News

It was pleasing to see the issue of young people and complaints gaining some exposure (Editorial comment and News, page 5 and 12, 4 July). However, in supporting the need for effective advocacy arrangements for young people, you unfortunately missed an opportunity to address a greater concern, the question of service user rights generally, and the uncertain future for complaints procedures.

The reality is that after an inspired start, the profile and importance of complaints has regrettably slipped from the agenda. With the outcome of the Listening to People consultation paper still awaited after almost two years, and complaints services across the country struggling to meet increasingly litigious demand with very limited resources, advocacy for young people represents just one of many factors in the effective complaints handling calculation.

Since Waterhouse, councils have appointed children's complaints officers, children's rights officers, and any number of other regional variations. The recent consultation document on advocacy standards issued by the Department of Health represents a further positive step down the road towards a more professional and available advocacy service for young people.

But improved advocacy services alone will not bring about the change in culture required to make complaints systems truly effective.

The right to access all stages of a complaints procedure, the independent consideration of a complaint where requested, and that the procedure should be complainant rather than organisation-led, should be non-negotiable.

This may sound self-evident, but as the collision of health and social care services gathers momentum, there is considerable concern that some of these basic values are under threat.

Steve Carney
Chairperson of the National Complaints Officer Group (social care)

Beware the experts

The intention to imprison those with personality disorders is indeed very disturbing (Editorial comment, 4 July).

We are promised "safeguards", but what can these possibly consist of? If the criminal justice system gets it wrong in deciding if people have committed a crime or not there will surely be more miscarriages of justice in deciding what people might do.

Any supposed safeguards will immediately be attacked by the tabloid press as the new "loopholes" that free dangerous monsters.

Many psychiatrists will not co-operate, so who will? There is no such thing as an expert opinion in deciding what someone might do. Those who pretend to this expertise, will be joining a sinister and evil tradition of pretended expertise including "racial experts" and witchfinders.

V Townley
London

Racism and councils

By engaging in a personalised attack on me, John Williams (Letters, 11 July) has side-stepped the issues raised in my Viewpoint column about structural racism in councils. My article was about the fact that many councils have chosen to flout the law by failing to meet deadlines set by the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000.

My comments stem from personal experience and the experiences of people from ethnic minorities known to me. Here are three examples that will suffice.

For a number of years I worked in the race relations field. Someone employed by us, from an ethnic minority group, was a qualified social worker. She had been qualified for several years (not months or weeks) but had never been accepted for a social work post by any of the many social services departments to which she had made numerous applications. She was a highly skilled and able person and a pleasure to work with. She had so much to offer but was turned down again and again. This was not only a loss to the social services departments themselves but it was a loss to the service users as well as to her.

I applied for a post in a community project but was turned down. I asked the reason why. I was told that it was because my experience was with "people from ethnic minorities and not white people". I was being told that the service users with whom I had been working and the work I had been doing with them were irrelevant. I was appalled that black people and their needs could be devalued in such a way.

A few years later I was working for a council that established a working group on race. I volunteered to go on it but was turned down on the basis that the group was for managers only. When it had been running for a while someone from the voluntary sector asked whether I would join it. I explained to her the reasons for why I was originally turned down. She was amazed that my employer had actually turned down my offer purely on grounds of hierarchy.

The British Association of Social Workers' new code of ethics offers some hope in all this. If all those working in social work, and in its management, sign up to it then they will be required to direct their loyalties to the service users, to good employment practice, and to improving the services they are involved in providing, over and above being loyal to employers who set a bad example to their staff by failing even to comply with the law.

Helen Best
Freelance trainer and writer

Segregation - no way

Iain Duncan Smith says that children with learning difficulties are being "forced out" of special schools, into ones that are "ill-equipped to understand or respond to their needs" (News, page 9, 11 July).

Presumably, the Conservative leader would like all children with learning difficulties to be segregated in "special" institutions, where it is known that many children do not fulfil their potential. If mainstream schools are not equipped to help those with special education needs, then surely we should ensure that they are in future? The right of all children to receive a decent education at their local state school must be paramount.

Paula Puddephatt
Hampshire