A long absence from the blog is always going to require more than one shortish post to catch up, so in the absence of a great title, this is part two. My other interesting encounter of the week was a day spent at an event to do with teenage pregnancy and the government target to halve teenage pregnancy by 2010. This is a complex area of work for those who have been part of this whole thing for the last 7 or 8 years. Many areas seem to have had good success, but others are struggling. We are living in a culture where sex for young people seems pretty much the norm and where despite the publicity and availability of various forms of contraception plenty of girls still don’t use them. This means not only pregnancy but also sexually transmitted diseases like chlamydia.

Interesting as the actual conference was (and as I am only just getting involved in this area of work so it was very informative) that is not really what I want to talk about here. Instead my focus is about the extent to which some people lack insight into the way in which they behave and are prepared to allow people to see their behaviours towards others, and the long running arguments they are involved in where ‘partnership’ is meant to be happening. We were sitting on tables together with people from our own geographical area, alongside others from neighbouring areas. As the new person, I was keen to find out as much as possible, but what I found out was fascinating. Two particular colleagues spent much of the time engaged in what appeared to be a long running dispute about the sharing of information, the lack of engagement of one party, the unwillingness to work together and the feeling that they should tell and dictate rather than share and collaborate. Sadly the main aggressor (and I choose that word with care) was from my own organisation, and sadly also other people sitting nearby were party to what i can only describe as the washing of dirty laundry in public. Sadly also this is going to have to result in me getting involved in areas I would rather not do when I get back to work. My take on such disagreements is this, say what you like to each other so long as the doors are closed and people from outside don’t know how much you despise each other. But please don’t act in a way that demonstrates that you are in turn aggressive and then defensive and which appears do demonstrate something quite unpleasant about the way in which you work in your organisation.

I am sorry to see this morning, that Mousie has taken down her blog. in the context of that, I have thought long and hard about the above post, and have been as vague as I can without it not making sense (I hope). It seems our colleagues in the NHS are waking up to the presence of blogs, which is great, but also makes being open and honest difficult. For now though I continue.