All organisations make mistakes – what defines the good ones is their willingness to admit their mistakes and put them right, says Alicia Wood.
You will all know that feeling when you get something wrong, or someone criticises something you or your organisation have done. I get a knot in the pit of my stomach and for a few hours at least (sometimes days), and then in my mind, everything I have achieved in the last 20 years is negated because of one mistake. On a feedback form for work I have done, if I get one or two negative comments, I will dwell on those despite there being many more positive comments.
I have learned to be less harsh on myself as the years go by but I know that it is the negative feedback and the mistakes that spur me on to do better, to challenge myself and come out of my comfort zone.
We all screw up and make mistakes – working in human services we are bound to. We make decisions on the hoof… some are irrational, based on emotion rather than fact. But we are human beings dealing with human issues and this will never change. How we respond to criticism and deal with our mistakes is what makes good organisations stand out from the others.
Tortuous cycle
I am prompted to focus on the subject of getting it wrong in this column because I have just been reading the excruciating saga of #JusticeforLB. For those of you who don’t know, LB was a young man who drowned in the bath of an Assessment and Treatment Unit. His death was found to be preventable but the organisation responsible for his ‘care’ have never taken responsibility or properly apologised. His family are in a torturous cycle. In their fight for justice, they cannot properly grieve or move on more than two years after his death. The organisation uses inhuman tactics and language to avoid taking responsibility for the poor services that led to LB’s death. I can only surmise that they are acting in this way to avoid legal action being taken against them.
I have been involved in Reach Standards for supported living for the last 12 years and have spent much time going round the country talking to providers and commissioners about helping people to live a more ordinary life. Every organisation I met had some fear about risk and the implications for their organisation if they got it wrong. Many imagined they would be sued – some even based their policies on not ending up on the front page of the Daily Mail. I always asked a risk averse audience if they knew any organisation that had been sued or in the Daily Mail — only Cornwall NHS Trust was mentioned. It doesn’t really happen that often but probably should when providers are consistently poor.
Good organisations screw up but their first thought isn’t to avoid legal action. Good organisations act humanely and say sorry first, with sincerity and humility. They do not try to defend themselves but they open themselves up to more criticism by being public about their mistakes. They are open about what they have done wrong and genuinely try to find out where they went wrong and put it right. They care more about the people they support than their reputation.
This can’t change the fact that we have made mistakes with sometimes terrible consequences but if we can act with honesty and integrity, we enable the people we have wronged to move on.
Providers and commissioners are having a hard time in the media with almost daily stories about poor services and poor commissioning. Social media is making what was previously minor news more available and open to more people. Those who are wronged take to social media to shame the wrong doers.
Honest dialogue
We need to see poor providers driven out – there is no place for them in caring for disabled and older people – but we also need to see good providers telling us all about the mistakes they make and how they put them right. We need to shift away from just marketing and promoting our successes to also sharing our screw ups and our learning from them. We need a more honest dialogue with those we support, their families and the public if we are to shift from either an unrealistic expectation of perfection or, alternatively, an expectation that we are all sharks who have no integrity.
The Care Quality Commission has shifted the focus of inspection on to the culture of organisations rather than a rigid set of outputs. They now expect providers to put their inspection results in a conspicuous place on their website for all to see.
The Driving Up Quality Code (www.drivingupquality.org.uk) is an attempt by providers to be more open about what they do. There are providers that are openly publishing what the people they support, families and others say about their services, the good and the bad, and what they are going to do to get better. None of these providers is perfect but they are being transparent and honest about their failings.
In an age where slick marketing and PR brands all providers, good, mediocre and bad, with the same buzzwords and shiny images of happy faces, we can now get some sense of the culture of the organisation and if the organisation is brave enough to share their mistakes and take real action to improve, we can begin to trust them.
Alicia Wood is Chief Executive, Housing & Support Alliance (H&SA). The organisation helps housing & support providers, commissioners and advice and advocacy organisations make good housing and support happen for people with learning disabilities. For more information about H&SA membership call 0300 201 0455 or email kate.newrick@housingand
support.org.uk
