Martin Webber's blog

Discrimination against people with mental health problems is a global phenomenon. It takes different forms in different cultures, but almost universally people are treated differently on the basis of their mental health.

In the UK the Time to Change campaign has been working to reduce mental health discrimination since 2009. To monitor the effectiveness of the campaign, the annual Viewpoint survey has been tracking the amount of discrimination experienced by people with mental health problems since 2008. This has found that, despite an initial fall, mental health discrimination has risen in the last two years alongside a general hardening in social attitudes.

Since 2011 the Viewpoint survey has included a measure of access to social capital, the Resource Generator-UK (RG-UK). The RG-UK measures a respondent’s access to a list of 27 social resources, which are standardised for the UK general population. I developed the RG-UK from a Dutch version about ten years ago and it has been used in a number of studies since then.

Social capital helps us to get on and get ahead in our lives. We rely on other people we know to provide us with information, practical assistance, advice and friendship, most of which we take for granted. Life can be much harder without these people around us and the resources they provide (not forgetting, of course, that we often give others as much as we receive from them).

People recovering from severe mental health problems frequently rely on other people for daily assistance, reassurance and opportunities for meaningful occupation. Access to social capital improves quality of life and enhances well-being. Without it, recovery of a meaningful life can be so much more difficult.

I was interested to see if discrimination reduced access to social capital. If the Time to Change campaign is able to reduce discrimination there may be a possibility that individuals’ access to social capital is improved thus increasing opportunities for recovery.

With colleagues in the Viewpoint team from the Institute of Psychiatry and the McPin Foundation, I analysed the RG-UK data from the 2011 survey to see if experienced discrimination was associated with reduced access to social capital. The findings have just been published online by the journal Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences.

Unsurprisingly, we found that people who experienced more discrimination had access to less social capital, highlighting its damaging social effect. We also found that older age, not being in employment, being male, not being educated to degree level and having been sectioned under the Mental Health Act at some time in the past were also associated with access to less social capital.

People who experienced discrimination from friends had access to less social capital from friends. Additionally, people who experienced discrimination in finding or keeping a job, in social life or who were shunned by other people, also reported less access to social capital.

It is important to note that as this data was collected in a cross-sectional survey it is not possible to be certain about cause and effect. However, as the questions about discrimination refer to past events and the questions about social capital relate to the present, it is possible to see how experiences of depression may influence accessibility to social capital.

Our findings highlight the potential wider social impact of discrimination. It is not only personally damaging, it can harm relationships through which people may otherwise obtain social resources which can assist in their recovery from a mental health problem. The imperative to challenge discrimination is stronger than ever.

Additional information

The full paper can be accessed by clicking the link below:

Webber, M., Corker, E., Hamilton, S., Weeks, C., Pinfold, V., Rose, D., Thornicroft, G. & Henderson, C. (2013) Discrimination against people with severe mental health illness and their access to social capital: findings from the Viewpoint Survey, Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, doi:10.1017/S2045796013000243

If you are interested in finding out more about research on stigma and discrimination there is an event at the Institute of Psychiatry in London on 4th July where the findings of the SAPPHIRE programme of research will be presented. The closing date for booking places is 28th June.

The announcement of the proposal to fast-track ‘bright’ graduates into social work via the Frontline scheme has met with mixed reactions from the profession.

The press releases from The College of Social Work and the British Association of Social Workers provide full and qualified support for the scheme respectively. However, discussion with other practitioners and social work academics suggests that these opinions do not necessarily represent those of the profession as a whole.

I have been asked to publish the joint statement issued by the Joint University Council Social Work Education Committee and the Association of Professors of Social Work on 11th February 2013 to make clear the response social work academics have provided. Of course, there is no requirement for everyone to ‘sign up’ or agree to this statement, but it represents the view of the majority of the academic social work community. This statement was made over three months ago, but there is little sign that it has been considered in the Frontline proposals.

My blog does not represent the views of any organisation that I am affiliated with – it is merely my personal ramblings. However, I do feel it is important that this statement is made public as I don’t think this perspective has been fairly represented in media reports of the Frontline launch or considered seriously in the debate about the impact of the scheme on the sector.

A Joint Statement on the ‘Frontline’ Proposal by JUCSWEC and APSW
(Joint University Council Social Work Education Committee and
Association of Professors of Social Work) 11^th February 2013

1. Introduction

1.1 The Joint University Council Social Work Education Committee (JUC SWEC) is a membership organization of over 80 Universities across the UK offering social work education at qualifying and post-qualifying levels and engaged in social work research linked to professional practice. JUC SWEC has contributed for many years to developments in social work practice, education, research and strategic policy within the UK. Many of the staff in its member Universities are qualified in social work, have considerable practice experience prior to becoming educators, continue in direct practice and/or maintain professional registration. The Association of Professors of Social Work (APSW) is a membership organisation open to all those eligible in the United Kingdom.  It has a mailing list of 100+ members – representing the key knowledge generators in the sector. APSW contributes to the promotion and development of the discipline of social work education and social work research and related matters in the UK.

1.2 All the individuals and organizations represented here are committed to supporting excellent research, education and practice in social work, a flourishing profession attracting diverse new recruits/students, and a strong workforce to deliver high quality practice to our most vulnerable communities.  In promoting high quality social work, we anticipate and look forward to new models for social work education, while ensuring social work as an academic discipline is protected if long term quality is to be enhanced.

1.3 The Higher Education community has over the last five years been strongly supportive of and involved with the national social work reform programme following the Social Work Taskforce Report (2009) and the establishment of the Social Work Reform Board (2010-12) – which has led to recent, wholesale positive changes in the sector.

1.4 The ‘Frontline’ proposal of a fast track (13months), post graduate route through qualifying social work training is currently developing at a pace with a view to a pilot project for commencement in summer 2014. The project is led by Josh McAllister, with support from Morning Lane Associates. JUC SWEC and APSW have engaged with the developments in a constructive manner (including attending the Advisory Group).

1.5 Drawing on our considerable breadth of experience we are taking this opportunity to express views on the Frontline development in the hope, before finalization, that we may be able to influence the direction and integrity of a programme that stated it set out to improve the standing and quality of social work. The views expressed here are based upon members’ contributions assembled from discussions and meetings. While highlighting serious concerns around these developments we are also suggesting some ways forward.

2. Our key concerns:

2.1 There is a clear mismatch between the proposed Frontline model (a specialist route for child protection workers) and the national, generic qualification leading to a profession with a protected title supported by the national social work reform programme (2009-12). Social workers need a broad training because they deal with a broad range of problems, families and communities, and to be prepared as members of a profession. The Social Work Reform Board, representing all related sectors, unanimously agreed this approach.

2.2 Fundamentally, the focus on a narrow child protection programme presents the greatest risks to the Frontline project and participants – but more importantly to children. Underestimating the value of considered preparation for this area of practice leads student social workers out into the most dangerous of scenarios with a minimum of awareness. Such a narrow curriculum and limited knowledge and experience means students know next to nothing about issues such as adoption, fostering, youth offending, mental health, disability and aging, The potential for mis-assessing risk and factors impacting on children and families makes this scheme a high risk policy

2.3 Frontline presents significant cost to the public purse for which it has so far failed to make a good enough case. It overlaps extensively with the current (just two years old) ‘Step Up’ /Masters programme – which already receives extensive government funding and only adds a notion of ‘student units’ – which already exist in various forms in existing provision. At a time when real financial challenges are faced by the social care sector as a whole, the need for another funded, minor variation on an existing theme seems limited.

3. Related Concerns

3.1 The ‘fast track’ nature of Frontline also challenges equivalence and achievability with Masters/Post Graduate Diploma level programmes[1] and the approach to Masters level training that emphasises research, reflection, creativity and the ability to deal with complex situations. This speeded up process seriously threatens the development of the very skills that child protection social workers need most (research mindedness and evidence based practice) as promoted by the Munro review.

3.2 The over specialization of the approach within the proposal does not reflect breadth even within the ‘children’s’ area of social work, and can barely equip social workers to manage “the complexity and uncertainty” of child care work with an overreliance on one specific model of practice. There is no evidence that compliance to a single process fits all families or “protect(s) children from harm”[2] (Munro 2012)

3.3 The regulatory framework may present some challenges for Frontline. HCPC Standards of Proficiency (SOP) and the College of Social Work (TCSW) Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF) for social work reveal particular gaps in the Frontline proposed curriculum around ethics, rights and values. In particular the ‘systemic practice’ focus of the draft curriculum (apparently to the exclusion of all else) is directly against the SOP 13. “Social workers need to learn more than one way of assessing and understanding complex family scenarios”.

3.4 The Social Work Reform Board, (chair: Dame Moira Gibb) of which JUC SWEC and APSW were members, worked collaboratively across the sector on major, wide ranging reforms for social work education, practice and continuing professional development – with ministerial support for their conclusions. All Higher Education Institutions who are social work education providers in England are currently engaged in re-writing new social work programmes for September 2013 based on the reforms, including the PCF and TCSW curriculum guidance. Candidates following the proposed Frontline model may not be able to meet the same transferable minimum standards through the proposed programme.

3.5 Generic qualifying social work was interrogated and assessed throughout the reform process – employers, academics, policy makers and students endorsed generic qualifying training for highly credible and robust reasons. A shift to child protection training as qualifying social work training will deplete the nature, portability and rigour of practice – particularly in the medium to long term (which is where ultimately the impact of Frontline will be judged).

3.6 The minimal attention to ‘adults’ orientated aspects of curriculum (mental health, learning disability, disability, ageing and so forth) will present many challenges in seeking support from the broad sector (adult social care being, of course, a huge area of local and central government spending). It is likely that organisations connected to the area of adult social work (such as Association of Directors of Adult Social Services) will struggle to support this venture.

3.7 Qualifying social work, through the work of the SWRB and the whole sector, is currently being carefully revised to support continuing professional development – a holistic model is being sought; Frontline’s ‘short-termism’ will not sustain change for families or useful practitioners in years to come.

3.8 Current social work education benefits from clear evidence of close working partnerships between local HEIs and local employers. The impact on existing partnerships, placement availability and range and location of programmes has not yet been properly evaluated or taken into account.

3.9 The threat of destabilising existing partnerships and making existing programmes vulnerable may remove from social work the capacity for the development of knowledge (using theory, research and evidence) that allows confidence in the appropriateness and efficacy of chosen practices and models.

3.10 The sector is very able to work with new models – and in many partnerships such discussions are taking place. It is unclear why Frontline would want to act in a manner paying scant attention to agreed reforms and using a market process to drive forward its plans in a way that may clearly negatively impact on other educators/programmes.

4. Ways Forward

4.1 JUC SWEC and APSW have already engaged with the ‘Frontline’ project and are contributing to its development in a constructive manner. We will continue to support this dialogue. Its risks are significant and its timescales are challenging given the problems we have outlined above. However, we would be happy to contribute to the evolution over a more measured period of new models of social work education that take account of our concerns and reflect the principles of the Taskforce, the social work reforms and the Munro Review.

4.2 It would be helpful to consider any new developments in the context of other provision, eg the proposed pilot projects in Manchester and London might be reconsidered, especially given the evidence that the North West already has a significant supply of post graduate social workers. There is also overlap in that region (and elsewhere) with the Step Up programme, of which Frontline is a variation. It would be helpful to clarify the relationship with Step Up programmes and, though we are still awaiting the evaluation of Step Up, there may be important lessons that could inform the Frontline project development.

4.3 We would particularly support a reframing of Frontline as a post qualifying programme tailored for social workers wanting to specialize in children’s social work and systemic family work. A strong programme for social workers after qualifying with government and employer support building on the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) will have higher potential for promoting job satisfaction, stress reduction and retention[3] at the “frontline” of family work.

 

On behalf of

JUC SWEC and APSW

 

Professor Hilary Tompsett, Kate Morris, Jane Mclenachan  (JUC SWEC)

Professors Aidan Worsley, Brigid Daniel, Susan White, Brigid Featherstone, June Thoburn (APSW)

---

[1] PG Diplomas require 1200 hours of student effort, which with 200 days practice learning totals 350 days for a programme. See evidence from the Evaluation of the ‘Fast Track’ programme initiated in Scotland in 2005/6  indicating that 18 months proved unrealistic for many candidates.

[2] Munro E (2012)  Progress Report: Moving towards a Child Centre System 1.5, p 6

[3] See evidence from evaluations of Teach First by Hutchings M, Maylor U, Mendick H, Menter I and Smart S (2006), and systematic review of the impact on retention of social workers of workforce interventions by Webb C and Carpenter J (2012),

In the last two weeks I have spoken at the BASW England Conference and Community Care Live about the untapped potential of mental health social work.

I have argued that we need to articulate and evaluate core social work practice in order to more clearly define our role within multi-disciplinary mental health services.

I used essentially the same presentation, but both variants can be found below.

Click here for presentation given at BASW England Conference 16th May 2013

Click here for presentation given at Community Care Live 22nd May 2013

The slides provide only a summary of my argument but I hope that I will find time to write up the full paper sometime soon…

If this week has taught me anything, it’s that I’m not cut out to be a diarist. It’s a real struggle to come up with something original to say each day without it becoming too dull. Anyway, here goes for the final time this week…

This morning started with social work in the news. A new Chief Social Worker (for children and families) was announced and Frontline was announced again. Twitter sparked into life with social workers (in my twitter feed at least) spitting blood with fury.

The Frontline proposals have divided the profession, including social work academics. Against the tide of discontent, Donald Forrester’s thoughtful blog makes the case for change. I found myself agreeing with many of the points he makes.

The proposed method of practice learning in Frontline involves intense weekly conversations about practice, often involving taped sessions. This is the method of advanced practice learning we used on the post-qualifying advanced award I led at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. Experienced practitioners attended weekly case consultation groups with tape recordings of their practice which were analysed by an experienced psychotherapist and discussed by the group. Students found this an intense, but transformative experience.

Our experience has been that this method is an excellent bridge between the academy and social work practice. It challenges practitioners to consider theory and research to support the interventions they are using. I am certain that if it is properly resourced it provides a good model of practice education for experienced practitioners, though I am less certain how it will work on a qualifying programme. Our students needed considerable resilience to withstand our intense focus on their practice and I’m not sure a 5-week summer school will provide that. But I’m happy to be proven wrong.

I am also concerned about the resource implications of the Frontline model and how sustainable it will be if rolled out wider. For example, where are the experienced clinical supervisors going to come from? Social workers at the BASW conference yesterday bemoaned the lack of supervision they received. When they did receive supervision it was focused on targets and processes rather than permitting them to reflect on their practice. A new cadre of supervisors may need to be trained, but by whom? My post-qualifying course which trained people to provide this form of supervision was closed down as soon as I handed my notice in last year as it was less profitable than other courses ran by my former department.

I’m not convinced that 5 weeks training is sufficient to gain the knowledge required to safely practice as a social worker. The proposed curriculum appears very narrow in focus and I’m concerned that graduates may struggle with complex cases where the intervention techniques they are trained in don’t work. I know it’s not a very good comparison, but graduates I have taught on Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies courses have the same menu of intervention options for a range of different case scenarios. They have a limited ability to think laterally or creatively in situations of complexity. I am a little worried that Frontline graduates, who are taking responsibility for challenging child protection cases within 12 months of starting their training, may similarly struggle.

My scepticism is not based around concerns that resources may move away from universities to practice based learning in the future if the model is proven to be effective in protecting children and improving social work practice. I fully support evidence-based interventions and I welcome evaluations of social work education (though I wonder what the control group will be and if the graduates will be randomised to Frontline or a normal Masters programme in social work). But I am concerned about the narrow focus on children’s social work and the likely squeeze on mental health and other areas of a traditional social work curriculum. All social workers need to know something about working with people with mental health problems and understanding their needs. Many of the parents Frontline graduates will work with will have mental health or personality problems. Ignorance about this may lead to defensive or insensitive practice.

I am not frightened of change, nor am I pretending that all is well with social work education. But there is an on-going reform process and I can see no reason why this method could not be piloted as part of a wider reform process. It is being imposed from outside the profession, creating suspicion and hostility. It is focused on only one practice domain – child protection – leading to fears about diminishing status or importance of other areas of social work practice.

The attention it attracts through government backing and the media circus which follows it, distracts focus away from what is not permitting practitioners to practice effectively: the conditions in which local authority social workers are working. Caseloads have grown exponentially since the Baby Peter case. One practitioner I spoke to yesterday had 90 (yes, nine-zero) cases. How can that be allowed? Local authorities are having to save £millions because of the austerity measures and Directors of Social Services are happy to commission less effective services if they save them money (I was in a meeting with them last week when this was openly discussed). If social workers had reasonable case loads, proper clinical supervision, supportive managers who were not driven by targets imposed from above, and the support to develop their practice, it is likely that their practice will improve. It is disingenuous to suggest that poor qualifying programmes are solely responsible for bad practice.

I welcome the desire to attract people into the profession who could potentially enhance it in some way. That is to be welcomed. But why create a completely separate entry route? There are already postgraduate programmes who only take graduates with a minimum 2:1 degree. There are already work-based routes into social work.  At risk of repeating myself, why couldn’t this initiative be considered within the existing package of reforms?

As I have banged on about for many years – though mostly before I started blogging, unfortunately – investment needs to be made in enhancing post-qualifying education. Yes, qualifying education should be robust and equip students for practice on their graduation. But post-qualifying education – in the first year of practice and beyond – needs to be properly resourced and supported by employers. The Frontline method of practice education could be used as an intensive on-the-job post-qualifying training in different specialisms for newly qualified social workers (who have received a robust generic qualifying education). Many Approved Mental Health Professionals have rated their specialist post-qualifying training very highly and are respected for their expertise. If a similar model of high-quality practice education were rolled out across the profession, we could similarly enhance the status of social work across the board.

This had started out as a diary entry but I haven’t actually said anything about my day and the work I did. It wasn’t terribly interesting, to be honest, and involved mainly catching up on a backlog of emails, half-finished reports and some marking. As I said, I don’t think I’ll take up writing a diary.

Competition time

There were three entrants to my competition – two on my blog and one on twitter.

The three most viewed posts on my blog to date are:

End of social work at the Institute of Psychiatry

Good practice in personalised care in mental health services

Social workers and self-disclosure

Unfortunately no-one guessed them correctly, but I have used my random number generator to pick a winner from the three entrants.

And the winner is … {Drum roll} … Ermintrude.

Many congratulations. Your prize will be in the post c/o The Magic Roundabout!

This article first appeared on 16th May 2013 on The Conversation

The conviction of seven men for rape, child prostitution and trafficking in Oxford on Tuesday brings to an end another horrific case of child sexual exploitation.

Social services were again in the firing line for failing to protect the girls and Joanna Simons, the Chief Executive of Oxfordshire County Council, was quick to issue an apology on behalf of the local authority. But social workers alone are not to blame.

The ethnicity and culture of the perpetrators has come under scrutiny, as in similar cases in Derby and Rochdale. The disproportionate number of Asian men in sex-grooming gangs was widely reported. While existing data on perpetrators is patchy and unclear, there does appear to be an over-representation. However, it’s also clear that perpetrators of child sexual exploitation come from all ethnic groups in the UK and not all victims are white British girls.

Stereotyping perpetrators and victims does not help to protect young people. But, without abandoning core professional values, social workers need to be confident about identifying and tackling grooming behaviour without issues of culture or ethnicity obfuscating the risk to the children involved.

Child abuse is a social problem

Child abuse is a significant social problem. Data collected for the NSPCC in 2009 found that about a quarter of young people in the UK reported experiencing abuse or neglect as children.

Since the Baby Peter case in 2007, child protection social work team caseloads have increased exponentially. Cafcass, the organisation that represents children in care cases, witnessed a 62% increase in the number of local authority care applications from 2007-8 to 2011-12.

Children in local authority care also have poorer educational outcomes and a greater prevalence of offending and substance misuse behaviour than the general population. This is likely to be because of vulnerabilities that are already there, but risks from being in the care system can’t be overlooked. It isn’t surprising that the prevalence of emotional distress and mental health problems among looked after children is also high.

Childhood trauma isn’t always resolved just because you grow up. It can contribute to the onset of severe mental health problems for many people. Child physical, sexual and emotional abuse increases the risk for all mental health problems, in particular post-traumatic stress disorder. Long-term separation from a parent before the age of 16 has also been identified as one risk factor for psychosis. The connections between problems in childhood and mental health problems in adulthood are well established.

Parental mental health problems are also a significant risk factor for the neglect and maltreatment of children, but mental health services don’t always consider the needs of children. Similarly, child protection social workers are there to act solely for the child.

Integrated working in mental health is at risk

The government wants more integration between health and social care by 2018.

Bridging the gaps between children’s social care services, provided by local councils, and adult mental health services, provided by the NHS, could help to protect children and meet the mental health needs of their parents.

But competing priorities in the NHS and local authorities are pulling them apart. For example, local authorities are concerned that the social care needs of vulnerable adults are not given enough importance in mental health services.

And in the NHS the introduction of so-called diagnostic-led care clusters, which require mental health workers to assign people to different categories such as “problems associated with hallucinations and delusions”, takes an increasingly medical approach that doesn’t value social issues.

A recent evaluation by the Social Care Institute for Excellence highlighted the barriers and opportunities for agencies to work together. A study I published last month in Child and Family Social Work found that those working in NHS mental health services and children’s social care services thought having joint agreements improved how they worked together.

But as the evidence stacks up that integrated community mental health teams are probably the most effective way to engage and treat people with mental health problems in the community, the pressure to cut the budgets of local authorities is leading some to actually pull out their mental health social workers. This is going in the opposite direction to the idea of integrating health and social care.

It’s against this backdrop of disintegrating community mental health services – though Minister for Care and Support Norman Lamb has not appeared to refer to it – that the government wants greater integration of health and social care. It’s potentially good news for many people with both health and social care needs, but cuts to budgets mean some local authority directors of adult social care services may need some convincing about pooling their cash.

To improve services to meet the needs of both children and adults, we can’t ignore the problems that are already there between those already trying to do this – and with less money.

Today has been a really satisfying day. I’ve been able to connect with people I’ve worked with in the past and those I look forward to working with in the future.

It involved an early start to get the train to London. Leaving the house at 6am is so much easier when the sun is already high in the sky than in mid-winter when it still feels like the middle of the night. It’s one of the great things about living in North Yorkshire – you get to see the sky!

On the train I had a very fortuitous meeting with the administrator of a charitable trust I have been planning to submit a research grant application to. I had met him before in my previous job but I wasn’t entirely sure it was him as it was a few years ago and was only a brief meeting. Being a little shy I waited for him to make the first move and got on with marking my dissertations. But he knew who I was and introduced himself, so the awkwardness soon dissipated.

It was good to catch up with him and to break the silence of the early morning sleepy carriage. Making contact with him helped me to think about how I might pitch the bid. Of course, just because I know him won’t guarantee the proposal will be funded. It just doesn’t work like that. But it helps to have a bit of insight into what they may be looking for in a bid.

I think this is a good example of how social capital – the resources we have within our social networks – can help us. Advice, hints, tips and understanding the way in which research funders think helps to maximise success. It doesn’t guarantee it but as the advertising slogan goes, ‘every little helps’. It is the subtle ways in which contacts provide snippets of information which help us to move forward. It’s a message that recurred throughout the day.

I went to London to speak at the BASW England conference, which had the theme of ‘Giving mental health prominence in social work’. The paper I gave focused on unlocking the therapeutic potential of mental health social workers, particularly in their latent ability to deliver and lead on social interventions. I presented some of the Connecting People study to illustrate that it is possible to articulate complex social interventions and develop an evidence base for them which can help to make the argument for their application in routine practice.

Some nodding heads indicated agreement. Well, at least no-one nodded off. If you want to get a flavour of what I said, the prezi I used can be found here.

I was followed by three eloquent speakers who provided diverse perspectives on the conference theme. Mary O’Reilly spoke from her personal experience of using mental health services about being in touch with our own mental health. Faye Wilson spoke about some work BASW has conducted on the mental health of the social work workforce. Finally, Lisa Cherry talked about her personal experiences of being in the care system and how we need to do more to care for the mental health of looked after children.

The following panel discussion was lively. It was clearly a theme the 150 or so practitioners there felt passionate about. However, a sense of powerlessness permeated the discussion. One person spoke powerfully of how she was in the process of being made redundant because she blew the whistle on bad practice. Practitioners are scared to challenge oppressive and bullying managers for fear of losing their jobs and not being able to find another one as vacancies dry up across the sector. This simply isn’t good enough and something needs to be done about it.

Subsequent workshops focused more on solutions and came up with some strategies including:

• working with colleagues to inform local councillors about the issues facing social work, as their decisions can affect local authority social work via Directors and Assistant Directors of Adults or Children’s Services;
• focusing on practitioners’ well-being by being more proactive in looking after ourselves;
• advocating for better supervision or providing peer mentoring;
• campaigning to highlight the impact of the public sector and welfare cuts on poor and vulnerable people across the country; and
• keeping the challenge against inequality alive.

I feel that we need to speak with one voice about injustice and the pressing issues people who need social work services are facing every day. I am disappointed that the College of Social Work and BASW could not sort out their differences and have now gone their separate ways.

But there is hope. Individuals within both organisations share the same values and are committed to speaking up for the profession and the people we work with. I was really pleased to meet with Ruth Allen, Chair of the Mental Health Faculty in the College of Social Work and Faye Wilson, Chair of the BASW Mental Health Reference Group after the conference to discuss a shared approach going forward. There was absolute agreement and commitment to speak with one voice on issues facing mental health social workers. With the imminent disintegration of mental health services, this is needed now more than ever before.

Prior to this meeting I had time to fit in a bit of filming with Shula Ramon. Shula, based at University of Hertfordshire, is involved in a number of really interesting projects including developing a European e-learning Masters programme on social inclusion and recovery. She interviewed me on film about social capital and mental health, and the Connecting People study. Extracts from the interview will be used as film clips on the e-learning programme which will provide education and training in social approaches in mental health services.

Throughout the day I’ve been able to catch up with old students, former colleagues and social work-friendly journalist Andy McNicoll. (See yesterday’s post about his recent Radio 4 interview about psychiatric bed shortages). I was also introduced to several new people who I hope to connect with again in the future.

I went home with the feeling that together we are stronger. I know it’s a terrible cliché, but there is something powerful about collective efficacy in challenging the dominant institutions which oppress. It’s important to hold onto a little optimism that things may get better, but we have to work together to bring about that change.

I’ve been working at home today because I had a placement visit which was closer to my home than the university.

Cutting out the commute gives me an extra two hours for work and family. Although I often help out with the school run, it gives me the opportunity to get my head down and make an early start at the computer.

Some people can only concentrate first thing in the morning, whilst others find their best time is late at night. I have found that I don’t tend to have a better time of day for working. For me it’s much more about focusing on the task in hand and the time of day fortunately doesn’t seem to affect me. Deadlines are important, though. Either self or externally imposed, they help to get the job done.

I’m very fortunate to have a quiet space at home to work in. Our home has a spare room – which I rather grandly call my study – where I can lock myself away and concentrate. Prior to moving last year I worked at home in a garden shed. Well, it was a converted summer house but the huge variations in temperature (freezing in the winter snow and boiling in the summer sun), and the various spiders and slugs which found their way in, made it feel close to nature. On a cold and wet day like today I’m pleased to be working indoors!

The focus of my work today was finishing the draft of the paper I’ve been working on for the past few days. Its focus on the potential disconnect between the academy in which social work is researched, theorised and taught, and the agency in which social work is practiced, is timely. The Frontline proposals to fast-track bright graduates into social work via a summer school and work placements, have largely bypassed social work academics. The government-backed plans have been based on a similar scheme for teachers but have been developed with no reference to the current extensive reforms of social work education. We argue in our paper that practice-based research provides an opportunity to integrate the academy and the agency to meet the needs of both.

En route to the placement review I caught Andy McNichol, a Community Care journalist, being interviewed on Radio 4′s All in the Mind. Andy was talking about psychiatric bed pressures which are meaning that people detained under the Mental Health Act are increasingly being placed out of their local area. The lack of available beds is a significant stressor for Approved Mental Health Professionals and contributes to the high levels of stress and burnout we have found. People with mental health problems continue to be treated as second class citizens, far from the ‘parity of esteem’ which government ministers wish to see in the treatment of mental and physical health problems in the NHS.

The placement review itself went really well. The student is engaging with the learning opportunities available on the placement and there are clear signs of progress since it started. Although it is down to the support and supervision provided on the placement, it is great to see a student thriving in a practice setting and making sense of the university learning in this context.

We had an interesting discussion about the issues facing people in rural North Yorkshire, perceived to be a prosperous area of the country. You don’t need to scratch far beneath the surface to find the social problems here which social workers across the country are very familiar with – poverty, mental distress, poor housing and debt, to name but a few – and the stigma attached to them.

This evening I have been working on an unplanned piece of writing, but a tight deadline piqued my interest. I was contacted yesterday by a journalist asking me to write for a new website called The Conversation. I checked out the Australian version and found that it published academic analysis and insight into contemporary issues. Its aim is to utilise expert knowledge to understand issues and problems facing the world today. The UK version of the site launches tomorrow.

My scepticism was allayed by a piece on The Media Show on Radio 4 (sorry, I don’t have many diverse cultural influences do I?) on my way home from the placement visit. The launch of The Conversation UK website tomorrow was talked up as a way for academics and researchers to share their research with a mass audience (the Australian site has over 840,000 visitors each month). As I think it’s absolutely crucial for us to communicate our findings more widely, I got tapping on the keyboard.

The piece I was asked to write has gone online as I have been writing this post and will feature on the site when it is launched tomorrow. It explores some of the news items I referred to in yesterday’s post and somehow I have managed to connect together the child exploitation case in Oxford with moves toward greater integration in health and social care. I have peppered it with links to research and various sources of data to support some my cogitations. I’m not sure it works, but the editor seemed happy enough. I’m sure I will get feedback about it one way or another, though.

Its Sats time at my girls’ school. These tests for 11-year olds will determine which class they will be in at secondary school and provide valuable performance indicators for primary schools (or, in other words, help to place them in league tables).

These tests have been controversial since they’ve been introduced and have not been popular amongst teachers or parents. The new spelling and grammar test is designed to raise literacy standards, but I’m not convinced it’s the right way. I’m certainly in favour of improving standards in education – I’m as frustrated with the poor literacy of some university students as the next person who teaches in higher education. But a regime of testing inhibits creativity and skews students’ learning towards performing in tests. Getting students to read about something which may not appear in an assessment is becoming increasingly difficult as many are just concerned about passing the test.

As the debate about this on the Today programme rumbled on this morning I couldn’t get out of my mind the brilliant animation of Ken Robinson’s RSA talk on changing paradigms in education. He talks about enhancing children’s creativity rather than stifling it through a regime of testing from an early age. I think there are some important lessons for higher education in there somewhere too, but do take a look and let me know what you think.

Today was punctuated by meetings so I knew I was never going to achieve what I had set out to do. I did make some progress on the paper I was working on yesterday, but not as much as I had hoped. It is one of my eternal frustrations – dealing with the ‘here and now’ jobs alongside writing the papers and grants which make the ‘tomorrow’ jobs possible. Both need doing, but a balance needs to be struck somehow.

I chaired the first seminar of the new Centre for Mental Health Social Research (CMHSR) at lunchtime today. Liz McDermott (Lecturer in Social Policy in our department at York) talked about her really interesting study exploring narratives of lesbian, gay and bisexual young people discussing self-harm and suicide in online fora. The seminar explored how her method of analysing the content of discussion fora produced different narratives about self-harm than researcher-led studies.

A podcast of the event will be available soon, but you can get a flavour of her presentation from the tweet stream below. We weren’t terribly successful in engaging people from cyberspace in our discussion, but it is our first seminar and we’re just getting going. You can engage with our events and find out about our developments on Twitter by following @YorkCMHSR or searching for tweets using hashtag #cmhsr. Our next seminar on 12th July will feature Lisa Brophy from University of Melbourne talking about community treatment orders. These seminars are open to all, so please do come along if you can.

Tweets about “#cmhsr”

After the seminar the CMHSR steering group met to discuss how we can promote collaboration amongst Centre members. We are currently undertaking a scoping study to identify the important research questions in the field of mental health social research – please click here to find out more information about this and to suggest your research priorities for us to consider. We are planning to synthesise responses and set up small working groups to develop research proposals in the areas of highest priority. I am really pleased at the interest in CMHSR so far, but it is now time for us to capitalise on this and develop some proposals to get some new studies underway.

I also had a really interesting tutorial with a student this afternoon and spent some time with him discussing social interventions in mental health services. He has been surprised at the low status afforded to them but, instead of being deterred from working in community mental health services, he appeared keen to promote them and challenge the hegemony of psychiatry and psychology. It was so rewarding to see a student not content with the status quo and anxious to get qualified and make a difference.

His concern about social interventions is at the heart of the presentations I’m giving to the BASW England conference on Thursday and at Community Care Live next week. I discussed with him a paper published recently by the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and blogged about by the excellent Mental Elf. (I’ve been petitioning the National Elf Service for the creation of a Social Elf to post about research evidence for social care and social work, and I believe that one may be on the way soon…) Anyway, this study conducted a systematic review and meta analysis of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for depression in older people. It found that CBT was no better than active social support in helping reduce symptoms of depression. Or, in other words, good social interventions which enhance support provided to older people with depression can help as much as CBT. We don’t hear this message very often, but it is an important one which I hope will find its way into clinical guidelines and change practice.

Finally, social work has been in the news again today. Oxfordshire County Council apologised for not adequately protecting girls in a child sexual exploitation ring in Oxford. This difficult case raises issues of race, culture and vulnerability, which social work needs to engage with to prevent more young girls being harmed in this way. However, social work appeared conspicuous by its absence from today’s announcement by health minister Norman Lamb that health and social care will become more joined up by 2018. Few people will dispute that integrated care is a good thing, but this announcement appears to take a rather ahistorical approach. The withdrawal of mental health social workers from integrated community mental health teams appears to have been overlooked, as are the lessons which need to be learnt about how the competing priorities of local authorities and NHS Trusts can pull integrated teams apart. Teams have been integrated in mental health services for many years now – surely this would provide plenty of learning opportunities for how to integrate other aspects of the health and social care systems in England?

Perhaps we should introduce the compulsory testing of our politicians to measure their knowledge before they launch policies which appear more about political games (Labour has been talking about integration for some time now) than enhancing care and support for people who need it most…

I am frequently asked how I find time to engage with people via social media amidst all the other things I do. With the use of a smartphone, I have simply woven it into the fabric of my daily routine (family permitting, of course!).

It’s in the down-time that I check what’s occurring online and I find it useful to start the day before anyone else wakes up with finding out what people are talking about. So, shortly after my alarm went off at 6.15am this morning I checked my Facebook timeline (saw pictures of a collaborator’s wedding in India) and my Twitter feed (early-riser @Ermintrude2 is excellent at tweeting and debating the social care news first thing in the morning – the following, and the discussion it provoked, is a good example of the invisibility of social care in many Department of Health announcements):

Elderly patients will get personal NHS worker to coordinate health care, pledges Jeremy Hunt independent.co.uk/life-style/hea… via @independent ??

— Ermintrude (@Ermintrude2) May 13, 2013

To get to work I drive from my home in Ripon to York and then park in a village on the edge of the city, get my bike out and cycle the last 6 miles. Well, I do normally, but I’m currently between bikes. My last one has served me for almost 20 years and, several groupsets later, has finally given up the ghost. It has seen me through the winter, but the North Yorkshire snow, grit and muck has now got to it and I’ve had to write it off. Replacing the groupset will cost almost as much as a new bike, so I’ve ordered a new one through the Cycle to Work scheme. I’m hoping the voucher will come this week so I can pick it up and get back to my normal routine.

While I’m waiting for my new bike to be sorted out, I’m driving the full 26 miles to and from the University of York with the Today programme and PM (yes, I’m a bit of a Radio 4 geek) for company. As well as keeping me in touch with what’s going on, there are occasional gems. On the PM programme today, for example, there was a piece on a new play Inside Out of Mind. The play is set on a dementia ward and dramatises real life incidents which were documented in an ethnography. Researchers worked on the ward and noted their observations about its daily life. The PM presenter said that instead of writing it up for a peer-reviewed journal, they went to a playwright to dramatise it. This will certainly ensure it has impact!

In the office I picked up dissertations and end of placement reports for marking. Note to self: must get this done by the end of the week. I also picked up an inspection copy of Daisy Bogg’s new book Evidencing CPD: A Guide to Building your Social Work Portfolio. (Another one for my task list). Daisy is one of the most prolific social work authors I’ve come across. I’m fortunate to be supervising her part-time PhD as I’m hoping that some of her writing speed will rub off on me!

I try to keep up with emails on an on-going basis so they don’t stack up. My system is to deal with quick things straight away and put aside those which need a proper response. Then, in down time between other tasks, I come back to them later. However, I’m always trying to deal with a backlog and just don’t have enough ‘down time’ to give to clearing my inbox. I’ve heard that the best way of dealing with it is just to delete them all and if it’s important then someone will get back to you. I’m rather hesitant about doing that as I know I’ll just delete something important and will regret it later.

Anyway, in my first tranche of emails this morning came two rejections. One was for a systematic review paper which received quite different reviews from its four reviewers. They ranged from ‘publish it now, this paper is just perfect’ to ‘I don’t know why this journal is considering this paper for publication’. Unfortunately the editor was more persuaded by the latter argument than the former. The second was an abstract for a paper for a special issue of a journal. Both will be edited and sent elsewhere.

These kind of rejections are completely ‘par for the course’ in an academic’s work. I’ve made several unsuccessful grant applications over the years and papers are quite frequently rejected from the first journal I send them to. I’m still learning not to take it personally, but due to my personality type I view myself as a constant improvement project so I think carefully about how I can improve future submissions to improve my ‘hit rate’.

The substantive piece of work I undertook today was preparation for the presentation I’m giving at the BASW England Conference ‘Giving Mental Health Prominence in Social Work’ on Thursday this week. I’ll write more about it then, including providing a link to the presentation. I’m really looking forward to it as I enjoy discussing my research with practitioners and sharing some of my thinking behind it.

Fortunately, today was a meeting-lite day. Large organisations like universities can suck you in to their overwhelming bureaucracy and you find that you don’t get any work done as you’re always in meetings. I try to keep them to a minimum. On Mondays we have a brief half-hour social work team meeting. Although the first thing we discussed was the length of the meeting (keeping to half an hour is sometimes a struggle!), the agenda covered a range of items including covering colleagues’ work during sickness, whether or not we should apply for the Frontline tender, research ideas and projects to improve the quality of social work education we provide. Decisions were made, actions were noted and the meeting finished on time. Just how I like it!

Amidst sorting out the formatting of the follow-up questionnaire for the Connecting People study, confirming travel and accommodation arrangements for forthcoming conferences and making arrangements for the start of a new co-ordinator for Making Research Count next week, I made a bit more progress with one of the papers I’m working on.

I aim to get pieces of work written up as soon as possible so they remain timely and useful. This is not always achievable, but having tight deadlines helps. A recent call for papers has prompted me to quickly pull together a paper from a symposium I chaired at the European Conference on Social Work Research in March. The paper is exploring one of the themes of this blog – the role of ‘the academy’ in the development of the social work profession. I’m writing this with six collaborators, taking the role of editor. Two contributions are in and I’m in the process of shaping it up so I can show the remaining contributors where their pieces will fit in.

I had hoped to get it drafted today, but that’s another job for finishing off in the morning. I’ll let you know how it goes!

I set up this blog to help in a small way to bridge the gap between social work academia and practice.

One of its aims has been to discuss ongoing research and to disseminate findings via accessible posts which explore the implications of research for social work practice. There is a growing recognition that we need to communicate research findings more effectively than just publishing them in journals and, since I started blogging in 2011, other academic blogs have come along with a similar purpose. I believe that it is not acceptable to only publish social work research in peer-reviewed journals in formats which are inaccessible to practitioners (if they have access to them at all). To have an impact on practice we need to communicate using different media.

Another aim of this blog is to demystify what a social work academic actually does. There is a perception – unfortunately correct in some cases – that academics are too distant from practice to be able to contribute meaningfully to the profession. However, the perception that we all live in ivory towers is not accurate and does not fully appreciate the role of social work academics in the development of the profession. Therefore, I blog about some aspects of my work to open up discussions about important issues on the practice/academy interface.

I don’t think it would be terribly interesting if I were to use this blog as an online diary, providing details of the minutiae of my life. However, this blog lacks a sense of the rhythm of a social work academic’s daily life. Therefore, I am planning to blog each evening this week about the work I do each day to provide an insight into this. I don’t have a typical week, so what may happen this week may not be usual, but it will give an indication as to how my time is spent, what I’m thinking about and what I’m working on. Due to reasons of confidentiality some of the details may be a little hazy, but I hope to convey the important themes of events as they occur.

Diary of a social work academic: Monday

Diary of a social work academic: Tuesday

Diary of a social work academic: Wednesday

Diary of a social work academic: Thursday

Competition time!

If all goes to plan I should blog my 100th post by the end of the week. To celebrate this, let’s have a bit of fun. All you need to do is to guess which are the all-time top three most read posts on this blog. (The list of ‘top posts and pages’ in the right hand column will not help you to answer this question because that only relates to the last 24 hours). You will need to scroll through the archives and guess which three you think have been read the most.

To enter the competition, please post a comment below stating the titles of the top three blogs in their order of popularity. The person who guesses correctly, or is closest to the right answer, will win a signed copy of Reflective Practice in Mental Health. Advanced Psychosocial Practice with Children, Adolescents and Adults. The competition closes at 10pm on Friday 17th May before I make my final post of the week.

Go on, it’s just a bit of fun!