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A key text for challenging ageism and promoting dignified practice. Dr Sue Thompson presents invaluable guidance on how to take care of older people in positive empowering ways that avoid common ageist assumptions and practices. This is an essential guide to good practice in eldercare. Available from https://neilthompson.info/shop/ or Amazon

Speaking openly and honestly is more likely to be effective than dropping hints. This is because: (i) people often don’t tune in to the hint; it goes over their head; and (ii) if they do get it, they may resent it – they may feel that you are trying to manipulate them, rather than communicate with them in a genuine way. Despite these problems with hinting, it is a very common occurrence for people to risk alienating others in this way. Learning and practising the skills involved in sensitive and tactful direct communication without ruffling anyone’s feathers are much wiser steps to take. Click here to read more

The CIPD’s 2022 Resourcing and talent planning report, produced in partnership with Omni RMS, explores the difficulties that UK employers are facing in recruiting and retaining people during the cost-of-living crisis. Now in its 23rd year, the report and supplementary case studies help employers and their people teams make informed decisions about people management and investment. While these findings are based on UK data, the broader trends and implications should be of interest wherever you are based. Click here to read more

I’m part of the ‘Exploring Stigma and Poverty’ design team, a group that’s been created to look at the issue of stigma and the impact it has on poverty. Our discussions and exploration have been deep as well as wide-ranging. When we met in January 2023 we looked at the impact stigma has on society as a whole, but also on us as individuals. We called this latter part, ‘making visible the invisible’ as we feel that there is little focus on how damaging stigma is on the individuals that experience it. We drew on our collective experience of stigma. This took some of us back to our childhoods. It’s been a very reflective experience and really made me think…

By law (the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998), you can make a whistleblowing disclosure to one of the following: your employer a legal adviser government ministers – this only applies if you work for a statutory body another person who is responsible for the wrongdoing a prescribed person or body any other person or body if there's a good reason to, or if it's related to an 'exceptionally serious failure' – for example, the police or media You must also make sure your disclosure is made with 'reasonable belief' and is: a qualifying disclosure in the public interest When making a disclosure, it's good practice to consider the list in order. But there might be cases when you do not…

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There is no room for racism in a civilised society. The recent surge of interest in anti-racism is very much to be welcomed, but we have to guard against oversimplifying some complex and sensitive issues. This book, from the author of Anti-discriminatory Practice and Promoting Equality, provides an important foundation of learning that will be helpful for anyone committed to a genuinely anti-racist approach to practice. Available from https://neilthompson.info/shop/ or Amazon

So-called ‘common sense’ is often not common (different people have different ideas about what is common sense) and not always sense (it is often contradictory). What counts as common sense can be important advice and wisdom built up over many years of experience. However, it can also, at times, be based on unquestioned prejudices and taken-for-granted assumptions. But, whether what counts as common sense is sound or not, what resorting to common sense amounts to is relying on preformed ideas instead of using reflective practice to think, plan, analyse and make sense of the situations we are dealing with. Someone saying: ‘It’s common sense’ is often inviting us to accept their perspective uncritically, rather than work out our own view…

When young people want to tell their story, we listen. We see something in every one of them. We see hope. Often their stories aren't easy to tell, but they tell them. They know that opening up will help them feel better and show others, who have it just as tough, that there can be a brighter tomorrow. Click here to read more

It seems there are two types of disgruntled people in our current economy: those who don’t have jobs and those who do. Why? Because for each person who has left an organization, the ones left behind are working harder, feeling overworked and underappreciated, and often being underpaid. Almost everyone in the workplace has been “doing more with less” for a long time. Yet productivity has risen 2.3% annually during these tough times, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This increase is due to fewer employees working more hours and taking on bigger workloads. This is good news for CFOs and senior managers, but it comes at a cost. The dark side of productivity improvement is that people are stretched…