WE hope New Earswick residents and others reading your sensational report about our staff training programme (February 2) will pause to consider where the balance of truth can be found.

Has the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, after decades of responsible service to the community, really ordered its workforce to start spying on tenants' private lives, or has one anonymous member of staff got the wrong end of the stick?

Very far from instructing staff to "spy", our training sessions encourage them to behave like any good neighbour would when working in residents' homes, especially those who are elderly or disabled.

They also invite staff to think carefully about what they might do if they did come face to face with evidence of a serious crime - including child abuse, where we have a legal duty of care.

No less important, we encourage staff to understand there are circumstances they may encounter which upset them, but are none of their business, or ours.

The major misunderstanding, sadly repeated in your disparaging leader column, lies in reading all the scenarios given out for discussion as if they were a green light to intervene.

On the contrary, the whole point with some of them is to recognise that some distressing problems - such as the example of a man with a heavy drinking habit - are private and should remain so.

Other scenarios are about not jumping to the wrong, hasty conclusion: a lesson, it seems, we could all learn.

Our course leaders have repeatedly made it clear that no one wants our repairs and maintenance staff to start acting like social workers.

The important message for our residents is that JRHT hasn't suddenly abandoned the role of responsible social landlord to become "big brother". Our staff are still the same skilled, helpful and - we hope - neighbourly people they have always been.

Michael W Sturge,

Deputy director,

Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust,

The Homestead,

Water End, York.

Editor's note: "Our comment article made it very clear public perception may be that there is a thin line between caring and snooping, and suggested tenants should have been consulted before any misunderstandings could arise."

Updated: 11:42 Friday, February 04, 2005