Sam Sly and Keiran Murphy shared these lines as part of the Power of language Webinar given by the Centre for Welfare Reform on 4 February 2021. The talk explores the dangerous impact of negative professional language on the lives of autistic people and others.

1. LANGUAGE
Sam Sly and Kieran Murphy and Alexis Quinn
Enough is Enough
Time4Change

2. Agenda for
today
Serviceland
Why Professionals use
Serviceland language
The damage language can do
What are you going to go
away and do?

3. This session will explore
the power of language
used by professionals

4. Serviceland

5. Be mindful when it comes to your words.
A string of some that don't mean much to
you, may stick with someone else for a
lifetime." -Rachel Wolchin
“Words are containers for power, you choose what kind of power they
carry.” Joyce Meyer

6. Why do you think
Professionals use
Serviceland language?

7. •Because it’s used by others (trying to fit in)
•Because it makes us feel important (especially for
those whose roles are also devalued)
•Because it makes us feel we are different from
those we are supporting
•Because it’s lazy
•Because it makes having to do difficult things easier
(de-humanises people)
•Because it excludes those not in the ‘know’

9. ‘They are trying to blind
us with science and merely
baffling us with bull**it’

11. Wound 5: Placed into one or more historic deviancy roles
Wound 6: Symbolic stigmatizing, “marking,” “deviancy
imaging,” “branding”
Wound 7: Being scapegoated…..blaming the victim
Wound 8: distancing from other people; congregation &
segregation
Wound 9: Absence or loss of natural, freely given
relationships & substituted by artificial, bought ones
Wound 10: loss of control over one’s life, one’s autonomy and
freedom
Wound 13: De- individualisation (reducing humanness)
Would 15: impoverished of experiences typical of the valued
world
Wound 17: Having one’s life ‘wasted’
Wound 18: Being the object of brualisation, killing thoughts
and death-making

12. What words can you think of that
are used in Serviceland?

13. Challenging Behaviour
• It is meaningless without context;
what is it describing?
• It can de-individualise & de-
personalise
• It doesn’t help find out why?
• It has negative connotations;
danger, risk, fear
• It therefore makes you think of
service solutions; restrictions,
restraint, medication, seclusion
Placement
• It gives the impression of
temporary
• It feels lacking in security
• It feels lacking in care
• We would not use it outside of
‘serviceland’ with our loved ones
or our families
• It is not used to describe home
for anyone else

14. Language can keep people
‘othered’, segregated and
firmly in Serviceland
#IAMchallengingbehaviour

15. Sam’s Top Tips
• There is already a word everyone uses
for what you want to say so – USE IT!
• If it is a word that belongs in
Serviceland it’s harmful so DON’T
• And please DON’T abbreviate a
person’s life away

16. So what are you going to go away and do?
• What have you learned today?
• What are you going to go away
and do after this session?
• Are there obstacles to making
it happen?
• How can they be overcome?

17. Comments, Feedback & Close

18. My Contacts
• Sam Sly
• Enough is Enough Time4Change
• Sam.sly@enoughisenough.org.uk
• sam.sly@nhs.net
• 07900 424144
• Sam Sly
• Enough is Enough Time4Change
• Sam.sly@enoughisenough.org.u
k
• sam.sly@nhs.net
• 07900 424144