Hysterical, but not in a funny way
Posted: 28 September 2013 Filed under: compensation culture, Discrimination claims, Dispute resolution, Mediation, Special educational needs | Tags: Centre for Policy Studies Leave a commentA new and aggressive business has emerged in recent years – the business of stoking compensation culture hysteria. We see evidence of it in the press and, more worryingly, in government policy-making fuelled by a hatred of lawyers. It reminds me of the ‘PC gone mad’ hysteria that was so lively in the 1990s and still rears its unlovely head now and again. Like most hysterias, neither of these – the PC gone mad and the compensation culture – is rooted in an evidence base. Why, then, do they have such hold on the public, and political, imagination?
One example is a report published last year by the Centre for Policy Studies, a thinktank that describes its aim as advocating ‘a distinctive case for smaller, less intrusive government, with greater freedom and responsibility for individuals, families, business and the voluntary sector’. The Social Cost of Litigation by Frank Furedi examines two areas, health care and education, and argues that the fear of litigation is affecting the way professionals practice and, as a consequence, producing damaging outcomes.
In particular, Furedi focuses on what he calls ‘demand for recompense for accidents’ – presumably accidents which, in the good old days, would have been chalked up to experience, with no one to blame. Rising compensation levels, he suggests, lead people to make financial claims against public bodies, and the fear of such claims makes professionals risk averse, which in turn ‘erodes professional autonomy, stifles innovation, leads to defensive practices in both hospitals and schools and encourages greater bureaucracy’.
Anecdote as evidence
The paper has so many holes ripe for picking that it’s difficult to choose which to write about. To call this report an ‘investigation’ into litigation in education and health care is farcical. First and foremost, it refers to new research – but what this ‘research’ amounts to is a series of anecdotes with unidentified individuals who seem to have have been selected on the basis of sharing the hysteria brief of the author.
This evidence includes, for example, an account by an unnamed headteacher of the damaging effect of a parent asking questions: every time the school gets a request for a copy of policies and risk assessments, it’s a week’s work to fulfil the request. The question crying out to be asked is – how can it take that much time, unless you don’t already have policies in place and have to write them from scratch?
It is a truism that one person’s bureaucracy is another’s transparency, or accountability – but possibly a truism unfamiliar to this headteacher.
I can do anecdote, too. I mediated a disability discrimination claim brought against a private nursery by parents of a toddler with autism. The boy had been excluded from his nursery for biting another child. The nursery had struggled to balance his needs with its duty of care to staff and other children. In six months there had only been this one recorded incident. The nursery staff claimed he had been biting them many times in that period. There were no records of this, nor any records of what steps had been taken to address his behaviour. A child who could not speak and who in frustration used biting as a means of communication was labeled bad and excluded. Only by starting a legal challenge could the parents get the head of the nursery to agree to meet in a mediation and discuss what impact this had on them as a family. What came out of it was a clear way forward in terms of improving the procedures for logging incidents and enhanced training for staff – and yes, financial redress, but in this case it was in the form of fundraising for an autism charity.
Professional judgement
I agree wholeheartedly with Furedi’s statement that ‘…we need to challenge the expectation that professional best practice in the public sector should be measured by the absence of complaints or litigation’. But this is followed by the rather chilling statement: ‘A genuine return to respecting the principles of professional judgement would have a humanising effect on public services.’ In other words, let’s turn the clock back to when people respected doctors and teachers and didn’t ask questions or make demands. Doctor, after all, knows best.
There is more than cosy nostalgia at work here. It is essentially an attack on access to justice, an attack on rights – the extension, awareness and enforcement of rights. Furedi writes that ‘professional autonomy is being increasingly challenged by its confrontation with an agenda of consumer rights’. Nothing says more than his use of the word ‘agenda’, a term laden with disgust and dismissal.
The source of ‘evidence’ on the rising culture of naming, blaming and claiming in education are articles from the Telegraph and the Daily Mail on outrageous sums awarded for ridiculous injuries. For more robust evidence, see the speech given in March this year by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson (“Compensation Culture: Fact or Fantasy?“). He shatters myths around court decisions that gave rise to hysteria in the popular press, and he concludes that there have been no developments in substantive law encouraging a compensation culture.
The Furedi report argues that claims ‘inexorably’ lead to a diminishing of the public services and decline in the quality of education. Tell that to the young people with special educational needs who have had to fight for inclusion in mainstream schools. Those with behavioural difficulties face a constant struggle against being labeled bad. A survey conducted by the National Autistic Society (NAS) found that some 21% of children with autism are excluded, permanently or otherwise, from both mainstream and special schools, the most common reason given being that the school was unable to cope with the child.[1]
Others find that without legal challenges, schools and local authorities won’t make the physical changes needed so that children with mobility impairments or cerebral palsy can attend mainstream schools. Let’s follow Furedi’s lead and use anecdote here – but from a named individual who went public with his struggle. In April 2010 Jonathan Bartley, a parent of a child with cerebral palsy, confronted David Cameron about his claim that there has been a ‘bias towards inclusion’[2]:
‘We personally had to battle for two years to get our son into our local school, which his two sisters attend. It cost us thousands of pounds to go to a tribunal, which we then won. The local authority then said they would appeal against the decision to the high court. At that point, the secretary of state intervened, and paid for some modifications to the school. Samuel now attends the school.’
Instead of discouraging challenges, we need instead to encourage smarter complaining and better handling of complaints. Late settlements by local authorities is a constant problem with the SEN and disability tribunal. Whether it’s a tactic or it merely reflects departments under pressure, such settlements have a disproportionate cost for both parents and local authorities. The latter is, as Furedi would be the first to point out, public money being misused.
‘This is the perverse outcome of the modern fantasy of redress through litigation: every time we bring a claim against our health or education services, we are in effect suing ourselves. And every time we are encouraged to ‘name, blame and claim’ as an act of responsible citizenship, to stop other people sharing our bad experiences, we end up contributing to the worsening of these very services.
Where’s the evidence for that? This confused argument – that public services suffer when public bodies pay financial redress – has no foundation. The former Parliamentary Ombudsman Ann Abraham was straightforward in her condemnation of such an outdated approach: ‘Much work still remains to be done on the issue of financial redress. I’m still bewildered by the different attitudes to redress across the public sector: from local government where it appears to be understood and accepted; to central government where it is accepted – but somewhat grudgingly much of the time; to the NHS where it feels like pulling teeth… .’[3]
Complaints aren’t the enemy
An interview with Furedi allowed him to elaborate on his views:
“In conversation, Furedi is steadfast: ‘There shouldn’t be compensation claims for financial reward in the public sector. It is a completely irrational process because who pays for it? It is not the nurse or the teacher or the doctor who is found liable. No, it’s the taxpayer, the public purse – that is what pays for it. It leads to an irrational use of resources. People talk about the postcode lottery. This is even worse because resources are distributed according to whether you have a good lawyer or a bad one.’ “
What better argument for encouraging a culture where complaints are welcomed and efforts are made not just to resolve the individual grievance (which, yes, sometimes requires financial redress) but also to learn from complaints and improve? One way to do this, and to save public money in the bargain, is to encourage earlier use of mediation – independent, rights-based mediation to help resolve the complaint and identify what needs to change.
Where a complaint has no merit, mediation offers a cost-effective way to identify what has led to it – a misguided sense of justice, an unreasonable demand for cash, or – far more likely, in my experience – a breakdown of trust and communication. Trust is rightly cited by Furedi as a key issue – but trust isn’t earned by virtue of a degree certificate on display in the headteacher’s office.
The report suggests that it’s misguided to think that complaints foster greater accountability. Why? It argues that the institutionalisation of a culture of complaint has caused a rise in complaints. How do we know that complaints aren’t on the rise because of a decline in services or, more optimistically, a sign of progress and greater awareness? Show me the evidence.
[1] Barnard et al, Inclusion and autism: Is it working? (NAS, 2000).
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/28/jonathan-bartley-david-cameron-special-needs-schooling
[3] From “The role of the independent scrutineer: ensuring effective accountability”, Ann Abraham’s Annual Lecture to the Centre for Public Scrutiny, Feb 2005.
Inclusion – try it, it’s good for you!
Posted: 10 October 2012 Filed under: Disability, Discrimination claims, Dispute resolution, Mediation | Tags: business, disability, inclusion, Paralympics Leave a commentOne in five of us has a disability.
This might not come as a surprise in light of the very successful Paralympic games, which put disability at centre stage. But will this visibility last? Two years ago, as planning for the Games was in full swing, the UK government issued a Legacy Promise for Disabled People, setting out its commitment to bringing a shift in the way society views disability and to doing away with the obstacles that prevent people with disabilities from being fully included in all parts of society.
One aspect of this Legacy Promise is a commitment to improve accessibility of public transport. Gaps between the high-level commitment and the reality on the ground is an issue covered elsewhere in the article “Mind the Gap: What we’ve learned from the Paralympics” written with my colleague David Hilton.
Another aim of this Legacy Promise is to promote to business the benefits of attracting customers with disabilities. As with the ‘Pink pound’ campaign, making a business case for better access to goods and services for disabled people is considered to be more effective than threats and sanctions for breaching equalities legislation. Research conducted in 2010[1] found that one of the main barriers for small businesses was not knowing how to boost sales by attracting disabled customers.
So I welcome a new booklet produced for small businesses called Growing Your Customer Base to Include Disabled People. Published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, together with the Employer’s Fourm on Disability and the Office for Disability Issues (ODI), the booklet [http://odi.dwp.gov.uk/docs/idp/Growing-your-customer-base-to-include-disabled-people.pdf] provides clear and useful guidance on attracting and retaining customers by improving access to services.
It’s mostly parenthood and apple pie stuff – uncontroversial, unthreatening, even comforting in its common-sense approach. The problem is businesses need to know that even when it isn’t easy to improve access, it’s still the law. And that even with the best intentions, there will always disagreements over what is meant by reasonable adjustments and how far businesses need to go to ensure their services are accessible.
It’s unfortunate that at the same time we’re looking to see evidence of a legacy from the Games, we’ve seen a loss of the specialised service that helped businesses and disabled people resolve such disagreements. The Disability Conciliation Service was set up in 2002 by the Disability Rights Commission, and in the merging of the equalities commissions it transformed into the Equalities Mediation Service. Over the past ten years it has handled hundreds of discrimination cases and helped businesses and their customers to achieve long-lasting changes to the benefit of both. The government stripped the Equality and Human Rights Commission of its power to fund the service and refer cases to it. This sent a strong and unwelcome message – that it isn’t society’s responsibility to promote inclusion, and that disputes over accessibility are no different from disputes over building repairs or neighbour problems.
But these are different, and disputes over access aren’t a problem just for the one in five of us with a disability. We are all disadvantaged if we fail to live up to the promise of inclusion. It isn’t just good business, it’s our business.
[1] Carried out by Atkins Limited for the Office for Disability Issues, www. http://odi.dwp.gov.uk
Where do campus ombuds fit in?
Posted: 7 September 2012 Filed under: Dispute resolution, higher education, Mediation, ombud, ombuds, ombudsmen, ombudsperson, system design | Tags: campus ombuds, dispute resolution, higher education, mediation, student complaints, universities Leave a commentSeptember 2012
Student complaints: are campus ombuds the answer?
The potential role of campus ombudsmen is a bit of a hot topic at the moment in England and Wales, at least in the world of student complaints. Campus ombuds have been around for some time in the USA. Most universities there seem to have someone in this role. In the UK, however, they are a relatively little known phenomenon.
What is a ‘campus ombuds’?
The International Ombudsman Association (IOA, http://www.ombudsassociation.org), the professional body for ombuds in the USA and elsewhere, describes different types of creature – classical, organisational and advocate ombuds. Campus ombuds fall into the organisational ombuds category, which the IOA defines as ‘a designated neutral who is appointed or employed by an organisation to facilitate the informal resolution of concerns of employees, managers, students and, sometimes, external clients of the organisation’.
Most campus ombuds operating in the US do not investigate complaints themselves but act as a resource for staff and students who experience difficulties and might be considering raising a formal grievance. Although operationally and personally independent, they are for the most part accountable to the university that employs them. Their operational independence therefore depends on the respect given to the role by the university administration and on the ability of the individual ombuds to resist any attempt to compromise their independence.
A model example
To find out more, I recently met with David Rasch, the campus ombuds of Stanford University, a private university in Palo Alto, California that has some 15,000 students and around 2,000 academic staff.
David describes his role as a confidential resource; he emphasises empowerment and he uses mediation approaches, although he is not a trained mediator. He describes what he does as:
- non-judgmental and supportive listening
- confidential discussion
- coaching people to independently negotiate and resolve problems
- identifying and reframing roots of the problem
- developing strategies for resolutions that fit all parties’ interests and goals
- opening channels of communication
- negotiating, facilitating or mediating between some or all parties
- developing and recommending systemic solutions
Unlike ombuds here in the UK, David (and his campus colleagues throughout the States) does not conduct formal investigations. Interestingly, he can initiate an inquiry if he becomes aware of an issue – a power not shared by most of the ombudsmen in the UK, who can only take on a complaint that has been raised by an individual complainant (or group of complainants). He keeps no records of any discussions, something that helps protect the confidentiality he promises to those who use his service.
With a PhD and a background in psychology and counselling, David manages to gain credibility from both staff and students as well as wider staff at the university.
Using the campus ombuds is voluntary, and he has no targets to meet in terms of reducing the number of formal grievances or legal claims against the university. Staff and students with a problem are encouraged to see him before filing a grievance, and he asks them to say (in a feedback form) whether they would have used a formal process if they had not gone to him. From this he has a sense of the impact of his work.
About half the complaints he sees relate to employment issues from non-academic staff. Another 15% are from academic staff, and these tend to relate to the tenure process, problems with students and departmental politics. Just over one-third are student complaints, and these range across undergraduate and postgraduate students. He reports monthly to the university’s President on demographics and types of cases but not on specific cases.
Independence
Campus ombuds have been referred to by critics as a means to “stop students from occupying the dean’s office” and by proponents as a “conscience on campus”.[1] Listening to David, my sense was that the role of campus ombuds is hugely valuable, albeit possibly more so for a university’s administration than for a university’s students or staff. Ombuds can keep grievances and grumbles from escalating into full-blown legal claims, ever a consideration in such a litigious country. But even for those with the grievances or grumbles it offers a low-key way to deal with them without inviting the personal and professional destruction that so often accompanies disputes.
However valuable the role, however, it is one that depends heavily on the integrity and robustness of the individual ombuds, and there appears to be little protection for those post-holders pressured by an unsavoury administration to breach confidence or keep a lid on dissent. I have no doubt that David Rasch at Stanford is solid in both these characteristics. Others might not be, and their appointment and dismissal is at the whim of the administration.
Useful in the UK?
How might this role work here in the UK?
This summer the Department for Business (BIS, which oversees higher education in England and Wales) published its response to its White Paper ‘Students at the heart of the system’ and its subsequent Technical Consultation.[2] Buried within a long document addressing student finance and regulation of higher education is a brief mention of campus ombudsmen. BIS notes that among respondents to its consultation, ‘The idea of campus ombudsmen and regional networks was supported by many but seen as unnecessary or inappropriate by others.’
Not an overwhelming endorsement, then. It will be interesting to see how the issue of campus ombuds is handled by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) in its response to its own Pathway 3 Consultation. This consultation was carried out in late 2011 (see www.oiahe.org.uk) after the OIA was tasked by BIS to consult on ways to encourage early dispute resolution. The OIA is expected to publish the results and its response soon. The issue is also the focus of work carried out by the Improving Dispute Resolution Advisory Service (IDRAS), a consultancy body for higher education.[3]
The OIA and IDRAS
For those of you who aren’t familiar with either body, a bit of background. The OIA was established in 2004 and is the independent reviewer of student complaints about higher education institutions in England and Wales. It can only take on complaints once they have been through the university’s internal complaints procedure. Yet recent years have seen a steady increase in complaints, with resulting pressure on its staff to deal with cases more quickly. Meanwhile, complaints appear to be growing more complex.
IDRAS covers both student and staff disputes within universities. It produced, in 2008 and 2009, several reports on the state of play of dispute resolution within universities, including an overview of campus ombudsmen.
The OIA’s Pathway 3 consultation sought views on how best to promote the resolution of complaints at an early, internal stage, including the introduction of a campus ombudsman role. The consultation included a survey of the campus ombuds role in other countries, including Australia and the USA, where the role is well established.
‘Ombudsman’ culture in the UK
Here, the term ‘campus ombuds’ is problematic. We have a professional body, The Ombudsman Association (formerly known as the British and Irish Ombudsman Association, or BIOA), whose members are the various complaint-handling schemes for central and local government, housing and various private sectors, including utility companies, financial services and legal services. The OIA is a full voting ombudsman member, as is the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, which investigates complaints about higher education in Scotland. This means both schemes meet the Association’s membership criteria – including independence and accountability, as well as the power to investigate complaints and make determinations.
Campus ombuds in this sense would not meet the criteria for full membership of the Ombudsman Association. Furthermore, introducing a campus ombuds role here would risk creating confusion with what is in effect a national ombudsman scheme, the OIA, and put in place yet another hurdle for students to overcome before their complaint can be considered independently.
Mediation, not campus ombuds
In the UK we already have a range of mediation options for student complaints that could be developed in the push for more early dispute resolution, before complaints go to the OIA, or even in conjunction with an OIA investigation. There are a few well-established campus mediation services including Dundee University (see http://www.dundee.ac.uk/academic/edr/), which has been operating since 2009, as well as mediators and mediation providers with expertise in higher education (eg Equalities Mediation Service (www.equalities-mediation.org.uk) and IDRAS).
As a mediator with many years of experience in disability discrimination claims in higher education, I confess to having an interest in seeing more mediation taking place, and earlier, in such cases. I see the damage done to students and universities when complaints are dragged out over many years, limiting the options for resolution.
But my vision is not to steer all student complaints into mediation by default. It isn’t right for every case, or for every party in dispute. It is one of a range of tools that should be available for resolving such complaints, and it sits neatly with the authoritative role and investigative expertise of the OIA and, in Scotland, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. I’m not averse to having campus ombuds as an additional tool, but I worry that it will provide another hurdle and will add to the time involved in resolving student complaints. I also worry that it will be expensive for individual universities to establish and maintain an ombuds office. And I worry that, without independence, it won’t be a role trusted by students.
Instead, I’d like to see regional networks of specialised, independent mediators established, with the OIA’s support, which universities can call upon as and when needed, and as early as possible in the life of a dispute.
I look forward to seeing the OIA’s response to its Pathway 3 consultation. I’m hoping it will challenge assumptions about how the concept of campus ombuds will translate here and that it will explore the benefits of having access to independent mediation for student complaints.
[1] As quoted by S.A. Weigand, ‘A Just and Lasting Peace: Supplanting Mediation with the Ombuds Model” (1996) 12 Ohio state Journal on Dispute Resolution 1, pp.120-22.
The non-neutral neutral
Posted: 30 March 2012 Filed under: Discrimination claims, Mediation, Mediation styles | Tags: Discrimination claims, impartiality Leave a commentI’m a mediator, but I’m not neutral.
That’s a strange thing for a mediator to say. Let me explain. When I mediate a case, I promise to be impartial and fair and not to take sides or prejudge the outcome. But I won’t promise that I will be neutral. Neutral sounds to me as if I have no values and no views – as if I’m a statue or made of wood. I think most people would rather have a mediator who is human.
And in some of the mediations I do, I have a duty to remind parties of their rights and responsibilities set out in legislation or codes of practice. When I mediate an alleged claim of discrimination, I don’t take a view on who is right and who is wrong, but I am avowedly anti-discrimination – definitely not a neutral stance. Like most of the parties I work with, I am keen to promote greater equality in our society.
I also think most people would rather have a mediator who believes that mediation is just one way to resolve disputes. It’s not right for every situation, and it should never be compulsory. I am strongly opposed to any government initiative that seeks to drive people into mediation aganst their will. It’s a useful tool, and it should be affordable and accessible, and people should have the information they need about it – but they should always have a choice.
I consider mediation to be an important part of access to justice, but just one part of it, and I am passionate about helping individuals to make informed decisions about issues that affect their everyday life and our wider society.
domarmediation 