Danger in gossip

Published on 11/09/2012 00:00

Who would have thought 
garage owners, defenders of old ladies and non-resident parents would share a common legal concern? Your report (Law & Legal Affairs, 10 September) cited MSP concern at actions being taken by public officials based on “institutionalised gossip”. That struck a nerve.

The phenomenon of individuals having their lives damaged by false allegations they have no opportunity to rebut is becoming commonplace in child contact and adult community-care cases. In such cases, social workers enjoy quasi-judicial standing, despite the conflicts of interests they and their employers have as assessors of need, providers of services and, now, agents of budget cuts. In a system geared to seek out the negative, defamatory rumour and falsehoods entered into the system and circulated without appropriate inquiry easily become “Institutionalised Gossip”.

The problems stem from how the protection systems of 2007 have been put into practice. Their structure and remit can provide the perfect grapevine upon which professionally-wrapped “Institutionalised Gossip” can be generated, go viral and create self-corroboration, with grave effects.

Under a policy of “No Fears As Long as We Work together”, information submitted by a multi-disciplinary team member is given automatic “evidential” status and then spread as fact, into the professional sectors (eg NHS/police/social work) only to reappear down-line as “independent” corroboration. Thus, “rumour” gets stacked inside “intelligence”, which is then stacked inside the “evidence”. No-one takes responsibility for the effect of shuffling. On a specific item, the whole team can be reliant on a single professional’s input. The question for the MSPs is: what are they going to do about it?

Joyce Nicoll

Dolphin Road

Edinburgh