‘support’ because it lulls us into a false sense of competence

Glimpsing the obvious 17: Hanged if you do…

In reality, you are responsible only for what you do – not for what your client does.

Glimpsing the obvious 16: Not an emergency service

If it doesn’t need emergency services it’s not an emergency. It may be something that’s better sorted out sooner than later but it’s not worth putting yourself or others at risk simply because other people don’t want to wait

Glimpsing the obvious 15: The Saviour fantasy

If you think that you can save the world you are wrong. If you are prepared to work on getting your own piece of the task right you can be part of a team that makes a real difference.

Glimpsing the obvious 14: Don’t flap

The problem is that the more we flap the less effective we become. Our emotional over reaction is contagious too. If we lose our cool then our colleagues are more likely to do the same.

Glimpsing the obvious 13: Manage the risk

Just as nobody has the right to remove risk from your life so you do not have the right to remove all risk from the lives of your service-users.

Glimpsing the obvious 12: Sympathy isn’t usually helpful

Empathy acknowledges that people have a right to feel as badly as they want to but then it asks: “But why would you want to?”

Glimpsing the obvious 11: Lapse is not relapse

Tom realised that their belief prevented them from controlling their alcohol use. They thought that they must keep drinking after their first little tipple and so didn’t attempt to do otherwise.

Glimpsing the obvious 10: Do as I do

A very important part of this work is ‘modelling’. If we expect our service-users to make positive changes we need to demonstrate them in ourselves.

Glimpsing the obvious 9: What people say may not be what they mean

The other possibility I want to consider here is the ‘challenging behaviour’ strategy of taking people at their word even if you don’t think they’re being honest.