Today we were visited by a nice lady from social services, she brought with her the forms we shall need to fill in in order to obtain a grant for a walk in shower for Pa and,we hope a stair lift. She is the latest in a long line of social workers who have arrived, spouted a load of jargon, left a multitude of forms to be filled in and then disappeared back in to the far recesses of her department never to be seen again.
The forms we were given today are horribly familiar as this will be the third time I have filled them in and sent them off, yet am in hope that this time things will be different.
To begin with this one arrived on time, others have been anything up to four hours late, she knew our names, on one occasion we spent an hour with a social worker who having confused us with another couple spent an hour attempting to persuade us to enter a nursing home. On discovering her error she became annoyed at having her time wasted, after a few trenchant remarks from me she departed in high dudgeon having not discussed our needs at all!
Today's visitor was very professional and she spoke in plain English in stead of the current Social Workers jargon ,unintelligible to a humble soul such as I. She did not need to interface with our landlord, she would telephone him. She did not use the words pro-active, what the hell does that mean? She refrained from the use of meaningless buzz-words and actually referred to our problems rather than our issues.
Not being a Social Worker and in the know a good deal of what they say usually causes much head scratching, the practice is nonsensical since these people are supposed to be communicators.............the trouble is no one seems to have mentioned the fact to them.
I regret to say the the nursing profession has recently succumbed to the curse of the buzz word. In the throws of extreme pain I was asked by a nurse in A&E if I had any recent interaction with the hospital. Through the fog of pain and pethidine I was puzzled for a moment, she asked me again and then asked my son the same question. In spite of the pain I came over all whimsical and said that I had recently collided with the lift doors on my way to Urology. Why for the love of reason could she not have asked me if I was receiving treatment for my kidney problems.
The answer is I suppose one of place, importance and /or belonging, these people feel the need to have their own language to describe things as a means of giving them importance, also it is a way of making things sound either better of more positive than they really are.
For example;Quantitative Easing, once upon a time this measure was referred to as devaluation. It involved the printing of money when there was not enough to go around. Devaluation does not sound positive, quantitative easing sounds better, even though it still involves the printing of money in order to keep things going . The difference is either one of perception of perhaps the hope the many people will not know what the hell quantitative easing actually means, a little of both, probably.
Most people have at some time been on the receiving end of one of those verbose epistles from one government office or another so you will know the sort of thing I mean. I once received a communication from the Inland Revenue so sprinkled with such phrases as rendered it unintelligible and I was obliged to fill in the part of the form asking for a translation in to English!
Enough of this frippery, The nice lady took our details, seemed very helpful and then asked me if I would care for a commode in the living room, I glanced around the small room , cursed with three doors and filled as it is with Pa,s leg braces, special shoes, his bed, his big comfy chair, his desk and his television and asked her where she suggested I put such an item. I pointed to the large window through which much can be seen from the garden path and then asked her how she imagined that either Pa or myself would be able to carry the contents of the blessed thing up the stairs to empty it down the loo when both of us were unable to carry things up and down the stairs due to our disabilities.
“I have to ask.”she said. “ In case you fall down the stairs,if we are not able to install a stair lift,its what we call covering our ass!” Now that piece of jargon I understood!
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