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SOCIAL WORK – THE MODERN ERA
WHY DO WE NEED SOCIAL WORKERS?
Despite the growth in prosperity over the decades, the need for social workers has not diminished. Many people from all walks of life need someone to approach at a time of trouble who is knowledgeable on different avenues of help and resources.
Social workers work with people in difficulty, whose lives have been thrown into disarray through poverty, accident or illness. They help families to cope, encouraging a nurturing structure for children and individuals to live fulfilling lives, despite physical, emotional or mental difficulties. Others may have difficulty fitting in with people through personal problems or borderline personality disorders due to neglect in infancy. These disorders can lead to conflict with those in authority, drug and alcohol abuse, family problems and difficulty in giving consistent affection. Social work departments often act like a fire blanket to protect the local community from the full impact of some of the troubled and troublesome people in their neighbourhood.
The Social Work Task Force1 noted:
• caring for family members
• having problems with family relationships and conflict
• struggling with challenges of growing old
• suffering serious personal troubles and mental distress
• having drug and alcohol problems
• facing difficulties as a result of disability
• being isolated within the community
• having practical problems with money or housing.
A fledgling social worker
At the age of 23 in 1968, I heard a radio programme that described the work of child care officers and the way they helped children settle into foster homes for temporary periods. ‘Wow what a brilliant thing to do!’ I thought, and set about becoming one. Having had a dozen homes by the age of 13 (my father was a soldier), I instinctively wanted to help other children over these complex transitions. There was no hint that the position of social work in our society would change so much over 40 years that I would spend half my career in a profession battered by the media and blamed by everyone else.
In the 1960s, the Home Office had a drive to increase the number of child care social workers by setting up emergency courses for mature students under the guidance of Clare Winnicott. That was how I entered social work. There was considerable focus on the social sciences, human growth and development, the psychodynamics of families, skills in communicating with children and the legal framework – as well as the opportunity through supervision and group discussions to develop self-awareness and insight. This encouraged a reflective view that became part of my professional approach. On qualifying, the focus of my work was to develop relationships with children in social services care, families in need and with young offenders living in the community.
The cases waiting for me
• I met William,2 a two-year-old in a residential nursery, over a tube of pastilles. After discussing our favourites, he picked out all the blackcurrant ones for me. What an overture of friendship! No wonder I saw him through thick and thin over the following years.
• I was shocked to find Susan aged nine and Tim aged six living with a housemother in a small group home just because they no longer suited their mother’s new life. Their little sister June, prone to fits, was in a nursery on the coast 70 miles away.
• Maggie had run off to the Isle of Wight festival aged 14 – ‘What spirit’, I thought, though my supervisor suspected some underlying envy in my reaction. I kept close by while she completed school, found a job, moved to lodgings, and had rows and reconciliations with her mum – teenage life in the round. Aged 17, she shyly told me of her affair with a well-known pop star. Fortunately my continued ignorance of the pop scene reassured her that I was a safe confidant.
Finding substitute families
I supported foster carers and house mothers in their affectionate care of the children, and tried to return the children home, or find adoptive families or more accommodating placements. As Olive Stevenson3 pointed out, our activities were both practical and thoughtful, designed to mitigate the trauma of separation as explored by John Bowlby4 and also James and Joyce Robertson, lambasted for filming the acute distress of ‘A two year old goes to hospital’.5
Mark – a young blind boy, fostered then adopted
A young couple rang the bell of a boarding school for blind children, where they were introduced to a 10-year-old in my charge, called Mark, who needed a permanent loving home. His mother had been very young and unable to bring him back to the family home after his birth. It was an immense challenge for them. But they had the idealism, imagination and energy to create the right environment in which he could grow and develop affectionate relationships and the skills to lead an independent adult life.
During two years of fostering, they persuaded the headmaster of the local comprehensive to take Mark. Other pupils helped him to fit in. He took up music and played in the school band. Then they successfully adopted Mark. Years later we met by chance on the train. He was oblivious to the crowd around and immediately asked me about his mother.
I was shocked how deeply linked we must have always been in his mind. I realised again that the past cannot be wiped away, we can only try to understand it.
I built up shared experiences with children in care so we had a trusting relationship to work with when their lives next went pear-shaped. They used the unthreatening neutral space of a car journey or meal to share their confused, sad or angry feelings. As urged by Clare Winnicott,6 this helped them to stay emotionally alive and maintain the capacity to feel – essential while efforts were made to rehabilitate them with their families, or to construct a separate life with the support of house mothers or foster carers. I also developed a good rapport with the police while spending many hours in the juvenile courts.
The Seebohm reorganisation
The welfare services in the post-war period were fragmented and administered by a range of government departments such as Health, Education and the Home Office. Services were limited to protection from destitution rather than care of the whole person. However, all this changed with the Seebohm Report7 in 1968, which reviewed the organisation and responsibilities of local authority personal social services.
The Seebohm reforms were implemented in 1971, combined with the introduction of generic practice and an emphasis on community well-being and citizenship. This structural modernisation of social work brought together the welfare, mental welfare and children’s departments. It introduced a single social service department in local government providing a community-based and family-orientated service, headed by a qualified director. Social workers varied in background from the more practical welfare officers – who supported older people and those with physical disabilities in the community – to relationship-focused child care officers and mental welfare officers, and to psycho-dynamically orientated psychiatric social workers.
Local branch of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW)
In 1972 I helped to set up a local branch of BASW, the new combined professional body for social workers. Our launch event focused on the new social services departments and Lord Seebohm was our first speaker. He said he had wanted to provide a single door for all the needy people to walk through so that clients would no longer be shunted from one department to another.
Another intention had been to increase the bargaining power of ‘welfare’ to equal or supersede that of the housing departments in local authorities – then the big spenders (hence the current concerns having ‘children in need’ funds sharing the schools budget). Apparently Lord Seebohm had been taken completely by surprise to learn of the move to generic social work which had already been introduced into practice and into the new Certificate of Qualification in Social Work (CQSW). That major change had never been anticipated in his review.
These structural changes encouraged an expanded and radicalised young workforce to develop visions of social equality and social justice. Social work moved toward a community development model of innovative outreach schemes for all client groups.
Managing an intake team in an inner city borough
I started work in a lively inner city borough as a student. The councillors decided to implement the required restructuring during my time there. This caused considerable turmoil and I was fortunate after qualifying to be given a permanent post. Social workers ran drop-in centres for the mentally ill, support groups for young mothers, neighbourhood warden schemes for the housebound, and diversion schemes for youngsters in trouble. We wanted to become more accessible, and held sessions in GP surgeries and clinics as well as having a stall at the local market.
I was concerned by the ad hoc management of new referrals to the office as the staff group expanded (with overflowing baskets of referral papers balanced on windowsills and worse). I pressed for a better system. Intake teams had been recommended by the National Institute of Social Work to meet generic community needs, and on promotion in 1973 I was asked to set one up. An e...
