500,000 Public Sector Workers Culled

tomterm8

As a general rule, most of these breastfeeding consultants aren't highly paid. Bendix looked around and found a much more highly skilled role than normal, which involves training the doctors and nursing staff at a childrens hospital so they don't need to pay specialists on basic cases, feeding advice and clinical decisions for premature babies and children with a substantial amount of medical difficulties, and quite a significant amount of mamangement of other staff.

bendix

tomterm8 wrote: »

As a general rule, most of these breastfeeding consultants aren't highly paid. Bendix looked around and found a much more highly skilled role than normal, which involves training the doctors and nursing staff at a childrens hospital so they don't need to pay specialists on basic cases, feeding advice for premature babies with a substantial amount of medical difficulties, and quite a significant amount of mamangement of other staff.

I did not look around. I typed breast feeding coordinator jobs into Google and came up with several pages of similar roles, all over the country.

Who gives a !!!! about breast-feeding jobs. The point was originally made to illustrate the literally thousands of non-jobs in the public sector

I could easily have referred to other examples I've seen recently. One was for a football community coordinator. Another was for a Walking Liaison Officer. We could all cite hundreds of other examples.

It was an illustrative example to add colour to a general principle.

shortchanged_2

bendix wrote: »

You're getting desperate now. Noone is saying we don't need doctors.

People are questioning the need to have armies of pseudo-social workers charged with promoting something as intrinsically natural as breast-feeding, earning between £20-£45k per year, funded by the taxpayer.

It's just layer after layer of waste.

Frankly, I don't believe even you are comfortable defending it.

Is that why the UK has some of the worst breast feeding rates in Europe?

tomterm8

bendix wrote: »

I did not look around. I typed breast feeding coordinator jobs into Google and came up with several pages of similar roles, all over the country.

Who gives a !!!! about breast-feeding jobs. The point was originally made to illustrate the literally thousands of non-jobs in the public sector

I could easily have referred to other examples I've seen recently. One was for a football community coordinator. Another was for a Walking Liaison Officer. We could all cite hundreds of other examples.

It was an illustrative example to add colour to a general principle.

Yes, actually you did.

1984ReturnsForReal_2

Anyways.



Its hardly half a million breast feeding co-ordinators being put on the dole queue is it?

lostinrates

tomterm8 wrote: »

That's a good question. The short answer is that demographics have changed, and since the 1940's many more people bring up families far away from their parents. In addition, in the 1960's a lot of women were forced into bottle feeding, and so a lot of peoples parents didn't get experience with bottle feeding.

Like a lot of things, bottle feeding comes easily to some people, others have more problems and need a little help. The support that used to be given to women via their parents isn't available to everyone, and so the state intervened, because there is quite a significant body of research that shows brest feeding improves health outcomes.

There is a lovely woman who contributes in the health & beauty board sometimes. she volunteers a lot with breast feeding help, having required help herself. while not an expert she is a woman who learned much in the way she would have years ago from mothers/extended female family. I essence I imagine that to be part of ''the big society'' and a worthy part. That she also has access to something other than ''quackery'' is obviously relevant, but mothers helping mothers guided by one paid professional is cheaper than a whole team of professionals and people still sitting at home isolated from other ''real'' people going through what they do.

tomterm8

I just remember in the mid 1990's, one of my IT lecturers worked in a bank. He was a Fortran and COBOL programmer, which was dead old at the time. None of the bank senior management really knew what he or the rest of the department did. All they could see were old, ugly guys in bad suits that huddled around computers all day. So, one day they brought in guys with shiny suits and good hair cuts and closed the department down.

A few years later it turned out all those guys in bad suits with bad hair were actually necessary... and a little think called the Y2K bug meant that they rehired all the old guys as consultants and paid them ten times their old salary, to fix problem that, in the old days, the department no one really knew anything about sorted out without anyone noticing.

Just because you don't know why a walking coordinator, or breastfeeding consultant or whatever exists, doesn't mean its automatically 'waste' and you should get rid of it. Some thought should be given as to why these things exist in the first place. Maybe they are waste, or maybe not, but attacking things without understanding it means you always run the risk of having to rehire them at twice the price later on.

lostinrates wrote: »

There is a lovely woman who contributes in the health & beauty board sometimes. she volunteers a lot with breast feeding help, having required help herself. while not an expert she is a woman who learned much in the way she would have years ago from mothers/extended female family. I essence I imagine that to be part of ''the big society'' and a worthy part. That she also has access to something other than ''quackery'' is obviously relevant, but mothers helping mothers guided by one paid professional is cheaper than a whole team of professionals and people still sitting at home isolated from other ''real'' people going through what they do.

Yes, I agree, it would be nice if we could get people in the public service more joined up with charities, and with people willing and able to help.

lostinrates

tomterm8 wrote: »

Just because you don't know why a walking coordinator, or breastfeeding consultant or whatever exists, doesn't mean its automatically 'waste' and you should get rid of it. Some thought should be given as to why these things exist in the first place. Maybe they are waste, or maybe not, but attacking things without understanding it means you always run the risk of having to rehire them at twice the price later on.
.

That, is, surely the problem with everything. We could all pay less is we could afford to do everything properly the first time, if we could buy houses without mortgages etc etc. But we can't so we prioritise the need and get debt within affordabilty to attend to those prioritised needs then wants. If the debt level gets too big...we end up paying more and having nowt.

Andy_L

ILW wrote: »

So, if in the past people learnt these skills from their parents who were untrained. Why does it now require a highly paid specialist?

Their parents had practical experience & had been taught by their parents who themselves had practical experience & had been taught by their parents who..etc etc

Now that people don't live in extended family groups in the same geographical area that cycle has been broken

ninky_2

Andy_L wrote: »

Their parents had practical experience & had been taught by their parents who themselves had practical experience & had been taught by their parents who..etc etc

Now that people don't live in extended family groups in the same geographical area that cycle has been broken

quite. hunting and gathering should also come naturally...and did for centuries. however, i'd like to see the average modern human fend for themselves in the wild (if you could find any 'wild' that is). totally ridiculous to think breastfeeding is problem free and never beset by difficulties. or that it's not something important or worth investing in. a rather male view as well might i add.