My TV

Just recently, my TV got stuck. It wouldn’t respond to the remote control and, even when I pressed the button on the TV itself, nothing happened. I switched it on and off, but the same picture stayed frozen on the screen. So, I phoned the company.

After two hours of “try this”, “press that”, “switch this on”, “switch that off”, and “try it again”, nothing had changed. The picture was still stuck.

As I faithfully followed all these instructions, I kept thinking, I’m sure if we did this one thing, it might solve the problem. Eventually, I suggested it to the expert on the phone.

His reply was, “No, your TV is broken. I’m ordering you a new one. No cost, it’s just a replacement.”

End of the call.

Now the expert had gone, I thought I’d try my own experiment. After all, it was a new TV, and I didn’t really want the bother of having another one fitted if I could help it.

So, I tried my idea.

Wow! The TV was unstuck. It worked. Everything was back to normal.

I quickly phoned the company to try and cancel the replacement TV, which was apparently already on its way. After being put through to this department, then that department—I think about four or five internal transfers—with the usual questions about my name, password, address, date of birth, shoe size...

No, sorry, they didn’t ask for my shoe size; it just felt like they did...

I was eventually told, “Sorry, the order can’t be stopped. Just refuse it when it’s delivered.”

Pregancy

Then I read about *1 the Baroness Amos investigation. An independent national investigation highlighted widespread problems, including poor hospital culture and a failure to listen to women.

There it is again.

You’re the customer—or, in this case, the woman giving birth—but, of course, the experts know more about your body, your pregnancy and your birth than you do. So too many things go wrong. You’re not the expert, even though it’s your body and your baby. The trained professionals know best.

I remember well the birth of my second child. I was there; I think the baby was overdue. Born at home, the expert midwife did all the right things, but then the new baby continued to cry.

I said I thought the baby was hungry.

“Oh, no,” was the expert’s reply. “Not a newborn baby.”

I replied, “I don’t think this baby has read the book; it doesn’t know it shouldn’t be hungry.”

Very disdainful look from the midwife.

However, when the expert had left, we agreed to try a feed. The baby was born around 11.00 p.m. and then slept peacefully through the night.

Foster care

I’m involved with foster care, and one thing that really winds me up is seeing foster carers repeatedly excluded from meetings where decisions are made about the children they’ve looked after.

Imagine a carer who has looked after three children, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, for ten years, yet is excluded from the meeting deciding what happens next.

*2 Their voice isn’t heard because they’re “just” the foster carer.

The experts, of course, know best—even though they haven’t lived with those children day in, day out, for a decade. They’re not the trained experts; the social workers with the degrees are.

I reckon there are almost every area of life where “the experts know better”, and the voices of those who are supposedly being helped are simply not listened to.

Education

My wife tells the story of bringing home her school report. Her father wrote a comment for the teacher—the expert—to read.

He wrote, “A teacher can only be called a teacher when the student has learnt.”

Apparently, my wife’s report indicated a lack of learning in certain subjects. She wasn’t at all pleased with her father’s comment because, unsurprisingly, she got into trouble at school for what he had written!

I guess I could go on, but isn’t it time our experts learnt to listen? To be just a little less expert? To admit that perhaps they don’t know everything?

I think this pattern needs changing. Maybe in foster care, it should be mandatory to include foster carers in discussions about children’s futures before decisions are made.

I am not anti-experts, be they social workers, midwives, or TV technicians, but perhaps what’s needed is listening and a little more humility.

W870

Adrian Hawkes
www.adrianhawkes.co.uk

*1 The independent National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation led by Baroness Valerie Amos published its final report in June 2026. It concluded that England's maternity system frequently fails pregnant women and babies. The review found that care is deeply inconsistent, women are routinely not believed or listened to, and racism and discrimination are embedded across the system.

*2 Foster carers are formally expected to be included in decisions concerning their placed children, but in practice, the experience is mixed. While guidelines state carers should be consulted as the people who know the child best, many report feeling unvalued, sidelined, or ignored by social work teams and local authorities.