Circle Inaugural Lecture

1. Circle Inaugural Lecture Dr. Mark Smith Royal Botanic Gardens 12th November 2013

2. Approach • “… the construction of the present always owes something to moments from the past”(Harris, 2008). • Understanding, is the “result of a dialogue between the past and our present which occurs when there is a ‘fusion of horizons’ between the two” (Gadamer, 1960). • “….the drawing of any invidious comparisons with what takes place today in ‘corporate care’ might invite a brief reflection on the parable of the mote and the beam” (Webb, 2010).

3. The Pacifist Service Units • “I was living in Wrexham during the early years of the War and could hear the bombs exploding on Liverpool for three nights. So on Saturday morning early, I set off on my bicycle, riding through the Mersey Tunnel to The Friends Meeting house where I had heard that a Pacifist Service Unit was being set up in order to help those bombed out.”

4. From PSU to FSU • 1947, a new national organisation named Family Service Units was formed. New Units were formed in 1948 in several London boroughs and gradually spread to provincial cities so that, by 1954, there were ten, with two in London and others in Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leicester, Birmingham, York, Bristol, and Bradford. From 1954, the Ministry of Health allowed local authorities to provide grants under Section 28 of the National Health Service Act. Even so, while a skeleton national organisation had been created, the influence of the Liverpool Unit remained significant (McKie, 1963). • Edinburgh Unit (1974) • As practical experience and theoretical training increased, a professional outlook and a high standard of efficiency took their place beside the human motive of friendship (Philp, 1963: 43).

5. Influencing policy • Particularly significant were the close links forged with academics in university departments, illustrated in the involvement of Unit members in the 'rediscovery of poverty' and in the formation of the Child Poverty Action Group (Lowe and Nicholson, 1995). Thus the Units both played a key role in the development of the emerging social work profession, and illustrated how voluntary organisations continued to have an important and ongoing role in health and welfare provision after the Second World War. • Notting Hill Housing study

6. Blazing the trail for social work • The inability of the statutory services to provide appropriate care gave FSU considerable autonomy and independence and helped to safeguard its ability to practise the innovative and experimental work to which it attached high importance. • ‘Pioneer work can best be done under voluntary auspices. It is the proper function of voluntary organisations’ (Beveridge, 1948).

7. The beginning of the end • “Like many other voluntary agencies, FSU’s ambitions were perennially frustrated by shortage of money ….” (Starkey, 1998: 427). • “It has never been one of the giants of voluntary social work. Management consultants called in to comment on its structure in 1988 noted its relatively small size and ‘hand to mouth’ financial existence” (Starkey, 2000:1).

8. From FSU to Circle • To provide help, support and protection to children, families and individuals who are in conditions of poverty, vulnerability or distress or who are otherwise in need by reason of their personal, social or economic circumstances; and • To advance education, policy and practice in health and social services through study of conditions that harm children and families and through dissemination of the knowledge gained through that study and the experience of service provision.

9. The ‘problem family’ • “They are often shiftless, apathetic and irresponsible to an almost incredible degree … An excessive amount may be wasted on drink… they are constantly in debt … they resort to the money lender – usually an exorbitant and quite illegal rate of interest… Discipline is absent or varies erratically between over-indulgence and over-harshness … The members of these families often express the best of intentions, frequently quite sincerely, but they rarely live up to their intentions” (Jones, 1950).

10. Methods • “Since there is no one cause there is no panacea … a total approach is necessary. Education has a vital part to play, both in the more formal sense of school education and the nursery school and in a wider sense, of social education through clubs and community centres, through Press, radio and cinema, through publicity” (Jones, 1950, Eugenics Review). • Workers ensured that families in need received any financial help to which they were entitled. • “… eugenist-inspired notions of biological determinism were mitigated by humane values which saw worth in every person ….” (Starkey, 1998: 423).

11. Friendship • “The offer of help comes from the Unit to the family. Nor has the worker any official powers or authority and the family can at any time ask them to withdraw. It is therefore imperative to gain the whole-hearted co-operation of the family and the approach is thus necessarily one of friendship. Friendship is, in fact, the foundation of the work of the Units, a friendship without condescension or aloofness, neither forced nor superficial” (Jones, 1950: 174). • …we have rarely encountered much overt hostility in opening visits … (West London FSU, 1969)

12. Practical help • “Manual work was one of the distinctive features of the Units’ service. Its purpose is twofold; to provide a form of help which is often not obtainable in any other way and one which will make a strong appeal to the imagination. They undertook with the families such work as cleaning, decorating, disinfesting and repairing furniture. They tried to train the parents in child care and home management, in cooking and hygiene, giving both advice and a practical demonstration of what was desirable” (FSU, 1952). • ‘Scrubbing a floor, taking a child to school or bringing a parcel of clothes are of small value in themselves; only the insight and imagination of the caseworker can make these insignificant details creative steps to rehabilitation.’

13. Social Education • Where ignorance is so common, social education in all branches of family welfare and home management is an urgent need (Jones, 1950: 175). • …to put information into readable form is not nearly enough. It is to confuse a simple statement of knowledge with its application. • Permit me to illustrate from a group of Italian women who bring their under-developed children several times a week to Hull House for sanitary treatment, under the direction of a physician. It has been possible to teach some of these women to feed their children oatmeal instead of tea-soaked bread, but it has been done, not by statement at all but by a series of gay little Sunday morning breakfasts given to a group of them in the Hull House nursery. A nutritious diet was then substituted for an inferior one by a social method (Jane Addams 1899 cited by Magnusson in Garfat 2003 p.3).

14. How families change • The family must be inspired to change, then shown the way and supported through times of crisis until rehabilitation is effected. • In the relationship the worker’s own faith is the dynamic. • Whatever happens, the worker must regard himself (sic) as responsible for the welfare of the family. The rehabilitation of problem families demands an adaptable and imaginative service, which can cope with all the complexities of family life without the limitations of red tape or orthodoxy (FSU, 174).

15. How families don’t change • (Families) cannot change at will and the more they are condemned, cajoled and talked at, the more anti-social they are likely to become (FSU, 1956). • Child Protection: “a system close to bankrupt, that … may well be doing more harm than good, … shattering families and communities with dire consequences for civil society” (Lonne et al, 2008: 5). • Procedure • Compliance …!

16. Conceptual and ethical flaws • “When we obscure the essential human and moral aspects of care behind ever more rules and regulations we make ‘the daily practice of social work ever more distant from its original ethical impulse’” (Bauman, 2000). • “When we enter into more bureaucratic arenas helping tends to be stripped of much of its moral dimension and utility. It also loses touch with a great deal of the supporting language and thinking. Words like boundary, client, delivery, intervention and outcome replace the discourse of friendship, association, relationship and faith” (2008: 153/4).

17. Relationships make a comeback • ‘Changing Lives’ identifies the importance of social work relationships. • ‘Change comes about through experience in a relationship’ (Beckett, 2006). • The strength of the alliance that develops between the youth and the worker, built upon perceived empathy, acceptance, warmth, trust and self-expression (and defined by the youth as a helpful connection) and the ability of workers to work positively with the clients’ ways of understanding themselves and others, account for 70% of behaviour change. Two other factors, hope and expectancy that change will occur, account for 15% of behaviour change.

18. Features of a positive relationship • Relationship skills are essential to achieving positive outcomes and these involve the worker in being open and honest, empathetic, able to challenge rationalisations, non-blaming, optimistic, able to articulate the clients’ and family members’ feelings and problems, using appropriate self-disclosure and humour (Batchelor and McNeill, 2005).

19. What clients want • A good social worker is experienced as a ‘friend’ and an ‘equal’ (MacLeod, 2008). • “…ordinary friendship where they meet on equal terms, not as client and ‘helper’”(Halvorsen, 2009: 76). • ‘We don’t see her as a social worker’ (Beresford et al. 2008). • Friendship • Reciprocity • Flexibility (going the extra mile) • Straight talking • Everyday acts of care are more important than formal standards, statements and procedural requirements in how children experience care (Holland).

20. A research function • From its inception Family Service Units accepted research as one of its functions, an integral part of its total activity. It is only rarely that social institutions accept a research responsibility in this way although it may be argued that their efficiency depends on a three fold concern with practice, training and research, that is, with providing a service, training staff to give it, and studying the need for it and the way it is given so as to improve or adapt to changing needs. • Within a casework agency research must be directly concerned with agency practice … Research in a social agency is a social process from start to finish.

21. Research conducted by FSU/Circle • Dads • Prisons work • Evaluations • Pro bono report • Knowledge exchange fellowships

22. Effectiveness • Apart from any humanitarian considerations, however, successful work results in financial savings, as illustrated by the following examples and figures: • Father and mother and four boys referred for assistance because of child neglect and the danger of children having to be removed. Intensive work by the Unit was vey successful and conditions have since been maintained to a high level. If these four children had been removed the cost of their maintenance would have been between £600 and £700 a year and the expense would probably have continued for several years.

23. Another example • The Kensington and Paddington Unit calculated that the annual cost of providing care for a family with nine children, currently on the FSU’s caseload, would be in the region of £10,280, considerably in excess of the Unit’s £2,000 grant from London County Council (Starkey, 1998: 428).

24. Pro bono findings • Cost to society of women re-offending averages at £76,000 per woman in the ten years following a first offence. In comparison, Circle’s costs are low at an average of £2,200 per offender engaged with. • As a result, Circle’s throughcare service for mothers leaving prison and their families would only need to reduce reoffending by a rate of 3 – 13% or more for the cost of Circle’s work to generate a net benefit to society. • Circle’s ‘Meet at the Gate’ programme is highly likely to be yielding social benefits worth considerably more than the programme costs” (Horn, 2013).

25. More than just money • “However, cashable savings to the public purse are not the only – or even the best – measure of the overall value of a charitable programme” (Horn, 2013). • “Enormous proliferation of legislation, regulation and guidance … as if by classifying, codifying, monitoring, incentivising and target setting in almost every conceivable sphere of social interaction, government could achieve the complete set of beneficial and positive outcomes” (Jordan, 2010: 3). • Failure of Third Way ultimately a moral failure (contractual rather than moral regulation).

26. A return to ethics • “The legitimacy of social work rests on exhortations that betray an ethical intent rather than a set of empirical or outcome based possibilities” (Webb: 2006: 8). • “Bureaucratic professionalism may well be working itself into a corner. We hope more will have the courage to develop spaces where helping is on a human scale” (Smith and Smith 2008: 154).

27. To conclude … • FSU has ‘exercised an influence on the development of social work practice which was out of all proportion to its size and financial resources’ (Starkey, 2000: 1).

28. Fit for the future • Changing Lives • Munro • Christie • Recognising that effective services must be designed with and for people and communities – not delivered ‘top-down’ • Prioritising preventative measures to reduce demand and lessen inequalities

29. Follow Circle on …

30. References Batchelor, S. and McNeill, F. (2005) ‘The Young Person-Worker Relationship’, pp.166-171 in T. Bateman and J. Pitts (eds.) The Russell House Companion to Youth Justice. London: Russell House Publishing. [ISBN: 1903855497] Bauman, Z. (2000) ‘Special essay. Am I my brother's keeper?’ European Journal of Social Work, 3, (1) pp. 5-11. Beckett, C. (2006) Essential Theory for Social Work Practice. London: Sage Beresford, P, Croft, S and Adshead, L. (2008) ‘We Don’t See Her as a Social Worker’: A Service User Case Study of the Importance of the Social Worker’s Relationship and Humanity’ British Journal of Social Work, 38, 1388-1407. Gadamer, H.G. (2004) Truth and Method, London: Continuum Harris, J (2008) State Social Work: Constructing the Present from Moments in the Past, British Journal of Social Work, 38 (4): 662-679 Halvorsen, A. (2009) What Counts in Child Protection and Welfare? Qualitative Social Work, Vol. 8 (1) 65 - 82. Holland, S. (2010) ‘Looked after children and the ethic of care’, British Journal of Social Work, 40 (6) 1664-1680.

31. References cont. Horn, D (2013) An assessment of the economic costs and benefits of Circle’s Meet at the Gate programme, ProBono Economics Jones, D. (1950) Family Service Units for Problem Families Eugenics Review 41(4): 171–179. Jordan, B (2010) Why the Third Way Failed, Bristol: Policy Press Lonne, B., Parton, N., Thomson, J. & Harries, M. (2008) Reforming Child Protection, London: Sage McKie E. (1963) Venture in Faith Liverpool: Liverpool and District Family Service Unit McLeod, A. (2010) ‘“A friend and an equal”: do young people in care seek the impossible from their social workers?’ British Journal of Social Work 40, 3, 772 – 788. Magnuson, D (2003) ‘Preface’, in T. Garfat (ed) A child and youth care approach to working with families, New York: The Haworth Press Inc. Philp A.F. (1963) Family Failure: A Study of 129 families with multiple problems London: Faber and Faber Lowe, R. and Nicholson, P. (1995) Contemporary Record9 (3) 612-627 UK Parliament (1942) Social insurance and allied services. Report by Sir William Beveridge. London: HMSO

32. References cont. Smith, H and Smith, M. K. (2008) The Art of Helping Others. Being around, being there, being wise. London: Jessica Kingsley Starkey, P. (2002) Can the piper call the tune?: innovation and experiment with deprived families in Britain, 1940s to 1980s: the work of Family Service Units, British Journal of Social Work32 573-587 Starkey, P. (2000) Families and social workers: the work of Family Service Units, 1940-1985 Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press Starkey, P (1998) The Medical Officer of Health, the social worker and the problem family, 1943-1968, Social History of Medicine 11 421-441 Webb, D (2010) A Certain Moment: Some Personal Reflections on Aspects of Residential Childcare in the 1950s, British Journal of Social Work 40, 1387–1401. Webb, S (2006) Social Work in a Risk Society, Bristol: Policy Press West London FSU (1969)