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Rules that are meant to serve

Rules and guidelines are a good way to run an organisation. If the rules are too rigid they can cripple a business or an organisation or the people that they serve.

For instance, if I had a lot of fruit to be picked and wasn’t allowed to pick it until my boss said it was OK. The fruit would get rotten and there would be no benefit from growing fruit trees.

It’s happened to a large degree with home care in some companies in New Zealand.

The rules are written down in concrete about what you can do and what you can’t do. They do not allow a home carer to use their own common sense.

A woman I went to once had a lovely apple tree with apples that were delicious and as large as dinner plates. I was not allowed to pick the fruit for her and stew them for her desert. You can guess that many would not tell anyone what they did do or did not do.

Mean while what goes on is that they meet and say “I didn’t clean the windows” and “I didn’t pick up fruit” and “I didn’t do this and that”…I did what the service delivery plan told me to do!

Doubtless to say if you gave one of your clients that was going to wait for a bus or drive their own car to a supermarket when they were not allowed to do that. Helping them then would lose you your job if you were unfortunate to be caught.

It’s tied up in money and insurance. If you stand up on a stool to change a lightbulb you could lose your job. They have to pay someone to do it, or else wait for their relative who never visits them to change it for them.

Yes, there are definite guide lines that should be put down. How ever, telling a home carer that they are not allowed to use their common sense or with holding information to their work is not in the interest of anyone.

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What do you think?

Written by Pamela Moresby

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