11 minutes
Communications, representation and safety A notice can out someone. So can a caption, a voicemail or a sign-in sheet. This lesson separates representation from exposure, and works on the wording, images, examples and contact routines that decide which one a message does.
What you’ll be able to do Distinguish representation, exposure and exclusion in a public communication, a photograph, a training example or a policy definition, and name the change that fixes each one. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should happen before the report goes out? Document a next step for Communications, representation and safety: Take the last public-facing thing your unit produced — a notice, a page, a report, a slide deck — and mark every place a named or identifiable person appears and every place a family is described. Check which of those the person actually approved. Representation, exposure, exclusion Three different things get discussed as though they were one. Representation is a person being visible in a way they chose: a quote they approved, a photograph they saw before it ran, an example built with paid advisors. Exposure is a person being visible in a way they did not choose, which is usually accidental and almost always produced by a routine rather than a decision. Exclusion is a person not appearing at all, or appearing only as the exception to a definition somebody wrote without them.
The fix for each is different. Exposure is fixed by changing a routine: what the envelope says, what the voicemail names, what the caption gives away, who is on the roster. Exclusion is fixed by changing a definition or an example: who counts as family, who may come to the meeting, which household the sample letter describes. Representation is not fixed at all — it is earned, by asking, paying, showing people the exact wording and letting them change or withdraw it.
None of this requires a communications team to become cautious. It requires the person who writes the caption to have been in the conversation, and the person who designs the notice to know what arrives at the front door.
Four ordinary places a message discloses The mailed notice The returned call The room The caption
A letter naming a clinic, a program or a service arrives at an address the person shares. Envelopes get opened by whoever is standing there. Look at what the outside of the envelope says and what the first visible line says, and offer a contact route the person chooses.
A voicemail on a household phone, a message that names a program, a call back at a time the person is not alone. Ask when and how it is safe to call, record the answer where the next person will see it, and follow it.
Sign-in sheets, name badges, a roster on a screen, a note read aloud at a team meeting, a schedule pinned where housemates walk past. The room tells people things before the person does.
A first name, a county and a program name under a photograph can identify a person to anyone who knows them. Captions disclose more than images do, and they are usually written last, by someone who was never in the conversation.
Includes, exposes or leaves out? A report uses a composite example, written with paid advisors and approved by them, to show how a policy change reaches a household.
Choose a category Includes people Exposes someone Leaves people out A photograph of a named participant runs with a caption giving their county and the program they receive services through.
Choose a category Includes people Exposes someone Leaves people out A policy says a person may bring “a family member” to a planning meeting, and staff read that as a legal relative.
Choose a category Includes people Exposes someone Leaves people out An appointment reminder is left as a voicemail on a shared household phone, naming the clinic.
Choose a category Includes people Exposes someone Leaves people out A public notice offers three ways to be contacted and asks the person which one is safe to use.
Choose a category Includes people Exposes someone Leaves people out Every household example in a training deck is a married different-sex couple with children.
Choose a category Includes people Exposes someone Leaves people out Check matches Reset Wording changes that cost nothing Write “the people you choose to bring” instead of “family member or legal representative.”
Ask “who should be part of this planning?” rather than “what is your relationship to the applicant?”
Offer contact choices instead of assuming the address on file: how would you like us to reach you, and is there a time or a way that does not work?
Put the name a person uses into a field the record can hold, and make that the name that prints on the notice.
Say what a public report will and will not show about a person, in the same plain words you used to ask.
Replace the single family example in a training deck with two or three that are all treated as ordinary.
The report said they had my consent. What I said yes to was a conversation. Nobody ever showed me the sentence with my county printed under it.
Composite advisory group member perspective, illustrative Let the person hold the disclosure What you can change You control whether a person can choose how they are named, pictured, quoted and contacted, and whether that choice is written somewhere the next staff member will actually see it.
What to watch for Do not treat a yes given months ago, in a different room, about a different draft, as approval of the thing you are about to publish.
Your next step Before the next publication or first contact, confirm the exact wording with the person and record the contact route they chose.
A private reflection, for you alone. Does this message make sense to someone who does not already know how the department works? Who could be exposed, burdened or misread by the way it arrives? Nothing you write here is collected, seen or kept.
Carry this forward Representation is being visible in a way the person chose. Exposure is being visible in a way they did not. The difference is consent and control, not tone.
Ordinary routines do most of the outing: mailed notices, voicemails on shared phones, meeting rosters, sign-in sheets, captions under photographs, a note read aloud in a room.
Asking how a person wants to be contacted, and storing the answer where the next staff member will see it, is one of the cheapest safety measures the division has.
Examples teach. A training case, a sample letter or a household diagram that only ever shows one kind of family tells staff what the normal case is, and turns everything else into something a person has to argue for.
People invited to tell their story are co-designers and advisors doing professional work. They are paid for it, they approve exactly what is published, and they can withdraw it afterwards.
A scenario about a report photograph and its caption, sorting practice on representation, exposure and exclusion, and a knowledge check on contact routines and record design.
Take the last public-facing thing your unit produced — a notice, a page, a report, a slide deck — and mark every place a named or identifiable person appears and every place a family is described. Check which of those the person actually approved.
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