Another long overdue update.
Months have gone by again and I haven't updated again. It has been a busy time and despite a desire to be blogging more often, there are just not enough hours in the day (or night) at the mo.
Firstly with the happy stuff, way back in March (it feels like an age ago now) Pink and I managed to get a couple of days away from the madness. We booked into a little hotel in Wales, Llangoed Hall, for a little rest and relaxation. If you look at their website you can hire the entire hotel for an undisclosed amount, or you can book two nights away when they are really quiet and have the entire hotel and grounds all to yourself for a greatly reduced bargain price. I have now attached obligatory holiday snaps.
We didn't really do much but eat, explore the grounds and spent one lovely afternoon eating afternoon tea curled up on a sofa each, in front of a roaring log fire reading books (whilst Jess pretended she actually owned the building and the 15ft fireplace). Came away feeling rested and as usual saying "we must do this more often", I just know it will be another 3 years before we manage it.
Life has been a roller coaster since Christmas, those who have seen me know that there has been a lot of hurdles to surmount in the wake of the government cuts/ the recession. O.K. lets get the politics out of the way first. When it comes to social care, Labour shafted us - long before the Coalition government was created - so this is not a political rant, although I am well aware of the ongoing impact of the current cuts. Anyhow.... the ring-fence was taken off the Supporting People funding. The government used to dictate how councils could spend this money but these rules changed. Allowing Devon County Council (in this example) to choose how to spend their money on supporting people in the community. DCC is a wily animal and planned these cuts long before it started to hit the news. Devon County Council are not responsible for homelessness (which is the category of funding the clients I work with fall under) that is the responsibility of Exeter City Council. So they have wiped out the funding for over 500 beds (with people in them) over Devon. That does not include all the funding cuts to children's services and domestic abuse etc. But they don't increase the funding to ECC to help them deal with the problem, oh and they don't make any redundancies in the Supporting People team, they just redeploy them into another team (nothing like jobs for the boys) despite the fact they are managing 50% less contracts, therefore a reduction of over 1/2 their workload. I would love to know what is in their 'rainy day fund', I think it ends with a least 7 zeros if not more!
So that's the bigger picture, how does that impact on me? Well the grants got cut, and whilst Probation and DCC wanted staffing levels remained the same (double cover 24 hours a day) they were cutting contract value. That meant we had to go through a really nasty restructure (and anyone who reads my journal knows that certain elements of the staff team are there for all the wrong reasons including just to vex me) but whilst I disagreed with the reductions in grading and wages (quite vocally) I agreed that we would work smarter and more efficiently. The loss of the Move-on beds and inability to open the new purpose-built building makes our job a lot harder but it forces us to look at new ways of working. And we went through all of this for the guarantee of only 1 years funding, then it could all be over again.
Some people really don't ever get the bigger picture. Some staff after having to re-interview for their jobs, have decided that there is no point in 'up-ing their game' and making our stakeholder realise just how valuable a service we are, no their time is better spent undermining decision and progress, waging petty point-scoring tactics and remembering the 'golden years' (which were pretty cruddy in my recollection, see here and here for previous rants). When all safe and secure in their jobs and suddenly realising that I had had my hours slashed to 14 a week, their answer, "well you can get another job". Just another reminder that they don't want me there but they don't want to do without me because of all that I do.
So February and March went by in a flurry of 50-60 hour weeks working days/ nights and weekends to make sure the transfer went though smoothly even though all my hard work was doing myself out of a job in the long-term. Despite my body clock giving up and resigning its position, I kept going with the mantra it will all end in April. The plan was to work my arse off for Feb & March, it will all come to an end on 4th April when my hours were reduced to 14 a week and I could take stock and recuperate and find another job.
Life never works out like that and here we are at the beginning of April and I am still working long hours, because we are short-staffed, am loathed (and loathing) some of the staff and until we manage to recruit posts which come with wages you can't live on, it doesn't look like it will be easing any time soon. I am so tired I can't think straight about the future and I am so stressed by working in that building that I am acting irrationally, to be honest I am being a complete bitch at work sometimes. It's not helped by the fact that my manager is sick to death of it all too, which I completely understand, but leaves me feeling very unsupported and angry more often than not. The fact that I worked close to 300 hours in March and yet they managed to completely cock up may wages and leave me utterly short this month has not inspired tranquillity in me.
Pink and I have had the last 10 days off which has allowed me to reflect and I continue to find myself in a quandary... what do I do with my life and which direction do I head in. Trying to write it all down to work it out doesn't seem to be helping and am just blundering around in the dark!
In lighter, more superficial, news I had my annual hair cut. I allowed myself to be convinced to cut out the remaining black dye that lingered on the ends.... ohmigod I hate it... I just need to keep repeating to myself "It will grow back, it will grow back" oh, and wearing hats!
Firstly with the happy stuff, way back in March (it feels like an age ago now) Pink and I managed to get a couple of days away from the madness. We booked into a little hotel in Wales, Llangoed Hall, for a little rest and relaxation. If you look at their website you can hire the entire hotel for an undisclosed amount, or you can book two nights away when they are really quiet and have the entire hotel and grounds all to yourself for a greatly reduced bargain price. I have now attached obligatory holiday snaps.
We didn't really do much but eat, explore the grounds and spent one lovely afternoon eating afternoon tea curled up on a sofa each, in front of a roaring log fire reading books (whilst Jess pretended she actually owned the building and the 15ft fireplace). Came away feeling rested and as usual saying "we must do this more often", I just know it will be another 3 years before we manage it.
Life has been a roller coaster since Christmas, those who have seen me know that there has been a lot of hurdles to surmount in the wake of the government cuts/ the recession. O.K. lets get the politics out of the way first. When it comes to social care, Labour shafted us - long before the Coalition government was created - so this is not a political rant, although I am well aware of the ongoing impact of the current cuts. Anyhow.... the ring-fence was taken off the Supporting People funding. The government used to dictate how councils could spend this money but these rules changed. Allowing Devon County Council (in this example) to choose how to spend their money on supporting people in the community. DCC is a wily animal and planned these cuts long before it started to hit the news. Devon County Council are not responsible for homelessness (which is the category of funding the clients I work with fall under) that is the responsibility of Exeter City Council. So they have wiped out the funding for over 500 beds (with people in them) over Devon. That does not include all the funding cuts to children's services and domestic abuse etc. But they don't increase the funding to ECC to help them deal with the problem, oh and they don't make any redundancies in the Supporting People team, they just redeploy them into another team (nothing like jobs for the boys) despite the fact they are managing 50% less contracts, therefore a reduction of over 1/2 their workload. I would love to know what is in their 'rainy day fund', I think it ends with a least 7 zeros if not more!
So that's the bigger picture, how does that impact on me? Well the grants got cut, and whilst Probation and DCC wanted staffing levels remained the same (double cover 24 hours a day) they were cutting contract value. That meant we had to go through a really nasty restructure (and anyone who reads my journal knows that certain elements of the staff team are there for all the wrong reasons including just to vex me) but whilst I disagreed with the reductions in grading and wages (quite vocally) I agreed that we would work smarter and more efficiently. The loss of the Move-on beds and inability to open the new purpose-built building makes our job a lot harder but it forces us to look at new ways of working. And we went through all of this for the guarantee of only 1 years funding, then it could all be over again.
Some people really don't ever get the bigger picture. Some staff after having to re-interview for their jobs, have decided that there is no point in 'up-ing their game' and making our stakeholder realise just how valuable a service we are, no their time is better spent undermining decision and progress, waging petty point-scoring tactics and remembering the 'golden years' (which were pretty cruddy in my recollection, see here and here for previous rants). When all safe and secure in their jobs and suddenly realising that I had had my hours slashed to 14 a week, their answer, "well you can get another job". Just another reminder that they don't want me there but they don't want to do without me because of all that I do.
So February and March went by in a flurry of 50-60 hour weeks working days/ nights and weekends to make sure the transfer went though smoothly even though all my hard work was doing myself out of a job in the long-term. Despite my body clock giving up and resigning its position, I kept going with the mantra it will all end in April. The plan was to work my arse off for Feb & March, it will all come to an end on 4th April when my hours were reduced to 14 a week and I could take stock and recuperate and find another job.
Life never works out like that and here we are at the beginning of April and I am still working long hours, because we are short-staffed, am loathed (and loathing) some of the staff and until we manage to recruit posts which come with wages you can't live on, it doesn't look like it will be easing any time soon. I am so tired I can't think straight about the future and I am so stressed by working in that building that I am acting irrationally, to be honest I am being a complete bitch at work sometimes. It's not helped by the fact that my manager is sick to death of it all too, which I completely understand, but leaves me feeling very unsupported and angry more often than not. The fact that I worked close to 300 hours in March and yet they managed to completely cock up may wages and leave me utterly short this month has not inspired tranquillity in me.
Pink and I have had the last 10 days off which has allowed me to reflect and I continue to find myself in a quandary... what do I do with my life and which direction do I head in. Trying to write it all down to work it out doesn't seem to be helping and am just blundering around in the dark!
In lighter, more superficial, news I had my annual hair cut. I allowed myself to be convinced to cut out the remaining black dye that lingered on the ends.... ohmigod I hate it... I just need to keep repeating to myself "It will grow back, it will grow back" oh, and wearing hats!