Colin Turbett – 11th November 2021
Community social work is at the heart of Common Weal’s ideas for a new National Care Service – our soon to be published blueprint will certainly outshine the Scottish Government’s own proposals in both scope and vision. Our ideas for bringing social work back to communities have been touched upon in various papers – in particular Struggling to Care and Care in Your Community. It is pleasing to see that community social work is gaining support across Scotland and several Councils are looking seriously at how this might be done. At the Social Work Scotland Conference on October 26th, I was invited to be part of a Panel looking at the theme of “The Future of Social Work” and issued this challenge to delegates in my opening remarks against the backdrop of the picture shown.
“We live in a deeply unequal and divided world on a heading for environmental disaster – and COP-26 looks likely to fulfil Greta Thunberg’s prediction of being a corporate greenwashing jamboree with a lot of bla bla bla…..“
That is all the result of rampant capitalism – in which social work has become embedded as a gatekeeper of a diminishing share of resources, and an agent of social control. After 1968 social workers were able to navigate a path between relationship-based engagement with people in their communities, and decisive statutory interventions when required. We didn’t always get it right, but we certainly don’t now. We have become obsessed with risk and we have become over proceduralised. We have also become inaccessible and remote from the communities we work in. We have sacrificed relationship-based practice on the altar of assessment, and action by others.
The pandemic has tested everyone, and thankfully promoted some reflection. Social work is broken! If we want to repair it we have to look at ways of rebuilding community engagement based on relationships. Integration – that is top-down integration – has taken us further away from this. We need to rediscover the promise of 1968 – begin again to seriously promote social welfare and involve ourselves in preventative rather than reactive practice. It can be done and there are examples across Scotland that suggest some social work leaders are already looking at this.
Iona Colvin, the Chief Social Work Adviser says in her introduction to this conference that the Scottish Government recognise the place of social work. Do they? As we debate with them our role in the new National Care Service, will we be listened to or will it be more bla bla bla? More of a system that downplays the importance of care in society and subsumes it to health on the one hand, and a market economy on the other. It’s up to us to demand a return to community-located practice and the resources we will need to do that. Let’s get out of the silos and centralised offices, and back to the neighbourhoods!
A Common Weal supporter, Lusta, recently made contact to share her experiences of Council sponsored community social work in Hackney, North London in the 1980s. Her thoughts echo with our proposals for some of the ways this could work in Scotland. Lusta volunteered in Centreprise, a cooperative run bookshop, coffee shop and cultural community centre that had been a social services office. After training she worked as a “patch” social worker in the nearby social work team office. She writes:
“Basically, you lived and worked on your patch with everybody. People I would work with over issues during the week would bump into me at the local shop at the weekend. That was the plan! We would basically be a local resource. Hackney introduced special advisers (consultants) from each and every local community, and if, for instance, I was asked to visit a Hasidic family, I would take along a consultant from the Hasidic community; the same with Caribbean families, and so on. They wanted us to learn to think from the standpoint of communities we hadn’t grown up in so that our own cultural bias was mitigated. The area manager for Social Services told us that we had to regard children who were looked after by the authority as if they were OUR children. She insisted that we argue hard for resources for them – and we did! I left there to work in an authority in Northern England and was shocked to find no one else had these ideas.”
Patch social work was the name given in those days to community social work, and Lusta’s experiences combine a community focused social work style with the importance of a hub for cultural and other services and activities. Sadly, such experiments in the local democratic service delivery using community strengths and resources did not survive the Thatcher years. They had almost been forgotten in the adaptation of social work to the market and work based primarily on very downstream risk assessment. The revival of relationship-based practice focused on prevention is long overdue.
Colin Turbett
Care Reform Working Group
I so agree. The new National Care Service is just going to be a rehash of what currently exists (may I say good in parts of the country). I too remember the days of the social worker being an actual resource rather than now in adult care, an assessor and care package manager tied to your desk and computer for large swathes of the week.. But if they are going to reinvent the wheel I don’t mind so much if they include good old community social work. Of course it is changed days since the Social Work Scotland Act was our only driver. Social workers have many more responsibilities with all the additional important legislation passed over the last 30 years. Maybe two tiers of social workers needs to be created. Community and statutory?
Really sorry, but once again – as with everything about ‘care’ on this site, this is discriminatory and ignorant. I was under the impression that this was a ‘Scottish’ site, yet all the ‘experts’ seem to be from England and abroad. Why on earth are we listening to some hippy social worker from Hackney, London on how to change the care system in Scotland. As someone who became a carer while I was still at school, (and before I went to art college in 1979, I would tell this to ‘sling their hook’. We need people who are primarily trained in basic & nurse care, not hippy dippy culture. We also need people who can read, write & speak English and pay attention to detail, as well as a knowledge of and respect for the different local Scottish dialects & culture. (The Central belt is not the same as north, north west & north east culture). Take it from me, this insulting & patronising garbage will not do young carers any good and will not improve standards of care.
Really sorry, but once again – as with everything about ‘care’ on this site, this is discriminatory and ignorant. I was under the impression that this was a ‘Scottish’ site, yet all the ‘experts’ seem to be from England and abroad. Why on earth are we listening to some hippy social worker from Hackney, London on how to change the care system in Scotland. As someone who became a carer while I was still at school, (and before I went to art college in 1979), I would tell this person to ‘sling their hook’. We need people who are primarily trained in basic & nurse care, not hippy dippy culture. We also need people who can read, write & speak English and pay attention to detail, as well as a knowledge of and respect for the different local Scottish dialects & culture. (The Central belt is not the same as north, north west & north east culture). Take it from me, this insulting & patronising garbage will not do young carers any good and will not improve standards of care.
Disgusted that you quote Greta Thunberg in the context of care, (or hold her up as a role model in any context). What does this spoiled brat know about care – or climate for that matter? Why on earth are Scottish parents & teachers allowing or encouraging their children to bunk off school to protest on climate hysteria, and copy such bad behaviour & bully others? This kind of bullying behaviour at school is nothing new, but now it seems to be condoned. Do they not value their education? Even though standards of education have fallen shamefully, since the introduction of the so-called ‘curriculum for excellence’, at least they are given some! There are children in other countries who do not have food, let alone an opportunity to go to school – and girls especially. How disrespectful for adults who work hard & pay their taxes to give other people’s children an education. Their parents obviously have more money than sense. Sorry, this yobbish behaviour is not something we want to promote in Scotland & it is disgusting to associate this with social care. If you think this is good behaviour, then no wonder the care system is failing people. Scottish people shouldn’t have to put up with abuse. This is neither clever nor funny.
Common Weal – ‘all of us first’. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/20/uk-care-homes-deny-family-visits-human-rights
Why are our ‘academics’ & young people not up in arms about these atrocities which have been going on under our noses, right across the globe since the beginning of last year? Why was Saint Greta not outraged & protesting about that? Did you think about these people who have been denied their human rights, when you were importing your ‘experts’ from other people to trash our country? Scenes of young medics & nurses crying & doing tik tok videos to highlight THEIR anxiety, while people were dying without proper care in hospitals (including NHS), & care homes. Were you outraged and angry when you heard about people being found dead of neglect in care homes in Spain? Did you not think it could – and was – happening here? Believe me, I know. As a relative, I have witnessed ‘carers’ who are too busy to feed the residents they are being paid to support, while helping themselves to the food in front of relatives faces. I gave one so-called ‘nurse’ into trouble for that. She should have been sacked, but they are desperate. Not impressed with this site. If you don’t care about what is happening under your noses to disabled, elderly & vulnerable people – regardless of colour, creed or orientation – then you are not Scottish.
BBC news re action on drugs, 22nd Nov. 1339 deaths in 2020, 25 deaths per week and families affected. To put this in perspective, it is estimated that 15,000 people per year in Scotland suffer from strokes. In 2019, 3754 people died. Numbers not my strong point, but that means 72 families per week lose a loved one, and 288 people/families per week affected. It is the most common cause of severe physical disability amongst adults. This affected my life at 16. As I was already supporting care of a physically disabled person when I went to art college, I kinda had more important things to worry about than take the drugs that were freely available in the common room & painting studios! I would suggest that Common Weal are easily impressed if they think someone who has run a coffee shop, bookshop & cultural community centre in Hackney can advise Scots on care. Be more impressed if they had been a trained nurse or health visitor. That would be of more help to Scottish children, young people, families and individuals.