On Friday, Community Care asked social workers to share their best and worst social work jargon. One thing became clear, despite good humour, there is no such thing as the ‘best’ jargon.
After a long weekend of trying to get our collective heads around some of this, and failing, here is what you put forward as the worst social work jargon.
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Hi P.I.P did you know K.P.I’s are N.I.C.E.. D.O.H – no mistake there…
Be S.M.A.R.T about your Person centred, F.A.C.S. Then ensure Quality Assurance with the Budget Holders…
TLA is Three Letter Acronym and FLA Four (or Five) Letter Acronym. I liked the pieces of management jargon heard at a national meeting with very senior SW people which concluded that the burning platform should be kicked into the long grass – recipe for a fiery disaster I would have thought….
In Scotland we have the SHANARRI framework and I am member of the BEMPAC for Corum/Baaf. I hate acrymons but love my job as a social worker.
I object to the word MASH. I am bemused at it’s use and end up writing the full term. What are you supposed to do if a family is reading the word MASH. What does it mean to them….their child’s case is in MASH…mash what? potato!
This article is actually quite disappointing as most of the examples given are merely acronyms that are no more than shorthand for descriptive titles. The worst jargon is far more dangerous, as it conveys an air of spurious “expertise”, seeks to exclude the uninitiated and often has more than a hint of condescension about it. My favourite is a term I saw recently where someone described how they had worked with an older person to “scaffold their future”. I bet the older person loved that!