dreary day, bureaucracy blues, yet another attempt to tell front line staff what to do while ignoring the issue of incompetent managers. if you train your managers everything would improve in australia, it's a refined skill, the techniques in managing people effectively are very well documented by millions of boring fucking books in dymocks and websites that specialise in this type of thing, they are simple skills yet not everyone can have them, or learn them, not everyone can manage. 
bad management is the biggest problem in australia. it's everywhere. most managers are just people who have bullied their way up to the top by fucking their bosses or licking their ass. that's the truth, very rarely do you get a manager whom actually really brings out the best in their team. 
the problem is epidemic and in govt beurocracies it thrives, nepotism, corruption, abuse, i've seen it first hand over 30 years which is why i stick to front line work, and challenge bad managers everywhere, especially bullies.
the course was well overdue.
five years ago i rang an outside agency to complain about a co worker whom had turned up drunk, on e's and whacked out of his head. he was bathing some one and left her in the bath, with the tap running, then he took the other clients out in a van. i'd spent a few weeks talking to my managers about him, and even taken him aside to talk to him face to face. he was self destructive, but he was putting friends of mine at risk, yeah they may have autism but they are my mates.
anyway i notified and immediately got in trouble from my bosses who put me on speakerphone while she yelled down the phone at me, 'how dare you go to outside the dept.'
i stood my ground, i know my shit.
'it's not me you should be shouting at, i'm the notifier, i did nothing wrong, and if this is how you treat people like me no wonder no one reports abuse and neglect. you should be thanking me...etc.'
later some one else, another manager from her office rang and congratulated me for being brave enough to notify and i suggested, the service should have a notification procedure in place.'
five years later i'm being trained by the ombudsman as part of the training the dept have put in place. 
it's good, thorough and detailed and i think everyone is learning heaps, paying attension. the staff are generally good, but the managers, fuck where are they, not even there, sitting behind desks making our job as hard as they can, chopping hours, yeah that was labour, cutting budgets, yeah labour again, while creating a massive strata of middle management wankers who had no abilities to manage. 
anyway at the end of the course i suggested that they train managers and let us get on with our jobs.