Social Work Change, Priti Patel and Gauss Linear and non-linear Problems

Posted on February 9, 2023 by George Bull

Written by George Bull….

Thousands of words, column inches and twitter feeds have been spilled out by our profession paining over what is going wrong; poverty, a ‘crowbarred in’ care review and profit in the sector to name just 3. Strikingly there is very little conflict over what the problems are…………… what to do about them however is a question in a different cosmos.

This brings us to Priti Patel and her maniacal perma-grin.

Patel (the Foreign Secretary) last month pointed out that those who decried her plan to process asylum seekers in Rwanda could offer no real solutions to the immigration crisis. The next sentence is one I thought I would never write, or any social worker would write for that matter……………………………………… Piri Patel may have a point!!!!! We are too often stuck in the ‘complaining and explaining quicksand’ with no vision for workable improvements or solutions.

The problems Social Work face are similar in nature to immigration with there being linear (straight forward) and non-linear (not straightforward) elements.

To list a few more examples from the ‘problems’ menu.

COVID
Linear – millions of people need vaccines – solution buy loads of vaccines and line loads of arms up to jab them.
Non-Linear – long covid is multi-faceted across the age range, combing mental, physical and social aspects. I for one have heard almost no credible solution or ideas on this.

Foster care
Linear – need more foster carers and more placements
Non-Linear – How do we promote, retain, train, support and develop foster carers locally and how do we remove increasing profit from sector at a time of restrained supply. How much should a foster carer be paid, should they have second jobs etc.

Safeguarding
Linear – support families at the right time with the right service and take decisive action in the cases where children’s lives are going to be threatened by their carers
Non-Linear – how do we decide between families that can make the changes or ones where the chances of harm will just increase, how do we enhance time spent with families and away from paperwork and how do we revitalize and add respect back to our profession.

To move the debate and our profession on I argue we desperately need to hone our skills in conceptualizing non-linear problems.

To assist us we need the help of an 18^th century maths genius Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Gauss was born to a poor family in Lower Saxony. His mother was illiterate (Gauss had to calculate his own birthday). Very early on Gauss’s genius for problem solving and mathematics was spotted, and he added greatly to many fields and – most usefully for our discussion – non-linear geometry. For two-thousand years maths only recognised shapes that could be drawn by a ruler and a compass. That was it!!!! That was the complete set of things. An entirely linear world with no external frame of reference. Gauss however refused to accept something that was the fundamental bedrock of mathematics since Plato was a lad. He established a world of curves and parabolas (think triangles or hexagons on a football – see picture). In short, he opened the world up to a different reality. If there was no Gauss then there was no general relativity, no GPS, no chaos theory (see below) the list goes on and on.

Lorentz butterfly effect – sensitivity to initial conditions creates significantly different outcomes.

As much as I like writing about long dead mathematicians, it is a fair question to ask what does this have to do with social work etc? The answer comes from Gauss and how he offered a totally different perspective on established fundamental problems. As social workers I feel we fall foul of not having many of our own theories and, not being a core theoretical field like mathematics, this causes us often to struggle to think outside of our borrowed theoretical world. Could this be why we get everyone from judges, McAlister/teacher types and a whole host of non-social workers being so pivotal to our future. Equally we can ask which other professions seek our perspective. Do psychologists, doctors and others regularly seek our opinions outside of the confines of our field, sadly I think almost never.

We need to go on a journey of reconstituting and reimagining our core position…. Anyway… back to Gauss……….

Whilst sat in primary school Gauss’s teacher, wanting to distract the class for 10 minutes, asked the young children to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100. The other children set about this linear question by just adding all the numbers up one by one – 1+2+3 etc. with the problem solved by two ingredients time and effort.

Gauss however conceptualized the problem in a different way to his school chums. He looked like all good social workers do for nonlinear connections and solutions. Young Gauss figured that 1 has a pair in 99, 2 with 98 , 3 with 97 and that there would be 50 of these pairs and 50 paring with 0, so all he need to do was 50 X 100 + the spare 50…. equals 5050.

Gauss must have looked across at his classmates at the chalk plume from the frantic calculations just as Piri Patel looked at the twitter comments and column inches regaling against her Rwanda asylum policy. The commonalty is responses without insightful solutions. My point is our profession has flogged the dead horse of talking about the problems and now we need to set our collective minds to creative solutions instead. The caterwauling status quo will only offer social work the same old outcomes whilst rocking all over the world with matchstick men (see what I did there!? – status quo… Status Quo!?).

How do we begin this re-imaging endeavour? Well, I would suggest we need to free ourselves of the following thought traps….

A baby P case could happen to me as a social worker, and I need to be mindful of that whilst dealing with every Child Protection case. Instead think… Baby P cases are rare events. I need to be thorough in my assessment but not be frozen by the thought that such extreme things are inevitable
Is the 1989 Children Act fit for purpose at 30 years old (many hold it in blind reverence)? Do we need more radical and critical social work that explores the application of legislation?
How many children should my Local Authority be removing? We should understand that there is no number, there are only individuals whose situations are assessed.
Are Local Authorities authorities with £80K paid Directors of Children’s Services much better than Ltd companies who provide social care services. They may be, they may not be. We need to be open to options.
Do our meetings satisfy a narrow professional interest or that of the family? We need to root ourselves in ‘why’ we are doing what we are doing, not in ‘how’. ‘Our’ meeting is not the important thing.
Do we ask too much of parents in too narrow a time-scale? To explore this one try working on more than one deeply personal issue at a time (you will struggle).
Do we as social workers do what we think is right or merely do we do what our mangers think is right within a Local Authority context. If we do not agree to a plan say to place a 16 year old in unregulated accommodation what action should we take as a professional? Do we show our dissent? Are we willing to? Is there a roll for radical and critical social work
Do we as social workers ever think much outside the narrow lanes of Child Protection, Child in Need and Looked After Children. Are we putting process before values.
Are our efforts as social workers redundant if austerity is levelling a far greater downside to any potential upside we can muster. Do a small but significant minority of our families just need more cash not a visit from a social worker ?
Why do the more experienced social workers stop working with families just because managerial and corporate positions are better paid. The best surgeons still operate, the best stockbrokers still invest. Why do the most experienced social workers stop visiting homes and providing assistance. Do we need a different career structure model?
Is social work best situated in local authorities? As a good friend says they are good at only emptying bins and sometimes they can’t do that. Does the bureaucratic environment of a local authority align well with a profession that should be responsive to individuals rather than process driven?
Would I work for a national fostering agency, or Child Protection agency? Do my morals only matter outside of the frame of reference where I am offered a job? Surely, we can carry our ethics to where ever we work?
Are schools increasingly taking over the Early Help and Child in Need role? Does our flimsy involvement with children and families pale into insignificance against the daily fraternal nature of school? Is that not where social workers should be located.

INSERT YOUR OWN SOCIAL WORK THOUGHT TRAP HERE………

Just like Gauss if we seek to pose tough non-linear questions like those above we have already stopped complaining and started reimaging. Only if we unshackle ourselves from the confines of local authority groupthink and our borrowed theories can we question fundamental truths in our profession. Whilst anybody with an ounce of humanity feels Patel’s Rwanda plan is abhorrent it is no doubt radical. How do we as social workers reclaim our Radical nature but also dance the realist tight rope of costs, political will and long term implementation. If we don’t get our act together a steamroller driven by McAlister, pseudo corporations and neo-conservatives are heading our way. Steamrollers take no heed of non-linearity they will crush all of our professional nuance and creativity in a moment.

Rare picture of the IRCSS 540 PPMcAlister Steam roller

About the writer…..

George Bull

George has been a social worker for 10 years working mainly in child protection and Early Help. He has lectured with Jamie Scorer at New College Durham, University of Sunderland and University of Northumbria in solution focused practice.

Podcast Show Notes: Stephen talks to George Bull about risk in light of the murder of Arthur

Posted on February 9, 2023 by George Bull

Social Work Shorts (Episode 25): Insights #8

In the latest episode of the Social Work Podcast Insights series Stephen and George talk about risk in light of the murder of Arthur and the media response to the Social Work Profession.

Here is the podcast – click this link

We acknowledge this is a difficult topic and that there may be a range of views. It would be good to have a discussion over on our Discord
Server which you can link to at this link Social Works Shorts brings you Social Work UK on Discord
You will need to download the app and/or create an account

Below are show notes. You need to listen to the podcast and use these notes in conjunction with each other.

Risky terms

Risk – the probability of a FUTURE event.

Uncertainty – future events that cannot be assigned a probability.

Now – if it’s happening ‘now’ there is no Risk it is happening 100%

Likelihood – the probability of a past event occurring in a specific way – i.e The likelihood of the father causing the injury (in the past)

Irreducible uncertainty/risk – the element in any assessment that cannot be captured despite endless time and infinite resources. (Stephen Webb)

Hardboiled social work

Assuming your instinct and practice experience are enough , with absence of best evidence and professional theory etc.

The Chart

In the chart the curves can be thought of as the group of all children who don’t need a social worker and those that do (in red)

Since life is complex and messy no test could ever separate these groups totally , even when there is a scientific /clinical test we cannot e.g CoviD-19. So, in a test based on opinion and judgement this zone of ambiguity will likely be much higher. In setting our thresholds we only have the following choices –

a – reduce the number of children we miss (false negatives) to as low as possible. This increases the number of unneeded interventions.

b – reduce the number of children we remove or assess but don’t need to (false positives) this would increase the number of children who will suffer harm as they have missed social work intervention (false negatives)

c – attempt to reduce the red area – for example Leeds Councils model of early help that has reduced Looked After Children numbers. This reduces the whole red section i.e. both false positive and false negatives. #Landscape shift.

The numbers on the chart

1 – this point in the chart is where False positives are very high as we set the threshold very low for intervention removal.

2 – is a mid way point with a proportion of false positives and false negatives , but also true negative and positives

3 – is where we only remove or become involved with children who need Social Work involvement and no children that don’t. Highly specific, however we miss some children who need Social Work (false negatives)

Example Airports want their security to be highly sensitive. They want to double check every shampoo bottle or phone battery is not a bomb for example. So they set the test level to be low when scanning bags thus incurring a lot of unneeded checks.

How many children is it worth removing (that don’t need to be) to prevent another tragic death? A very challenging ethical question

Queens Professor of Risk Sir David Spiegelhalter and Brian “it’s amazing” Cox discuss risk and Bayes.

Link to the Community Care article mentioned

Zahawi: take children into care when ‘any inkling of harm’

Invisible: Two Presidents, Catwoman and Social Work Reviews

Posted on February 9, 2023 by George Bull

Last month the government announced a wide scoping investigation into childrens’ social work and the care system with Frontline boss Josh MacAlister appointed as the head honcho.

Josh is a rising star of private sector social work, he’s the brainchild of Frontline a programme that seeks to fast track top students hopefully from Universities that have rowing and lacrosse teams to be social workers putting the profession on an even footing with legal careers. It offers a short 5-week intensive summer school before entering practice and placement, with a clear trajectory of management and beyond. Why should social work not get the best and smartest kids from University is the rhetorical question it seems? For nearly ten years he has received funding and been a go to man for the conservative government, in short, he is the archetypical Govian innovator (Michael Gove himself in the care system for 4 months as a child).

Enter Catwoman

I hate to bore you all with yet another Catwoman and social work story, but I think there is a surprising link found in the biography of Ertha Kitt.

Ertha was born in 1927 on a cotton planation as a consequence of a rape by a white doctor. Her mother (who was half African American and half Cherokee) was forced to give Ertha up to another family as her then new partner could not abide her “yellow” mixed race skin. Her new family raped and abused her and set her to work as a slave in their home leaving her to be tormented by their own children. Her route to stardom is one of the most remarkable stories in modern American history.

The indefatigable Ertha became a sultry actor (batman, mission impossible, Disney, Miami Vice), singer (Santa Baby) and performer (too many stage plays to mention). One of many big breaks came when she got a once in a lifetime role as Catwoman in the ultra kitch 60’s Batman TV series! KAPOW!!!!.

During this time Orson Wells described her as “the most exciting women in world”

50 years before The Black Panther movie one year before MLK got assassinated there was Eartha holding a gun to the head of the Joker, seducing Batman and generally stealing every single scene. Catwoman’s role would be to upset the status quo make villain and hero feel uneasy and unsure about what they have previously assumed and the positions they occupied.

During this exact period President Johnson’s wife, the extraordinarily named Ladybird Johnson, held a meeting at the White House to discuss why the youth of America had become so disaffected. There was rising crime, broken homes, drugs and gangs, all of which were major concerns. All this set against the disastrous Vietnam War Johnson had started, a war that was a bad idea executed badly that costs millions of lives.

To crack the problem Ladybird assembled a white crowd of socially clambering Stepford Wives and to quietly sit in the corner and to provide ‘faux’ racial balance, Eartha. With the pristinely ironed and noxiously perfumed beige mob assembled, speaker after speaker, talked about the tidy highways, excellent school system and really nothing to do with disaffected youth let alone any offer any solutions. Towards the end Eartha raised her hand and summed up the mood for the youth of America thus,

“Boys I know across the nation feel it doesn’t pay to be a good guy,”. “They figure with a record they don’t have to go off to Vietnam. You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed”.

Hearing this Ladybird Johnson bursts into tears and was furious with Eartha. A little later her husband the president walks in and Eartha again unprompted starts questioning him about the war, motherhood and the root of the problem. The body language in the picture below explains how he responded to her.

TRUTH TO POWER!!!!!

Eartha did not care one jot for upsetting the room or the ultimate decision maker the president, she cared more for the children than her own standing. Her reward for upsetting Ladybird and the president was the CIA basically shut her career down with her not working for over 15 years in the US again.

I am 10000% confident the review by Mr MacAlister will not dim his lights in the hearts of the senior Tories or his bank balance, he will not risk his career one jot so his suggestions will be palatable to his pay masters.

However is Eartha’s position a foolish one to occupy. The economist in me would suggest an outcome that optimizes the probability of something being accepted or achieved and the impact of the expected outcome, even if your right implementation is important. What value in making a suggestion that you know will never be put in place, or if it is watered down. For example Munro’s review (as she acknowledges) got universal nods of approval but little policy or actual change.

The Trade off being

MacAlister – High chance of acceptance + Low potential impact
v.
Ertha – Low chance of acceptance + High potential Impact

Tony Robbins

Another maverick who spoke to a president is the I Am Not Your Guru documentary maker and motivational zillionaire Tony Robbins. He was invited with another group of the politically harmless to speak with Obama in early 2014 about his health care bill.

Whilst Tony agreed with Obama’s policies, he made a point that stunned the room. Tony explained to the president that the error that he is making is that his policy on issues such as health care are based primarily on Obama being the smart and him feeling his policies are the best ones, however for policy to work this is simply not enough. It’s about relationships and if you don’t take the other half of America with you and your party will pay a price (and look how that turned out insert Trump MAGA emoji here).

The message here is even if you have a good, or even the best idea it has to be gripped and accepted by the populous for its implementation to be successful. Johnson and Obama could not be further apart politically, but they fell on the same trap that is looming over MacAlister’s Review. The first sign of this came when MacAlister jettisoned many voices and tarnished thousands of potential relationships with the people he seeks to aid, namely care leavers and other stakeholders. 1000 care experienced people applied, 40 were successful of which about 10-15 will form part of the review board. (You stand a better chance getting into Oxford or Cambridge with this offering a poignant Irony to the type of student McAllister wants to have on his Frontline programme.)

Imagine for a second a care leaver whose life story is a series of assessments, letters, and case notes on a computer, being asked to help but just getting another generic “no thanks” response to your ideas.

Ex piano tuner Alison Moyet I feel comes close to an accurate description in her 80’s hit Invisible,

You’ve got me so confused and there’s words I could use
But I’m afraid to say them
I feel I’ve been had and I’m boiling mad

You don’t have the time and you won’t spend a dime
Not even to call me
You don’t know I exist and I wouldn’t be missed
If I had the nerve to quit you

Invisible – I feel like I’m invisible
You treat me like I’m not really there
And you don’t really care

I wonder if Josh Mccalister is a Moyet fan?

Earlier this month I attended a conference that Mr Mcallister spoke at concerning Connected/Kinship Care.

At one point an experienced Carer/advocate raised the issue of several disparities between work/leave entitlement between kinship care and adoption and the post code lottery of levels of support and financial assistance to carers. MacAlister responded that he will look into theses issues and address them were possible. His unique cocktail of suave confident good looks, positivity and engagement really convinced me and likely many others in the conference. He on the face of it did better than Obama and Johnson.

However, after a day’s contemplation I realised the scale of ironing out these inequalities in just one small corner (kinship care) of his vast review. The following would have to be re-aligned.

Employment law, The Paternity and Adoption Leave Regulations 2002
Children (leaving Care Act) 2002
SGO support regulation
Local Authority financing

The scale of this task is tremendous and the votes in parliaments, debates and implementation would need to go on for many years beyond the publishing of Mr MacAlister’s review. Potentially Mr MacAlister is naive, and we can’t expect him to know the ins and outs of every area, but each of his recommendations I feel should be separated between easy wins and herculean legislative labours. Any one can provide a wish list, the real magic is in high quality and lasting implementation.

I wish MacAlister all the best with his review, but would urge him to be the Eartha and Tony Robbins in the room and don’t fall into Obama and Johnsons trap in leaving the Invisible people behind just because you think you’re the smartest.

Links

Munro’s review

Frontline website

Moyet singing

Eartha Kitt meets president

Social Care, Risk, COVID and True Uncertainty

Posted on February 9, 2023 by George Bull

The understanding and assessment of risk for social workers is as important as it is challenging.

The current COVID pandemic has brought risk into the public spotlight with social care (and everyone else) facing an array of risk-based judgment calls.

One example from my Connected Carers team is should the children of a 70 year old carer (with underlying conditions) continue to go to school; is it better to harm their education or harm the health of their main carer, what is the probability risk of these outcomes? What is their severity?

Stephen Webb offers a theoretical ladder to climb up with his adoption of the concept of irreducible uncertainty.

This is the acceptance that the risk of a certain outcome will carry with it a level of probability that can’t be assessed, can’t be worked on and that will stubbornly remain regardless of our approach and level of intervention.

“No one can say with certainty whether child abuse will occur, when it will occur (if it does), to what extent it will occur (if it does) or whether it is likely to happen again (if it did occur). Nor is there agreement on the degree of uncertainty involved in child abuse cases. These kinds of uncertainty will remain whatever mode of organisation is undertaken in child protection at a national level”
Stephen Webb (Decision making in social work Lecture (2014).

Importantly this unknown element is not in of its self-bad or dangerous it is just a representation of human complexity and the work we do as social workers.

A basic but useful definition would be

Risk = Assessed/measured uncertainty of a future outcome

Irreducible uncertainty = Risk that can’t be measured or quantified

To give another COVID example – we know many risk factors, age, weight, job role, post code, diabetes, racial background. Crucially thou we cannot say with certainty who will get it, who will die if they get, or, inversely, who wont and who will only have mild symptoms.

However, from a risk perspective it is valid to talk about the risk to 90-year olds being a 1 % chance of death and the risk for under 20’s being 1 in 10,000. This immense range is further confused by media reporting the shocking and very sad tiny number of cases of children who have died, it becomes part of our consciousness, so we feel it is more likely than it is.

A social care example would be cases likely Baby P or Victoria Climbe which have led a sea change in child protection. But their story is only representative of an absolutely tiny percentage of all cases open to social care. The point being that considering the most extreme forms of child death and torture are not useful when supporting families that are struggling with parenting, ADHD or poor standards of physical care. Undoubtedly fear of a terrible outcome will always be part of human nature and we have to be aware of this in our practice, to quote her Majesties professor of risk Dr Speigelhalther

“I am as prone to irrational statistical judgements as anybody else”

The messages for practice I feel are,

A risk assessment does not cover all the picture some of which cannot be quantified through social work intervention.
Using extremes as a measuring tool is not useful and can skew practice towards defensive decision making
Whilst we fear the worst-case scenario, we must be aware of how this can alter thinking and allow ourselves as professionals to develop an accurate, case specific judgement, on future outcomes.

George Bull

George is a Social Worker at the Connected Carers Team South Tyneside. He has been a social worker for 10 years working mainly in child protection and Early Help. He has lectured with Jamie Scorer at New College Durham, University of Sunderland and University of Northumbria in solution focused practice.

Who IS to blame….?

Posted on February 9, 2023 by Admin

The Guardian this morning (August 1st 2019) reports that social workers are being blamed for their own stress and burnout. You can read the article here.There are some very damning statistics in there about how social workers are feeling about this and how they are maybe being made to feel by employers. Indeed, the HCPC standards of proficiency include things about developing resilience and utilising self care (although not exactly in those words).

In the world of ‘things’ resilience is defined as the ability to resist stress (think of an iron girder), or the ability to spring back into shape. In the social work worlds resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back from the emotional trauma of practice. But I’m not convinced that is exactly all it is. The Guardian points out that there is a lack of an agreed definition or even a sense of what it exactly is but it does seem that the word resilience, more often than not, is prefixed by the word ’emotional’ as though that is the only, or primary, form of resilience.

I think resilience is multi-faceted. And I do think there is a personal responsibility element to it. I am not going to argue here against the very clear fact that workloads for social workers are too high and available resources are too low but I am going to argue that that is not the only factor. This is based on my observation that some people are coping well, some are doing ok, and some are not doing well at all, in very similar environments. So, I do think there is more to it than too many cases and not enough time. Although I am keen to stress that I think that is probably one of the more significant factors. And I think it’s worth saying here that workloads in most professions are too high – it’s not just social work…

Emphasising the personal responsibility element of resilience plays right into the hands of the dominant neo-liberal agenda endemic in the political stand point but nevertheless there are some things that can be done to enhance resilience that can only be personal. Let me explain. Resilience is not just about the ‘bounce-back’ from emotional trauma – it is about other things. We need to be physically resilient, not just for our work life but also for our life outside of work. We try and compartmentalise ‘work’ and ‘life’ in pursuit of ‘work-life balance’ when really what we should be doing is creating one balanced life that includes the things we get paid to do, the things we don’t get paid to do, and our rest and recuperation. Physical resilience helps us cope with all manner of things. This is why exercise is so important in managing stress. It has been shown that moderate levels of exercise (a brisk 20 minute walk) reduces feelings of stress (as well as reducing levels of cortisol and adrenaline in our bodies – the physical manifestation of stress). So, if you are exercising you will be more physically resilient. What you eat is equally important. The science of ‘the second brain’, as many researchers are referring to our gut, is young, but there are clear signs that what you eat has an impact on your gut biome and in turn on how you feel and how you cope with stress. How you sleep has a huge impact on your productivity and how productive you are, or are not, and therefore has a huge impact on stress. It is in this element – self care – where it is clear that personal responsibility is required in order to achieve physical resilience. No one can make you go for a walk, eat well, or go to bed at a reasonable time – only you can do that. This physical resilience has a direct impact on our emotions, our ability to manage them, and therefore on how we respond to stressful situations in all areas of our lives.

There is also another element to resilience. The ‘Organised’ element. If you have control of what you can control – if you have some sort of system that records and manages all of that for you – then when something throws your world into chaos you will have the capacity to deal with it better. David Allen (Author of Getting Things Done) talks about having a mind like water. When a rock is thrown into a still pond it creates ripple and these ripples eventually dissipate and then the pond is returned to calm. This is how your mind should be. This relies on what he calls a trusted system that contains everything that needs to be done, everything in your ‘sphere of responsibility’ as I like to call it. There is a lot of your life, at work and at home, that you can control and structure so that you can leave it safely alone while you deal with the crisis that will inevitably manifest itself at some point. By being organised and controlling what you can you will be more psychologically resilient. Research into the Getting Things Done methodology that Allen proposes has shown that by having everything you need to do, or may want to do in the future, recorded in a trusted system, feelings of overwhelm and stress are reduced. It doesn’t get the things done but it stops you trying to remember everything, gives you a sense of control and order, and frees up psychological capacity to do whatever needs doing right now.

There’s no denying that the emotional impact of working with people has an impact and that impact needs to managed somehow. By dealing with the things we can deal with ourselves, exercise, nutrition, sleep, and being organised, we can free up more of our capacity to deal with the emotions and demands of the job. I say again, I am absolutely not saying that we have no problems in social work with case loads and resources, but taking some care of yourself and having a system to be organised have been shown to help. Fact.

So, the government have some responsibility in terms of funding, the regulator has some responsibility in terms of advocating for the profession, senior managers in local authorities have a responsibility to engage in the local political agenda around funding and resources, but you also have a role in making sure you are ready for the task. You can make a contribution, you can make a difference. Why would you not want to look after you!? Why would you not want to do at least something? There is clear evidence it helps. It won’t make the problem go away but it might help you manage some of the fall out. You are too important to leave it to others. That’s the personal responsibility bit. That’s why you need to do something because you are too important not too.

Self care is an essential, not a luxury in any profession.

Work smarter, not harder

Posted on February 19, 2019 by Admin

Productivity

Work Smarter Not Harder

Organisation skills and productivity

Firstly, in talking about and exploring organisation skills and productivity, and self care and its impact on productivity, my intention is not for social workers to be given more. It is to try and give social workers the skills and ideas to be more efficient at what they are doing, more organised, more disciplined maybe, so that they can get out of the door on time (emergencies aside) confident that all is in order (not necessarily done but in order) and all is as well as it can be. The pay off for this is an increased ability to be able to switch off. You know everything is in order ready for you to pick up the next day – so, hopefully, more often than not, you can put it out of your head. The same is true and more important I feel for a weekend so that you have the time to recharge. So that’s my motivation – I can’t see a problem with that. I can see how managers might hi-jack the idea and see it as a way to give people more… or we could give the majority of managers I know the credit and accept that they’d rather manage happy staff. Managers are not evil. Well not all of them 😉

Being Organised is a skill to hone

We teach student social workers communication skills when to a greater or lesser extent they can already communicate. Why? Because professional communication is different. We teach student social workers report writing skills. Why? Because professional writing is different to letter writing, or academic writing. So why not teach them ‘being organised and productive’ skills because… being organised and productive as a professional does require a skill set and a knowledge base different to what people already may know. And I know from talking to students and practitioners that some of them are productivity ninja’s and some students turn up to start their social work degree without a diary because they hadn’t thought they’d need one…. and a whole range in between. Because if you don’t know, you don’t know.

Backed by science

There have been huge advances in brain scanning and imaging that means we can see what’s going on in our heads when we’re stressed, or when we are meditating, or when we are in the flow. We know what works and we know the impact of what doesn’t work – unmanageable stress and sickness. All of the ideas I put forward are backed by science and research

There are some ideas here on Social Work Shorts – click Productivity or Self Care at the top of this page to find them. There are a some ideas there to get you started. I feel I need to pull them all together into a ‘method’ to show how they all fit together so that’s coming soon.

Try these:
The stress isn’t going away so what are you going to do about it?

The Two Minute Rule

Frogs, Elephants, and the 2 minute rule

The Power of Small Wins

Do you care? The importance of looking after yourself

Also if you click the link right at the top you’ll find some podcasts covering similar material

Or click here

Enjoy! Go get your day!

Liam Neeson, ethnicity, and oppression

Posted on February 5, 2019 by Admin

Liam Neeson is in the press today (Tuesday 5^th February 2019).
You may have seen that he has told a reporter that during a difficult time in his life he had walked the streets for a week with a knife hoping, he says, to take his anger out on any black man who approached him. The fuel to this fire was the rape of someone close to him by a man who was black.

What do you make of this?
Personally, I think it’s a very honest and brave statement to make. People seem to be talking about the fact that this is racist. Well, yes, indeed! It’s wrong to attach the acts of one member of any ‘group’, be that colour, religion, sexuality….. to all members of that ‘group’. But we all run the risk of falling fowl to prejudicial ideas when our backs are against the wall and we, or our ‘own’, are threatened.

Evolutionary biologists argue that the human animal is built to discriminate to ensure the survival of its own family unit and group over that of those considered outsiders. The ‘other’ in our midst. Giphart and Van Vught (in their book ‘Mismatch’) state that “in present times traces of our tribal brain can still be found in men especially, who continue to be tribalistic.” They go on to state that men are much more motivated to protect their ‘group’.

Barack Obama in his book The Audacity of Hope says “Old Habits die hard, and there is always a fear on the part of many minorities that unless racial discrimination, past and present, stays on the front burner, white America will be let of the hook and hard fought gains may be reversed….. during difficult economic times it is possible that the imperatives of racial equality get shunted aside”. Here he acknowledges that these ideas are entrenched in some way. Do I need to point to some of the views of the latest American President?

So, is discrimination then an inherent ‘quality’ of being human…. Do we move towards people who are the same as us, whatever ‘same’ means, and exclude people who exhibit difference, whatever that means!

This idea of everybody being equal and there not being some sort of ‘natural order’ to things – man stronger than woman, whiteness better than blackness, able-bodied valuable and disabled not valuable – is actually a relatively new idea. You only have to go back to 1960’s America to find segregation based on colour, or 1990’s South Africa to see the same. It wasn’t until 1928 that women were given the right to vote. These, in the history of humanity, are very recent events. Look at the division’s based on religion we see today, and I’d argue that the Brexit vote, in the mainstream population, is founded on ideas of ‘closing the borders’ to keep the ‘others’ out.

I’m sure, as social workers, or student social workers, you feel you wouldn’t have such views, but I’d suggest we need to mindful of the potential for bias leading to discrimination and oppression if indeed evolutionists are right and we are predisposed to such bias. For me, as someone brought up in a very white Britain I live in the North East of England – not renowned for it’s mix of cultures and ethnicities – there may be a drip drip effect of racism, an undercurrent if you like, that does have an impact on my view of those of different cultures. Consciously it doesn’t, I can assure you, but maybe I need to be aware that for most of my life I may have been fed stereotypical views of people of a different colour, or sexuality, or gender, to name a few.

Let’s link this to social work practice.
If there is an inherent ‘quality’ to discrimination then we need to mindful that such things can influence our own views of others. We need to look at what we understand of the world and ask ourselves how that view is shaped. But, more than this, when we are working with individuals we are also working with people whose views of themselves have been shaped by the same forces. People are susceptible to stereotypes of others and also to being influenced by stereotypical ideas of themselves.

Discrimination is a multi faceted and complex phenomenon. It is there at the interplay between individuals but also between organisations and people, and between different organisations. As someone working in one of those organisations we may take on board the discrimination established by that organisation. Just as an example…. It’s not unusual to find the ceiling on care packages (which really shouldn’t exist) for older people to be significantly lower than those for other service user groups. What does that tell us about the value of older people in society and the readiness, based on finances, to propose a care home? Is that not discrimination?

Thompsons ‘PCS model’ explains that discrimination and oppression operate at a Personal level in individual thoughts and attitudes leading to prejudice and an inflexibility of mind. This is embedded in and influenced by Culture where a consensus about what is right and ‘normal’ is established. And for me, most worryingly for social work, this is woven into the fabric of society at a Structural level in organisations, laws, and the ideologies of those with power.

So, how do we practice in an anti-oppressive way?

Clifford (in Adams et al “Social Work: Themes, Issues and Critical Debates” 2^nd edition 2002, pg. 229) offers the following principles:

We have to work with and understand social differences not as a negative but simply as a state of how it is. Social difference often leads to disparities of power between dominant and dominated groups within the major divisions we’ve just seen but it’s more complicated than these large groupings. What about the region of the country you’re from, what about your personal experience of mental health, what about what it’s like being a single parent? All of these can constitute difference but may not be as obvious as the other things.

The personal and political need to be linked. Personal stories need to be viewed within the context of family, peer groups, organisations and communities – for example the problems of ageing aren’t just about how you as an individual view yourself but are seated within ideologies of old age, policies, practices, ideas about retirement, and health systems

Power operates at personal and structural levels and is dependent on many factors. As a social worker you may have the power of the law, or the power afforded to your status but the service user maintains the power to say no in the majority of circumstances. We should be upholding the service users right to use this power but we may act in a way that disempowers. I feel the most significant area of power the social worker has is that of information and how much they share about options. Case law around the Mental Capacity Act shows us that sometimes we only present one option where multiple options may exist.

The individual life experiences of you as the practitioner and of the service user must be placed in the context of prevailing ideas, social facts and cultural differences. The impact of someone’s situation needs to be seated in the reality of the moment it is happening in. For example, the government’s ideology of the importance of the family may impact negatively on the position of a single parent or the political view regarding benefits and the necessity of work may leave some disabled people in poverty. You need to understand this in order to understand the oppression someone may be facing while having an awareness of how your own values lead you to consider social difference and the use of power in your involvement with service users.

The ‘England Game’ – does it ever matter?

Posted on June 29, 2018 by Admin

Does it Matter?

Yesterday (Thursday 28^th June 2018) I got my act together and was ready to leave work on time because it was the day of the final England World Cup 2018 group match with England on a bit of a roll to say the least. I said to my colleagues ‘I’m off to get sorted for the match… not that it matters of course ‘cos we’re through!’ The response of one of my colleagues was ‘well does it ever matter?’ As in, I’m assuming, does the result of any fixture of the beautiful game ever matter? My rather tepid response, ‘well… in the moment I suppose’ left me thinking there was so much more to say on the subject and had me pondering a better response as I cycled home.

Emotional experience

Now, any of you who know me well will be pondering why on earth I think it might ever matter because as you will know I’m not a huge football fan. I certainly don’t follow the domestic game but, as with most sports, whenever the national team are in action I am an avid viewer. So, to that extent my response that it ‘matters in the moment’ is probably an accurate response for me personally. But clearly this is not the case for everyone. Thousands of people have travelled thousands of miles at great expense to watch their country play in the tournament. And the expressions on faces in the crowd of either delight or despair go some way to confirming that it does matter. It matters very much. In the opening pages of his book Fever Pitch (1992) Nick Hornby says he fell in love with football ‘suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it’. Clearly it has an emotional element then, so must matter, because emotions matter.

The Working Class Game

Despite the FA and the formula of the current game being firmly rooted in the public schools of the late 19^th century football is, (or at least was till big money and high ticket prices got in the way) a working class game. Greenwood in his beautiful and heart-breaking novel ‘Love on the Dole’ (1932) speaks of the drudgery of the daily grind in the factory, working the Saturday morning, and then being freed from the shackles of labour in time for the Saturday afternoon football match. This was the highlight of the working man’s [sic] week and their mood would rise or fall based on the outcome of the game. So, it appears that it does matter.

These working class roots certainly seems to matter in terms of the make up of the England team where your class doesn’t appear to be a barrier to inclusion. The England team are also ethnically diverse and therefore more representative of the nation than you see in some other sports. Raheem Sterling epitomises this. Born in Jamaica, his father murdered when he was young, brought up by his mother in London, and now on the international stage, celebrated for his football skills. Or take the story of Dele Alli, born to a Nigerian father and English mother who experienced alcohol problems, he ended up at 13 living with the family who he refers to as his ‘adoptive parents’. His heroes and his inspiration to achieve were Steven Gerard and Frank Lampard. So for Sterling and Alli, yes, football matters.

Benefits on mental health

The Mental Health Foundation are also very clear that watching football has a positive effect on mental health. They point out its impact on emotions, relationships, identity and self-esteem. They identify young men in particular pointing out that;

‘the opportunity to externalise tension and emotion is important to maintaining health. Young men are at the highest risk of suicide – it is the most common cause of death for young men under the age of 35. This age group is one of the dominant in football crowds across the country’ (www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/football-and-mental-health)

They also report a study (unidentified) that noted a reduction in the number of psychiatric admissions during and after World Cup Finals. So, it would seem it does matter.

Domestic Violence

There is a darker and very alarming side to the potential of an England defeat and that is the evidence that instances of domestic violence increase after such an event. A study by Lancaster University (Kirby et al. (2013) Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency) looked at incidences of domestic violence across World Cups back to 2002 and found some alarming figures. They found that reports of domestic violence increased by 11% after England played no matter what the outcome of the game, rising, by a staggering 38%, if England lost. The factors at play are not just the football match, but also increased tension that might go with it, and notably increased alcohol consumption. Although it was a small study the findings and the outcomes for the victims are obviously harrowing.

So – Does it Matter!?

So, does it matter. Does it matter that there’s an England game? Does it matter whether ‘we’ win? Well it would seem that the ‘big game’ can have both negative and positive impacts. I certainly feel the excitement of the England game. The build up, the drama. I find myself talking to people about the national team and ‘the game’. So, it does instigate conversation with different people in different ways. If the positive aspects on people’s mental health are tangible, then that must be a good thing. If the ‘beautiful game’ helps people from a relatively disadvantaged position dream, and sometimes achieve, then that has to be a good thing…. That has to matter… surely!? The on-going success of the England team will see children running around in England strips aspiring to be Kayne or Sterling. They’ll maybe get outside and run around and kick a ball. That’s got to be a good thing. That’s got to matter.

…and if (when?) we lose …well the Mental Health Foundation tell us that sharing a moan after a defeat is another way we can bond. And then we’ll move on. But we’ll have had that moment. And it’s in those moments that we share our lived experience and create the bonds that bind us together. ….so it’s got to matter? Surely?

How delivering good practice is adding to the DoLS assessment backlog problem.

Posted on November 4, 2017 by Admin

Ongoing increase in outstanding assessments

The annual review of deprivation of liberty safeguards has revealed an on going increase in situations that still require attention through assessment. The safeguards ensure that those deprived of their liberty in a care home or hospital in England and Wales, who do not have the capacity to consent to being accommodated, have recourse to the law to challenge their deprivation.

Opening the flood gates

The law has been problematic since it’s inception with difficulties around definitions of deprivation and ‘best interests’, two concepts essential to getting the right decision in this area. The Ches hire West ruling opened the floodgates of people needing an assessment. So, when people were under continuous supervision and control and unable to leave, this deemed them to be deprived of their liberty, and an assessment to confirm this was in their best interest was required. The reality of this ruling was that it applied to most, if not all, people in a care home who lacked capacity to decide to live there. This created an immediate crisis of a backlog of assessment. The solution to train more social workers and to employ locum best interest assessors has clearly not resolved the problem and with a review of the legislation placed on hold until at least 2019 it’s difficult to see how the problem will be resolved.

The backlog

Estimates seemto suggest that it will take years to clear the backlog as obviously, as people enter care or hospital, they add to the numbers of those already deprived who require assessment. Uncompleted cases have now risen to, in excess of, 100,00 it is thought.

Good practice ironically adds to the problem

The North East of England appears to have a disproportionate number of assessments to undertake. The reason for this is an interesting one. It appears that practitioners in the north east are happy to recommend a short review period and that local authorities are happy to accept this. The best interest assessor can recommend a period of anything up to one year before the deprivation is reviewed but in terms of best practice this should not be seen as the default time scale. Where someone thinks a situation may change, or where recommendations are made to make the deprivation less restrictive it is right and proper to review this in a timely fashion. Hence, a shortened time scale. The irony of this is that best practice is compounding the problemof the assessment back log and while we wouldn’t want to lose this it highlights the need for a new more efficient and effective system of managing the safeguards.

The risk of ‘desk top’

This is the third year in a row that the backlog has increased despite more practitioners being trained to undertake the required assessments. The risk of not transforming the law and process is that councils may resort to ‘short cut’ methods like ‘desk top’ assessments. Some already have. This will mean the safeguards will have very little if no potential for impact on the lives of vulnerable people. Through the process the best interest assessor gets to meet the person and talk to them and is tasked with finding out as much as they can about the person. This can result in recommendations that may reduce the restrictive nature of a deprivation with the potential of improving quality of life for someone. A ‘desk top’ exercise turns this person centred assessment into a bureaucratic exercise. Surely that can’t be right?

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The ‘England Game’ – does it ever matter?