future with love the reason I’ve chosen
it is that I’ve been a social worker for
a long time then social manager and then
Social Work academic and now I’m doing
consultancy and what I want to share
with you really is my experience the
things I picked up along the way and
love is beginning to feature big style
my Social Work training was based on
this guy B stack who was actually a
pastor you can see he was writing a long
time ago but it was about the dynamic
interaction of attitudes and emotions
between the caseworker social worker and
the client and that’s been there right
through and my contention is that
actually it’s got bit lost so over the
years and I’ve learned about the
separation of personal and professional
in organizations and relationships have
been seen as fuzzy things and not proper
organizational material and that’s been
around what’s been going on in the
organization’s themselves and our
relationships with professionals and
public sector with other people service
users clients customers whatever you
want to call them there’s also been the
advent of managerialism where the
private sector was seen as having it in
quotes as far as getting results getting
through life having a successful
organization so in my world
lots of people were sent on MBAs now I
learned a lot about MBAs because I
eventually jumped out of management
practice and went into universities and
my task was to develop social work
management education and I looked at the
MBAs as a starting point but I felt
again I keep using this necessary but
not sufficient and I come to feel that
some of our organizations if not many
are actually dysfunctional and having
spoken to people in the green room this
morning I think you’ll hear that
sentiment come up more than once my
contention is that measurement has
become a proxy for quality and
accountability and that’s having quite a
strong impact on the public sector and
human services regulation is very
important I’m not denying that about
people about places that services and
all the rest of it I think we need to
maybe drag it back a bit technology has
come to the fore and I’ve seen social
workers go into houses with a tablet on
which they’ve been filling in assessment
forms now I just wonder what that feels
like to be on this the other side of
that I’ve become a service user through
family members over the years and I can
tell you that I don’t actually like it
very much the other thing that I think’s
been around in the public sector and in
many organizations being a culture of
compliance and blame and I think that’s
not helpful I think it’s changed how we
are inside organisations and it’s
changed how we are on the outside in
relation to the rest of the world I have
a daughter with Down’s syndrome in
brackets because the language is
changing used to be Down syndrome and
now it’s back to calling it dance and
she also has autism and those two
conditions into play in a very major way
in her life she has lot of struggles she
started off in mainstream primary school
in a small village with two teachers
school with two teachers and she then
moved on to special schooling day
schooling and then to residential
special school and she now lives in a
residential community for people with
learning disabilities along the way
because of the need to find somewhere
for my daughter to go to school I
discovered Camp Hill some of you will
know about it and I think there’s a
theme there that’s going to be picked up
later in other speakers talks
it’s an organization set up by Jewish
refugees from Europe during World War
two
and started as a school
in Aberdeen there are now 11 communities
in Scotland two of those are schools and
nine of them are for adults and one of
those is a home for older people and
there are Camp Hill places now in 20
countries worldwide the organization is
bait the organization’s I should say
because they are all separate from each
other although there is a federal body
there based on shared living and that
notion was new when it started and then
it’s been through a number of stages
where it became very popular and it’s
now becoming much more difficult to find
volunteers to share their lives in
residential communities so the plan was
and still is in many places that the
place was staffed by excuse me volunteer
co-workers so young people often who
were from other countries interestingly
some countries had an exemption from
national service for young people who
volunteered so a number of people came
from places like Denmark Germany Sweden
Finland Switzerland and so on to work in
Scotland as a way of not being part of
national service so that meant there’s
been a steady flow of young people many
of whom had degrees highly educated
highly enthusiastic young people the
places are usually in rural settings
with large and very beautiful grounds
with play equipment for the young
younger people sculptures flowers all
sorts of beautiful things and a lot of
nature very much to the for the
philosophy in the houses is reciprocity
so for example although my daughter is
very disabled she’s very limited
physically she’s not limited but she’s
mentally and socially very limited she
had chores to do she had things that she
needed to contribute to the community
from delivering the bread fetching the
bread taking a young person who was a
very small young person but who was
blind and deaf her job was to get
that child to the meal table and they
did it with a lot of laughter she often
had her arms under her hands under the
arms of the young person and she dragged
him with his feet being dragged across
the room and the pair of them were
giggling their heads off but that was
her job she did it she would not let
anybody else do it and she got a lot out
of it and so did the young boy the wider
environment is very important in camp
ill places so there’s the immediate
environment of the nice building with
lots of inside the building there’d be
lots of circles they’d have circular
rooms circular carpets to signify the
notion of continuity and so on lots of
plants lots of beautiful wood hanging
lots of glass lots of pictures
lovely immediate environment candles on
the table for meals flowers and so on
but also the much wider environment of
the grounds themselves with all these
lovely things in it and the other thing
which is really important is this notion
of doing things with rather than doing
things for so the volunteers work with
young people with the residents whether
they’re adults or older people or
children to create things to do things
together this is a shot of a camping
place in Aberdeen one of the schools you
can see the trees the grass and all the
rest of it and there’s a pic there’s a
house there just to show you what house
light looks like this is another house
in that house would be about 20 people a
dozen or so would be co-workers who
would some of whom would be single some
of whom would be married and in
relationships and some of them would
have children and some of them would be
retired co-workers so they continued to
live as a small community within a house
and then there would be six seven eight
residence children older people people
with learning disabilities and so on so
very much an inclusive kind of household
in Camp Hill in Aberdeen they worked
very closely with the University of
Aberdeen and then Gordon University to
develop a BA in social pedagogy and the
what that has done of course is actually
include the folk who were already there
and perhaps getting older in a
qualification at degree level but also
encouraged young folk to come from other
countries in order to do a degree for
those who didn’t already have one social
pedagogy regards the individual as a
whole person a social person and it
works with and uses the group so it’s
very much attention to relationships
between individuals between the
individuals and the group and across the
whole group it’s a relational approach
involving head heart and hands which i
think is a really lovely way of
capturing how to be alongside people the
training emphasizes creativity shared
activity and those those activities
could be sport cooking drama crafts art
music the thing I used to love about the
camp Hill School in Aberdeen where my
daughter was was that the children were
woken up in the morning by somebody
walking through the house and either
singing or playing an instrument like
the recorder or the fiddle or the guitar
lovely way so much nicer than an alarm
clock when you think about it another
central aspect to social pedagogy is
this categorization if you like or way
of defining the three P’s a professional
the personal and the private the
professional is about professional
responsibilities duties concerned with
professional knowledge and skill and
using using the head basically but also
all of those things around experience
and policies procedures blah blah all
the rest of it the personal bit is is
about the individual the worker not
being a robot not a mere follower of
procedures but a fellow human being with
feelings hopes fears experience humor
and fun I can tell you I was so pleased
to find this it was just it was just
such a relief
I can feel here in ripple or to around
the place with that
I get that the private bit is the bit
about the individual as a worker that
they choose to keep private so those
things are not for sharing that the
private bit is the bat is the set of
boundaries that the worker puts around
it teamwork and professional modeling is
right sorry personal positive role
modeling is central to social pedagogy
it’s about good working relationships
and it’s about behaving in the
professional role as you want other
people other professionals to behave
towards you as a worker but also
modeling good social behavior for social
for users of services whatever those
individuals happen to be interestingly
the social work response to social
pedagogy has been suspicions they don’t
like the word they told me it’s too hard
it’s too difficult it’s unusual we’re
not used to it but we cope with biology
and audiology in sociology and so on so
why not pedagogy managers have argued
that they don’t want another
qualification there enough
qualifications around already thank you
very much and I have to say some
universities have said the same thing
because they’ve seen pedagogy as a
potential threat to social work and
social care regulators have said well
you can do it but you can’t call it that
because we don’t like the word and you
have to make it look like regular social
care which kind of defeats the point
really the other thing which is
absolutely crucial to this at this
particular time is how folk are ignoring
the evidence that’s been accumulated
from a number of reviews this goes back
to 2009 chuckle Trotter reckoned that
clients want a social worker who’s
reliable friendly warm authentic
straight talking goes the extra mile
sees me as an equal and he actually did
a study of quite difficult cases in
criminal justice and in child protection
and discovered that better outcomes were
achieved we’re social workers use these
kinds of approaches so what does the
literature say don’t want to dwell too
much on this but talked about
staff being open to challenge being
honest and empathetic and so on and
Beckett too argues about change for
service users which is mostly what
social workers are engaged in it’s about
promoting change comes through
experience within a relationship looked
after children rapport and this post
dates some of the awful stories that
where children have died at the hands of
their carers and what what they’ve
argued is that people are trying to do
their best in spite of the system so I’m
coming back now to what I was saying at
the beginning about organizations we
need to remove the barriers to
development to put good personal
relationships and support those
relationships theory has been talking
about words like boundary client
delivery intervention outcomes these
familiar to you yet some nods around the
room thank you and we’ve developed in
some cases a rigid and standardized and
non personal approach that’s a really
hard way to deliver a caring supportive
service so where am I going with all
this our current approaches aren’t
working I haven’t looked very recently
the figures but my understanding is that
the same number of children are dying as
a result of injury by their carers now
as we’re dying many years ago when I
trained now that is peculiar given the
emphasis on child safety and child
protection staff are dissatisfied
services are stretched and many service
users are unhappy with the service that
they get results figures haven’t
improved there’s a natural culture
inside organizations there’s a lot of
blame and services have become
risk-averse and that’s happening
throughout this country and throughout
many others so I’m coming back now to
love it’s not that all you need is love
am arguing that love is necessary but
not sufficient
what Frederickson says is that quote up
there I know you can all read on
not going to read it out to you just
it’s from a book called love 2.0 which i
think is really nice given the link with
technology but it’s a step back from how
we might currently see it it’s not a
special bond I’m talking about love now
it’s not a special bond it’s not a
romantic thing
it’s not about commitment sexual desire
or blood ties
it’s the micro moment of warmth and
connection with another human being I
think if we are service users that’s
what we want from the people working
with us and that’s what we need to be
giving so start for beginning to use
luck the word love in their
conversations it’s a bit clunky they’re
uncomfortable and they’re made to feel
uncomfortable by some others there are
some civil servants in senior positions
and some ministers in Scottish
government who are showing an interest
in the notion of love and relationship
based work and services are being seen
as the way ahead and I really welcome
that I appreciate it it’s what I want
for myself it’s what I want for other
people around me and it’s what I hope
that the people I work with will be
giving to their service users so all you
need is love won’t do we need all of the
above we need good training we need
serious research we need flexible
policies good people excellent training
and love frederickson says micro moments
of connection between people and I love
this quote from Jean Van Van EA we’re
not called upon to do extraordinary
things but to do ordinary things with
extraordinary love I rest my case [Applause]