Concerns about security now being more lax at day centre

[Lencoboy]

Yesterday when returning to my day centre at lunchtime after nipping round the corner to buy a sarnie for lunch, I found the front entrance door wide open seemingly for no apparent reason (it wasn't me that left it open/unlocked) and when I informed the manager about it she said that there were no clients there yesterday who were at risk of escaping/wandering off, and I said 'what about Dunblane back in 1996?' and she replied that Burton on Trent is hardly Britain's 'crime capital' and that Dunblane, as tragic as it was, was only just a 'one-off', and she believes that society has become disproportionately paranoid about pretty much anything and everything over the past 30 years or so.

Am I being excessively paranoid myself or are the staff at my day centre being negligent regarding security?

[LittleLionMan]

You’re being excessively paranoid dude.

[Lencoboy]

You’re being excessively paranoid dude.

Perhaps I am.

However I was always under the impression (rightly or wrongly) that ever since the Dunblane tragedy there has been some kind of security protocol in place in establishments occupied by vulnerable individuals. I know many schools throughout the whole of Britain have (for better or worse) become increasingly fortified post-1996, and I kind of assumed the same thing may have also applied to adult day care centres and the like, though I could be wrong, of course.

On a similar but related note (as I already mentioned in another thread on here a while back) , my day centre manager also believed that a lot of the zero tolerance policies against challenging behaviours from clients back in the late 90s and 2000s were often excessive, unwarranted and a consequence of paranoia and moral panic over something that was never really a major issue in the first place, but of course she had no choice but to go along with such policies back in the day as they were part of a protocol drawn up by Staffordshire County Council, who actually owned and ran the premises (as a day centre for elderly persons) up until the early 2010s, after which time they sold off the premises and they were then taken over by the independent organisation who runs the current day centre in conjunction with another site near Uttoxeter, but both the main manager and deputy manager of the Burton site which I have attended since 2017 worked there for many years in its aforementioned previous guise.

Perhaps they both believe in being a bit more liberal and going against the grain (within reason and through common sense, of course) as opposed to excessively strict disciplinarian and authoritarian regimes, of which I personally believe can be a greater recipe for animosity between certain staff and clients, which I've been privy to at various other places I've attended in the past.

[Keith]

I don't think you are being overly paranoid. If anyone can just walk in off the street into the building that is a security concern especially if there are vulnerable people in the day centre on certain days/times of the week.

[Lencoboy]

I don't think you are being overly paranoid. If anyone can just walk in off the street into the building that is a security concern especially if there are vulnerable people in the day centre on certain days/times of the week.

My day centre manager did say that risk assessments have been carried out (in conjunction with the local police and council) and no specific security threats to the place have been identified within the area.

She also added that in the vast majority of cases the perpetrators and victims of such extremely rare atrocities tend to be known to each other in some form or another (which I think was the case with Dunblane), but the manager can't really see what some random nutjob sidling in off the street and violently turning the place over willy-nilly is really likely to gain from such activities.

But then again, I suppose if my day centre was in a high-crime area of a big city, then the place being more fortified would obviously be far more justifiable.

[LittleLionMan]

I mean it’s OTT to jump straight to the Dunblane massacre because a door was left open.

The manager said there were no people she was concerned about in the building so she’s made a judgement call. I can’t see a problem with that, to be honest.

[Lencoboy]

I mean it’s OTT to jump straight to the Dunblane massacre because a door was left open.

The manager said there were no people she was concerned about in the building so she’s made a judgement call. I can’t see a problem with that, to be honest.

I agree I probably did jump the gun a bit with the Dunblane thing (no pun intended) as it was an epically extreme example of a 'worst-case scenario'.

I've read that the 'fear of crime' is often thought to be disproportionately greater than the actual 'threat' of crime for the most part in this country, and that we're generally at no significantly greater risk from the likes of burglars, muggers, murderers, rapists, paedos, terrorists, rioters, etc, now than at any time since at least the end of the Second World War, despite the plethora of instantaneous 24/7 rolling media over the past 25 years or so forever beaming unsettling imagery into our faces from virtually every corner of the world.

[LittleLionMan]

Yeah, there’s an interesting video on it on the Therapy In A Nutshell YouTube channel. It could actually be really beneficial to you, as you seem to struggle to be rational (or more so concerned) with media influences? I’ll try and find it for you later, but it explains why the media do it, it’s not just that the world is inherently bad, it’s because negativity and threatening headlines grab your attention more than positive or neutral stories.

[Lencoboy]

It's not just that the world is inherently bad, it's because negativity and threatening headlines grab your attention more than positive or neutral stories.

Always have done to a certain extent, and like I said yesterday in the thread 'Do you ever get the impression people just don't care' within the 'Misc' subsection of this forum, the 6-year period spanning from 2005 through 2011 seemed to be one of the worst for me during my adult years in terms of traumatic headlines and people concurrently being more uptight and angry than what seems to be the case now, despite further unsettling headlines and general perceptions of various issues over the past 8 years in particular, but most ironically (and for better or worse) people don't seem to express their outrage and indignation at the current state of this country in public, as in everyday conversation, or at the more extreme end of the spectrum, on the streets like they used to up until the early 2010s.

Not that I'm in any way gagging for a lot of the apparent public disquiet of the 2005-11 period to return in the same form all over again, but I'm just rather pleasantly miffed as to why there hasn't been widespread rioting like August 2011 as one could be forgiven for thinking that many of the prevailing conditions since then have been the perfect recipe for further disturbances of such nature during the intervening period. I'm also rather pleasantly miffed as to why people hardly seem to have intense discussions about feral youngsters now like they did back then, especially in response the fairly recent knife crime 'epidemic' and all the 'kids today...blah blah blah' stuff which seemed to be relentless right up until the early 2010s.

I reiterate I'm not gagging for repeats of all the above, as a lot of it was unpalatable and unsettling enough at the time but I'm merely just surprised as to how such issues don't appear to be as openly discussed nowadays.

[LittleLionMan]

I think your bar for bad behaviour is particularly low, and I don’t know how old you are, but describing the youth as ‘feral youngsters’ has been happening for generations… as people grow up they always think ‘the youth of today’ are worse than their generation was, when it’s all pretty much the same mixed bag as ever. I think most of us would accept we weren’t angels as kids, and the youngsters should be allowed to experience life and express themselves, it’s just knowing where that line is.

I actually agree that I’m massively surprised there hasn’t been major uproar over recent events, but different to you, I actually wouldn’t mind seeing it, to see people care. The one thing stopping it, I think, is that people have voted for most of the sh*t that’s going on, and can’t face being angry at their own decision… Brexit Means Brexit, remember.