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It is with great sadness
and shock that we are
looking back on the life of
Caroline Blackburn, a
woman so full of energy
and who had such a joy for
participating that her
recent death will no doubt
have stopped many of us
in our tracks.
Caroline worked for the
Alliance, running the Kirklees peer
advocacy team after spending a
number of years studying to be a
fully qualified and experienced
counsellor. She had recently
returned to university once more
to continue her studies – Caroline
had a thirst for knowledge that
her friends and family noted from
her early years.
She gave her role in Kirklees
everything, as she did with all
aspects of her life. She fought
tirelessly for better services for
drug and alcohol users and gave
many the opportunity for training
and volunteering, helping with
their transition away from chaotic
use and supporting people to
believe in themselves once more.
Caroline steered the service user
scene towards a level of
professionalism that had at times
been previously lacking.
Many will remember Caroline
from the annual
DDN
/Alliance
service user conference, hearing
that
laugh and seeing
that
smile.
She has left a daughter, of whom
she was immensely proud, and a
host of friends and family that will
hold her dear in their memories.
Caroline – you will be sorely
missed.
Maddy, Jules, Peter, Beryl,
Ursula, Daren, Tony, Lee, Dave
(former Alliance colleagues) and
those that worked closely with
Caroline over the years.
Obituary |
Letters
APPLYING WITH
CONVICTION
I'm writing in response to Nicola
Inge's article
Beyond conviction
(
DDN
,
June, page 8). The ‘Ban the Box’
campaign is an excellent idea and fully
supported by online magazine
theRecord
and our partners at Unlock.
The principle behind the Rehabilitation
of Offenders Act was to break the
cycle of offending and re-offending by
enabling people with convictions to
gain employment, and led to the
concept of a spent conviction.
Sadly, with the inception of the
CRB, now DBS, this principle suffered
a massive setback, and asking about
previous convictions at the
application stage became
commonplace, particularly in health,
social care and education – the very
services that espouse a progressive
approach to rehabilitation. This, in
turn, led to people with convictions
not even applying for jobs that require
a disclosure at the application stage.
The US approach based on the
equal opps agenda and its
accompanying legislation is well worth
emulating in the UK, for all the
reasons set out in the article. And,
following Gandhi’s famous dictum, it
would serve people with convictions,
the recovery industry and the wider
society well if drug and alcohol
treatment services were to ‘be the
change they want to see in the world.’
If recovery services were truly
committed to equal opps, they would
never expect candidates to discuss
their offences at interview because
this never gives people with
convictions the opportunity to present
themselves as equal to those without
convictions. This differentially
discriminates against those from
minorities, as mentioned above, and
male applicants – often under-
represented among the recovery
workforce – because they are seven
times more likely to have a conviction
than females.
There are only three reasons
employers ask about convictions on
application forms: because they think
they ought to, because they intend to
use that information to discriminate or
because they are just plain nosy. The
simple fact is that an employer only
needs to know about the criminal
record of people they will employ,
i.e.
the person who emerges as the
leading candidate, after the interview
stage is complete. There is no need
for any employer to elicit or, more
seriously, retain information about a
person’s criminal record if they are not
going to employ them. It is only the
successful candidate who ever needs
to be asked. The other candidates
should be able to exit the recruitment
process with their privacy intact. Sadly,
this is not the case with any of the
treatment service recruitment
processes that
theRecord
is aware of.
Often, employers are also labouring
under the illusion that screening for
convictions at the application stage is
a form of risk assessment. It is not.
The absence of a conviction tells you
nothing about a person’s honesty or
safe conduct, it only tells you that they
have never been caught and convicted.
A person with a history of, say,
violence or fraud, but who was never
10 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| July 2014
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
LETTERS
CAROLINE
BLACKBURN
26 JULY 1977 – 7 JUNE 2014
OBITUARY
‘Rather than
just counting
numbers, DAATs
need to look
at people’s
experience.
Until they do,
you won’t get
consistency
of service.’
As part of a panel
discussion at the fifth
DDN/Alliance conference
in 2012, Caroline spoke
out passionately for
fair treatment.