Thursday, 21 January 2010

LAA targets

I work for local government. Reducing under 18 conceptions is an LAA target. They have a teenage pregnancy strategy and a teenage pregnancy co-ordinator and a teenage pregnancy data analyst. The performance team report the data and try to explain why targets are missed. They make jokes about who is the culprit, who lives in a 'hot spot', are they responsible for impregnating all these teenage girls, is it because of the tv or alcohol or both? Fingers crossed the next quarterly figures go down, or rather legs crossed. People often make these jokes around me and I think should I be laughing too? It's not at all funny but I don't want people to think I'm overly sensitive or for them to be worried about offending me. How should I react when they look at me? Are my cheeks burning? Shall I make a lame joke too just so they know I'm ok with it? It doesn't matter because they just carry on oblivious to the fact I AM SITTING THERE. You know I have a 13 year old child and you know my age: Why are you not even bothered about whether you are offending me or not?????!!!!



Today at work we were chatting about trashy magazines.
Jo: 'do you remember Just 17?'
Youngster (confusing Just 17 and East 17): 'was that a band?'
me: 'oh, I loved Just 17. I got it every week'
Jo: 'I remember it being passed round school because it always had about (mouthed the word 'sex') in it.'
me: 'yeah, I don't know if any 17 year olds actually bought it'
Jo: 'Well, didn't you already have a baby at 17?!!! '
True.
She laughed at this concept for quite a long time and then when she had finished, apologised and checked that I wasn't offending. Of course I wasn't but to be honest, its just nice to be asked for a change. I may re-name this post-'its all about me'

LAA=Lame Ass Anecdotes
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous24 January 2010 at 14:47

    This post is so true! I worked for the police/council in an anti social behaviour unit and we always had to link the childrens behaviour to certain things to make targets, like tv or video games! I once remember my boss asking rather a portly child if he wanted dietry advice because clearly his behaviour was linked to the amount of e numbers he consumed!

    I would love to work with teen mums, always did ever since I had my daughter when I was younger, but the targets and having to pigeon hole them makes it sound like you might not actually be able to help in the way you know will actually make a difference!

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  2. KittyB27 January 2010 at 15:43

    Yep, I know what you mean-I thought about it too but all the targets and the language around it put me off. Thanks for commenting by the way-It's nice when someone 'gets' what you're ranting about! x

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