Category: media

care leavers, christmas, homelessness, leaving home, media, memory, Social work, child care and history of social work, winter festivals

A Window on Christmas

Jenni Randall

It was nearly 8am this morning when I walked the dog. It was dark, wet and as thoroughly unpleasant a morning as it is possible to be at this time of the year. The dark dank days of November and December are only brightened for most of us by the prospect of Christmas. The expectation of a light-bright, warm fun-filled Christmas with our families, presents wrapped with jolly paper and love. As I walk past the Crescent with the dog, the sea rolling stones at near high tide to one side I can look in windows of the Christmas houses, with their beautifully decorated trees, blazing lights, presents under the trees and can imagine even smell the breakfast being cooked in the kitchen. I peer in not with the sentimentality of the bedraggled street child on a Victorian Christmas card  but with sadness, with concern,  and a heavy heart.

The media is full of a strange mixture of standard news and items asking us to think about the lonely elderly, the homeless young people, those struggling with physical and mental illness, animals left to fend for themselves during the festive season and to be a good neighbour, to check to see all is well, spend a few minutes of conversation or even invite them into our homes for dinner on Christmas day. Is this the same sentiment as that Victorian Christmas card?  Our wish to share our own good fortune with those less fortunate at this season of the year. Some time ago when I read the archives of St John’s School, once a reformatory built in the 1850’s, I recall reading an account of the Christmas day menu which was to include oranges,apples and plum pudding donated by the great and good of the county. The rest of the year the diet consisted of bread, potatoes, porridge, and occasionally a little cheese and meat; the same  every day. These were the poor children of the county who had landed in the reformatory usually as a result of criminal acts brought about by extreme poverty, hunger and homelessness. And so we continue the patronage of the more fortunate today. There are more of us  to donate today as living standards for the majority are so much better than in the late 1800’s so we are able to give even when we have overspent our credit on presents and Christmas extras. Here comes the BUT!….. But nothing really changes. We overindulge and give the leftovers to the poor and destitute.

I include myself in this and it is not intended as criticism of the excellent schemes, projects and charities who do such wonderful work all year round and who provide extra support at Christmas. I am simply dismayed that we cannot begin to tackle the root causes of the homelessness and poverty that plagues our society. I am equally dismayed that the focus for our charitable efforts should be Christmas and not the rest of the year. Bringing the issues into such prominence at this time somehow exposes the depth of despair that those who are without family, friends, good health , means or a home must feel. It exaggerates the loss and failure.

A few minutes later on  my dog walk I pass Michael, I do not know if this is his name even though I see him most days. Every day he walks the town slowly, very slowly so that the time should pass at a quicker pace to fill the day. I see him read the paper, or a book, raid the bins or wait at shops for charity, he stops for a chat with the dog who is always pleased to see him, he meets his friends for a drink they too are homeless, washes in the public toilets and sleeps I know not where. He once had trials  to be a professional footballer. This morning he is heading into the church carrying his food bank Christmas bag.  A Waitrose bag no less! I know what is in it as I saw them being packed up. The church as ever provides sanctuary  and a warm welcome and cup of tea at the end of the service. This morning it is probably the only dry place to be. I like him he has a friendly smile and a kind face. A gentleman of the road. My father always used this expression not in a patronising way but to convey, I thought, respect and a sense of dignity so often denied. Is Christmas Day any different for Michael? Well the world is shut and may become his alone but he will be able to witness the festivities through those windows while we all play Monopoly and get indigestion.

What does it bring back for him, or does he choose not to remember as the memories are overwhelmingly  painful. I don’t know his story. Maybe he has no family, in care as a child, moved around the care system, many people who said they would provide him with a home, rescue him from his own abusive family only later to reject him. Time in prison learning new tricks to survive , harsh treatment to punish him further and reinforce his sense of lack of worth, attempts to make a family of his own lost through mental ill-health or addiction. Only he knows, but the shadows of his past may be remembered through the haze of drink and the windows of the rest of the world. He may brush it all aside as just another day and drink until he can sleep. I do know from my own experience that loneliness at Christmas takes on an added dimension even when you know there are people who care and who would welcome you unconditionally. I cannot imagine how it feels without that backstop( how dare I use that word at the moment!!!). I too would drink untill I could sleep.

So my wish for Christmas is that we keep the sense of charity that Christmas imbues in us for all the year and do not return to demonizing Michael and his friends in the New Year. Also that we can find a way to tackle the causes of poverty, homelessness, despair and hopelessness in this our affluent society. It is a scandal of our modern day. I will not forget while I am feeling lucky to be with my family sharing good food, companionship and love because there will remain with me that underlying sense of sadness that there are other windows on this world.

traces and memory 2

A very happy Christmas to you all .

 

 

care leavers, change through music, folk music, leaving home, media, social work and child care, social work changes

Care Leavers, Kinder Shores and the future Part 1

Jenni Randall

It was Care Leavers week recently and the media coverage was poor to say the least.  There was, of course, the inevitable national coverage of leaving foster care and the happy successes but at a local level, here at least, it was very poor. Now I accept that we are talking about a minority issue compared with the bigger issues the country currently faces and the major social problems highlighted by austerity.  They are, however, a significant minority who consume a large percentage of the time and finance of the public services as at worst their daily struggle to survival on the street, feeding addictive habits, fighting hunger, desperation and discrimination require substantial service input. At best there is a need for support, counselling , and advice as they make their way through life’s journey and its ups and downs without the love and security of their own family networks. I also accept that social work needs success stories and that the rise in care experienced adults who are prepared to share those stories with the media is very positive. Social work can get things right but we also need to be certain that we keep up the pressure on improving services and making those changes that mean that so many of those we have rescued do not then get abandoned and rejected by the rescuers. Rescue is not enough. Protection is not enough. To paraphrase, the now somewhat discredited Bruno Bettleheim love is not enough but must be supplemented by determined efforts on the part of the parent. Local authorities who represent the public parent must be prepared to act as parents and that does not finish at 18,21 or 25 does it? Any  parent would tell you that.

So determined efforts must be made by the public parent to ensure the wellbeing of its children. This , of course, includes effective shared care arrangements when birth parents are involved. Recently David Akinsanya told me that he was going to talk at an awards ceremony for children in care about life long relationships for those children. I have a life long relationship with three young people for whom I was a social worker and contact with several others. It left me thinking about what that actually means and how it could possibly be achieved within the frame-work of public care. I have done it as myself in a sense and not as part of my professional task though I perhaps do not draw such a clear demarcation between the two things as others. Not everyone either sees this as appropriate or as a practical proposition for them. If it is institutionalised, ie made part of the professional role and subject to regulation and inspection then no doubt there would be those wanting payment and the very essence of the arrangement would be strangled by safeguards and formulaic visiting schedules. David and I have talked publicly about this for a long time including through our training course and we can prove the need, the benefits and show from our own experience the value to these relationships but have never sufficiently resolved the how. So we have fallen short in allowing the idea to drop into the hearts and minds of social workers and young people but equally allowed overstretched local authorities to dismiss the idea as too difficult as we have offered no way forward.

We are therefore left with generations of young people and adults who are care experienced who live daily with loss, anger, painful memories, and so on. Whose adult lives continue to be determined by a difficult unresolved past. When I started the Kinder Shores project I hoped that the words and music would open up the issues to the public in a way that standard media approaches have not been able to do despite great efforts on the part of many organisations and individuals. I have discovered that it is hard to get the public perception of care leavers moved on past those images of rescue and gratitude, of the need to pull their socks up and get a job rather than live on benefit and on the street and the image of wonderful foster carers who have taken these poor children into their families and yet have been repayed by ingratitude marked by unacceptable behaviours. That may all be too much of a generalization, or too harsh but I am now able to sometimes say things I could not say in my professional capacity. We have to change this perception and make the public see the real issues for the children we have parented through the public purse. We need to make care work for them in their childhood and through to their adult life.

Though CD sales are now slowing Kinder Shores goes on with an exciting project to develop a play with a local Youth Theatre based on one man’s journey through care. Planned for May/June 2019 I hope this will bring out some of the issues behind the obvious media stories and perceptions about care as well as making money for the charity. Once the piece is written then maybe this can be used elsewhere to open up the debate and to get the messages about care to more people. But in the interim I propose to look at some ways that lifelong relationships may work in Part 2 of this blog. Other wise it would be too long and you would never read it! Care leavers may be a small group of people in our society but they are our children, society has created the system for protection and rescue but it has yet to create a real response to their need for parenting as children and on into their adult lives. We must continue to work with the care experienced to find the answers,  with responsible authorities to develop systems fit for purpose and governments to face funding responsibilities now and in the future.

Look out for Part 2. and remember there are still CD’s available through Amazon or Folk on the Pier website. Check out the charity on http://www.kindershores.org.

CD cover image KS

 

 

care leavers, change through music, folk music, leaving home, media, music, social work and child care, social work changes

Kinder Shores and a broken spirit

Jenni Randall

I have been musing , thinking, reflecting, deliberating and all that about the Kinder Shores project and how the project has gone. It’s a social work skill that we could not survive without and I do it almost unconsciously after all these years. Leave aside the obvious new skills that I needed to learn there have been a number of interesting twists and turns to getting to this point in the project and they have probably left me with more questions than answers particularly about my profession.

Perhaps the most striking and saddest issue is the lack of enthusiasm displayed by my professional colleagues both as individuals and through their organisations. I must not include everyone in this of course. There were a few who supported the concert, bought the CD and have been very encouraging, these have mostly been people who I know personally or who I have worked with in the past. Many of those who have shown interest initially faded into the background or were moved to other jobs or went sick!  The local authority boss showed great enthusiasm but there was no downward communication and when I finally took to my car and drove round all the leaving care teams no one had heard anything about it!

The Public face of social work

The experience of visiting and getting access to these social work offices turned out to be a lot trickier that I imagined. To start with there was the barricaded office with the receptionist behind the grill who was not about to let me see anyone and told me to make an appointment to come back another day after another  40 mile round trip. I don’t think so…… eventually after some insistence or rather bloodymindedness on my part a charming social worker appeared. The office I didn’t visit I sent posters with no response not even an acknowledgement. Then there was a council receptionist in some shared office who was not letting me in until I could tell her who I represented. Clearly my “I am representing myself” line was not at all convincing. But this was, I thought, the best , or do I mean the worst. The team I wanted was upstairs in shared council offices but  I was shown a telephone to one side in the reception area and told to ring a number in another town 40 miles away to access the people upstairs!! Just one receptionist was smiling , helpful and accessed the team who, though under great pressure, treated me with interest and respect. Now if I was a distressed 17 year old, whose social skills are poor and who is attempting to engage with someone to help them they would have been deterred so easily especially as it may have taken a good deal of courage to go into the office at all.  What happened to……. have a seat , do you want a drink and I’ll see if I can find someone to help you??? I left feeling that like the enemy, a danger to the organisation or its staff in some way and I am sure that young people or others seeking help would feel the same. The fact that the receptionist may wear corporate colours or a name badge really does not make up for being genuine in the wish to offer help. I totally get why some prospective clients may choose to “kick off”. Sadly this is a vicious circle and that will result in more bars and grills, and restrictions to access and of course the organisation could not be the ones at fault.

Marketing this client group.

Not easy is the short answer as I am sure many others have discovered over the years. There is little sexy about homeless, difficult, addicted, mentally ill young people who the general public think should be grateful for their rescue from  their abusive childhoods and the chances they have been given. I guess there is also a section of the public who feel that they get given too much and that somehow the whole mess is their fault. To be fair most people do not understand the terminology that we use around the care experience and confuse it with young carers, carers of the elderly  and so on. So it is a real challenge to make  anyone part with hard earned cash especially when they also feel that they are having to pay again for something which should be properly funded from their council tax. I may not have marketed this well this time so next time I think I will raise money for starving animals! An equally deserving cause before anyone gets upset.

The Corporate “Whatever”

All the social workers I finally met after breaking through reception were interested and engaged with the charity proposal no matter how many emails there were demanding their attention elsewhere. I was greatly cheered by this but equally there was a sense from them that they were not going to take it away into the organisation with any enthusiasm because there would be no point. When I tried to engage them with the idea of involving young people through  the In Care Council or by giving them the opportunity to talk to the public or do radio interviews with me there was no response . When I told one member of staff that I could get no response from the In Care Council the reply was “you never can” and a shrug. The response from another social worker to my wondering why the information had not been disseminated down to the teams was another shrug. There was no effort to suggest action about this just a corporate “whatever”. I am saddened by this feeling of depression or suppression of the social work spirit. I am sure the clients they work with must sense this too.

Answers

I have none. I am outside looking in these days. But I know that things have changed for the better in many areas but at the expense of morale, and a broken spirit. Some years ago I can see that the child care and leaving care  teams would have engaged wholeheartedly with this project, even if it was after hours, engaged the young people, and had lots of ideas to share.  But not now.  I do not have an answer to the broken spirit of social work sadly. But those who have engaged with this whole thing without question have been musicians and those working in the theatre industry, so the question I can answer is “Can you change lives through music” and the answer is very definitely  YES.

 

For more information about Kinder Shores  http://www.kindershores.org

CD’s on sale from Amazon or Folk on the PierCD cover image KS

 

 

 

media, Social work, child care and history of social work, Tv drama

Just wanted to say a word about Kiri….if a little late.

Jenni Randall

 

KIRI
Miriam (Sarah Lancashire)

I didn’t know whether to cheer or cry or both! My response to Miriams’s outburst to the assembled media wolf pack  was a moment of sheer delight. Forget all the stuffy, prissy nonsense in the media about the portrayal of social workers in Channel 4’s mini series Kiri, I at last saw something that represented how I feel about my profession.  How often have I wanted to openly talk with such passion and such humanity about a piece of work, about how I feel for a child for whom  I have responsibility. We cannot do it without risking the heavens falling in on us. Even in business meetings it is rare and frowned upon by others who see it as unprofessional.

If we are going to get nitpicking about our portrayal on the media, especially in drama productions, then it will never happen in a way that will make us seem a mainstream emergency service. Of course it will not be a totally precise picture, the procedures will not be complete or accurate, and there may be an added dramatic edge to some characters because it is a drama, it is entertainment and not a training video for the general public.vintage-sw-image-3

A picture of us all sat at computers, filling in forms and attending meetings and panels would be like watching paint dry the only excitement being complaining about cold coffee or the irritation of road works when we are characteristically late for a meeting. So we have to stop posting about procedural inaccuracy, dogs in offices and social workers drinking  and embrace the essence of our work that the public are more likely to engage with when more dramas are commissioned. I would give the very wonderful Sarah Lancashire a contract for a soap  around the same character.

I imagine that the police, doctors, nurses, lawyers and many others feel misrepresented from time to time and no doubt the backlash is that the public want them to behave as in the latest TV show. However they have the public ear and eye, who will have a much clearer view of what it is that they do and how they do it perhaps, more importantly, they may also get some understanding of why they do it.  Themes about complex issues around right and wrong, of difficult social issues, and the daily impossible decisions faced are all possible to explore through dramas. This becomes easier than documentaries where the personal and private issues of identifiable individuals may not be acceptable to explore so widely.  As a profession we have to sit back, embrace the possibilities and accept the flaws.

I believe the payoff will be huge. And incidentally I know social workers who have the odd drink, who take dogs to work and who have difficult and complex lives themselves. There is more that unites us with our clients than divides us however high we may wish to put our professional pedestals. I thought this was well portrayed when Miriam gets the only real comfort in her impossible situation from her ex clients. There is no warmth from her colleagues or her line manager who despite themselves settle for toeing the company line and offering her nothing by way of help, support or even a kind word. I have had great support from those I have worked with in many situations, they understand difficulty, trauma, pain, anger and all those emotions we share with them from time to time in our lives. We would all do well to remember  that in other circumstances we could be in their position in life. While the focus of any work is their situation not ours, all the pain and emotion to work with is theirs not ours there remains a place outside the therapeutic relationship for simple humanity, acts of kindness and solidarity without any negative impact on the “work”.

If Kiri did anything as a drama then it reminded me of why I became and stayed  a social worker and I hope it showed that to the watching public. Well done Channel 4 and Jack Thorne.

PS I don’t drink at work but I have taken my dog to work.

 

jo cox