The Vintage Social Worker

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

November 5, 2018 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.

change through music, folk music, memory, music, social work changes, Social work, child care and history of social work, Uncategorized

Traces and feathers falling……..

October 15, 2018 Jenni Randall

Sometimes a hint of something is enough to bring back a very strong memory, enough to bring you to the moment with all the senses and feelings that it engendered in its original being. Scarily strong ,the sensations can be almost physical. It can be a pleasure to revisit a past love or special moment equally if it was traumatic in origin then it can be sad, upsetting, and painful. Sometimes we do not have control over what triggers there are and what they will bring to us.

For me music regularly transports me to a memory, though sometimes that brings sadness mostly it brings delight and joy. Occasionally it leaves me with a question which may simply be I wonder where that person is now, a piece of my personal story that is left unfinished or perhaps an unanswered question from the past that remains into the present but long since buried.

I recall being shocked by a strong recollection of my first husband being brought back in a Norwich street. It was the way this man had walked and I gasped and for a split second I was certain that it was him although there was no way it could have been. But I was shaken by the strength of the feeling. Later playing Traces ( Ralph McTell) I understood.The wonderful Ralph McTell who can so simply and elegantly capture the essence of humanity in his writing explained it. I have been fascinated by this phenomena ever since.

“Maybe it was the way she rose from her chair, a trace of something in the air”

Walking the dog recently the scent of the damp grass and the coldness on my feet of the dew took me back to camping with Jack when we had spent the night ” laying on our backs watching feathers fall from angels” to quote one of my other favourite song writers Gerry Colvin. Jack and I had lain there till the dew fell and the grass smelt sweetly of the damp of the evening. It was a flash of a memory before the duties of a dog walker returned me to reality. I wonder where he is today?

I return to Essex fairly regularly so one might expect that the memories would come thick and fast. I sometimes pass somewhere and think Don lived there or whatever but a couple of weeks ago I was driving down the A12 over that horrid concrete slab road surface which has been an uncomfortable feature of part of Essex for as long as I can remember. The bumps in the road took my thoughts to another era of my life and events I had long forgotten. In the days when the new Social Services Department was responsible for homelessness there were in Essex homeless persons units, as there were all over the country. Often based in old workhouse buildings, or surplus forces accommodation they provided families shelter. Frequently we were present at evictions and transported them from there to the allocated unit. One such unit was at Stanway just outside Colchester, this had been a workhouse and was by this time an Elderly persons home and the homeless unit.

St Albrights. It had indeed been a workhouse for the Lexden and Winstree Union, just off the A12 it was built in 1836 for 330 inmates. It had later been a hospital, Elderly persons home and Social Service department offices. Sadly as with many of these wonderful buildings, often of innovative and notable design at the time, it now lies mostly unused and unloved hopefully destined for housing rather than a spa or other leisure facility. I always feel that if they continue as housing or in some other community usage then they continue to fulfil the original mission of the build and the design. There is some justice in this for such a wonderful old building in whose walls so many have lived, suffered, died and frequently been offered safe sanctuary from a world in which they had become vulnerable and alone.

Look where the bumps in a road have led my thoughts. But to return to homeless persons units for a moment. I recall as a child watching the family opposite our home in Balmoral Avenue, Stanford le hope being evicted. All their possessions piled onto the side of the street and they sat there Mum, Dad, kids and the dog. My father pulled me away but I worried about them for days. Where did they go? What happened to them? I was about 10 or 11. I didn’t understand. Later I attended several evictions and transported what I could of their possessions to a unit providing grim, multi occupied accommodation with shared cooking, washing and toilet facilities based in huts once used for the forces or buildings in ex workhouse complexes. It was the saddest of jobs. The smells and noise of those units, the fights , the poverty and hopelessness hanging in the air stays with me today. And we charged them rent! And used to visit to collect arrears from the homes they had prior to eviction!!! When I visited Southwell, the National Trust workhouse there are rooms from when it took in homeless families. As I entered I stopped, caught my breath and fought back the tears, I was literally brought to a standstill. I had condemned people to this,albeit in good faith and it did have the benefit of keeping the family together unlike some other homeless policies. Small comforts; the sickening smell returned to my nose and throat .

The train of thoughts came from those uncomfortable bumps on the A12. These are powerful traces from our story and for me they are containable, understood and controllable. Imagine how it must then be for those who have associations from those traces of trauma, disaster, pain and so on, for those for whom the hint of something in the air does not bring warmth, happy memories, laughter and love but anger, misery ,pain and sadness. No answers just some thoughts. And I am still wondering about where we “watched the feathers fall from angels” and where Jack is now.

References

Traces. Ralph McTell. Slide the Screen Away 1979
Watching Feathers Fall. Gerry Colvin. Back and Forth 2018
The Workhouse. English Heritage pub 1999
Southwell, Nottinghamshire. National Trust.

care leavers, change through music, Homes, leaving home, social work and child care, social work changes, Social work, child care and history of social work

Put on the red shoes and step into the big wide world

September 3, 2018 Jenni Randall

Putting on the grown up shoes and stepping into the world outside of home and all its childhood familiarity and comfort is a major transition in our passage through life. And it is so scary. I remember that drive to Plymouth when I left home for the first time to go to college so well. The anxiety brings me out in goosebumps even now 50 years on. First I had to drive there in an old Ford Anglia and I had never been further than London before so that was an adventure, then I had to find my accommodation, settle in and face the beginning of the academic year in a place I didn’t know. I had the advantage of a boyfriend on the second year of my course so that helped the aloneness. But it was all hugely terrifying.

Why am I telling you this?? Well in the past week or so my niece took her first step into the world of work leaving home for a resident job in an independent school in the South of England and a temporary volunteer at the food bank left Norfolk for university in Glasgow. Both of these amazing young women had the same advantages that I had in making these huge transitional steps . Both had a stable,loving and supportive family whose job had been to raise their children for this very moment, the moment they truly become part of the adult world on their own terms. They had a secure base from which to make their move on the world. They also had the advantages of good education which had explored and grown their individual talents and given them a sound understanding of the world. They had travelled , learned how to cope with new experiences, they were both socially competent and confident yet they were anxious and just a bit scared too. But they like me had a family home that they could go back to if it all got too much and I did in the early days to recharge my confidence by waking to my own room at home, to the familiar and the comfortable , to Mum’s cooking and the unique family banter of mealtime conversations.

Now imagine for a moment how these steps must feel if as a child or young person you have lived with many strangers in children’s homes, residential schools, and foster homes and this has left you with little or no security from which to begin adult life, plus poor educational outcomes and not much sense of self.

Young adults leaving the public care system for an independent adult life face many more challenges that just another move. They take with them their history which frequently carries many unresolved or even unspoken issues, they may not know much of their own story or understand how they have arrived at this point of embarkation to the adult world with so little preparation or support. Now I can hear the cries from leaving care staff across the country and those who support initiatives like Stay Put and I recognise that many carers and social work staff try their best to provide practical, financial and emotional for their clients. But given the level of vulnerability this is a barely a start on what is required. As social workers and service planners we have totally unrealistic expectations of what our care leavers can achieve. Yes we should have high expectations as all parents do of their children but we must not set them up to fail. The preparation for adulthood must start from the beginning and unless we can begin to provide a care system that owes more to a good parenting model and less to Victorian values and beliefs about the poor then we cannot expect the outcomes to be good.

But maybe there are things we can do while we are waiting for that particular revolution as it requires some serious adjustments in our general values and beliefs in society. The first would be to remove the artificial team barriers and working practices in social work organisations. It has never made any sense to me to have to change social workers at 15 or 16 from the Looked After Children Team to Leaving care. This is the point at which the social worker with whom you have built up a relationship and who knows you is needed to walk with you into independence. Of course I start from the premise that the LAC SW has been around for longer than a few months and is not an agency worker.

The second is to look seriously at the Stay Put schemes. There are young people who have foster carers who have stayed with them, often without the local Authorities permission or agreement ,and I know personally young people for whom this has been a family for life. Stay Put has issues because it is formalised and therefore if a young person stays then it can take out other placements and when foster homes are at a premium this presents a problem for both local authorities and for private fostering agencies alike. There are of course financial implications in this scenario too. This is not the answer.

For the care leaver every organisation they deal with has barriers, thresholds to be negotiated and no one provides them with unconditional services or support. Theirs has been a rocky road so far in life and who will hug and cry with them at that moment of leaving after settling them in their hall of residence or new lodging near their job, who will plan their first weekend home with a favourite meal or trip out, rescue them when they get sick, listen in the middle of the night when love fails them, advise about the best hangover cures, or be there to celebrate their successes. I was homesick for my own bed in my early student days and I knew it was still there and I was unconditionally welcome whatever the day, time or circumstances. We owe our young people whom we have rescued or seperated from their families a much better path into the adult world. Their red shoes are waiting but there are many forms and many meetings before they have any hope of getting them. We need to make our care fit for caring, fit for purpose.

change through music, folk music, music festivals, social work and child care

It all comes round again. A week in Cropredy

August 15, 2018 Jenni Randall

Well… not quite Cropredy but just down the road in Warmington. A week in 100 words a day. Can I do this……..difficult for one who always uses too many words and repeats herself!

Sunday. Arrived at Barry’s lovely cottage to a warm welcome. Having stayed here many times we have become friends and so seeing him is a great start to the week. It’s as hot as hell everywhere is brown , dusty and the soil has gaping crevasses down which small creatures could lose their lives. It reminds me of that wonderful Oysterband song Mississippi Summer. I hum it while unpacking. Later sat outside with Barry, one of his ex foster children, talked care ,social workers, cars,and drank wine till dark.

Monday. Lay in. No dog to walk. Beautiful clear peaceful morning. Even having to splat several wasps didn’t detract from the calm. Walked round Cropredy village. Mused on the Battle of Cropredy Bridge, the Festival Bell and the chapter in history this Festival has written. Thought about living on a boat while watching the narrowboats slide by. A man is painting the bridge and its so quiet, so calm, but there’s a trace of something in the air; memories ,anticipation, familiarity, maybe the unfamiliar too. The ‘festival family’ gathering to celebrate music, summer, and comradeship. The tribe will be here soon.

Monday evening… is this cheating?! Off to the Brasenose. For the uninitiated that is the pub in the centre of Cropredy . It has a festival fringe. Brilliant gig with the Gerry Colvin Band. Chatted with a few regular festival goers about this years line up, the good , possibly not so good and the unexpected. Always an absolute pleasure to see Gerry and Tom Leary who turned up on his way back from Wickham festival. Late night then….

Tuesday. Early start ?! I think not. Had lunch in Hook Norton with Ruth. There are no barriers with the oldest and best of friends. The conversation is easy even when visits are not that frequent. Years ago we talked about new work events now it turned to the sadness and challenges that getting older brings and our determination to not give in. Loss is such a huge theme in later years and I recalled reading the “we are only on holiday here and all holidays come to an end”. I love Ruth’s positivity and thoughtfulness. Oh and she may help me out of the rut I am in with the book.

PS Also pranged my car in a slight argument with a difficult lady next door because I had parked by her bins. Life is too short to worry.

Tuesday evening. Really cheating now. Had dinner with Barry and a young man who is ex care and lodges with him. He cleaned my slightly battered car. It shone. He was reluctant to have dinner with a social worker. I find it so sad that those we are meant to “advise, assist and befriend” ,to use a favourite expression from the old description of a probation officer, dislike and distrust us so much. He was lucky that he was fostered by someone who will continue to care for him throughout his life and to give him a home when he left care. We agreed that everyone in care just needs that one person to care enough to help them turn their life around.

Wednesday. It all begins to today. Great meeting with Wendy CEO at Rees Care Leavers Foundation. Ideas flowed. Very positive. Next wristbands and the chatter, hugs and laughter in the queue starts a weekend of friendship, fun and great music for the tribe. The tent next. Simple. A pump up tent. Takes minutes, absolute genius. Set up and off to eat. Then on to the Trades and Labour club in Banbury for Trad Arrr’s festival warm up concert. Now becoming a tradition in itself. Fab gig. The music starts here.

Thursday. Relaxed and thoughtful morning. Considered blogs and books, the ideas from yesterday about care leavers life stories and records. Forget about the complexities of the Data Protection Act and Local Authority regulations and legalities for a moment , there is a simple truth in all this . My family and personal history is mine and accessible to me so why is this simple dignity not afforded to those who have been in public care? The struggle to get records, the heavy redactions, the counselling if you are adopted, the gaps, the emptiness of not knowing, is just cruel. There must be a better way. Not everyone can get on Long Lost Family. Maybe that is the Kinder Shores project.

Thursday evening. 4pm .Fairport take the stage and we are off. The chairs and flags are staking out small territories on the field while the rest of us drift around the edges, the bar and the pit. Police Dog Hogan have a bit of a technical nightmare, the Oysterband sound is too low (shame as they are one of my all time favourite bands)and Brian Wilson despite being a legend is not quite with us. A great evening. Great music from everyone. I get quite over excited by the sight of Kinder Shores on the Cropredy merch stall racks, in the programme and mentioned on stage. There is a familiarity about it all, same stalls, layout, timings, and I wonder if this is a good or just that we are now the elder tribe who like that comfort. But it is the people and the music who make this festival so maybe this doesn’t matter.

Friday. Meet school friends Denise and Linda. We are now all rising 70. We talk families, grandchildren(I’m a bit out of that one!), holidays, other friends from the grammar school days and inevitably illness and aging. I always said I would never do this but health is so critical in this phase of life it is unavoidable. We think we are much the same people as we were back in the day. This is may be true. We review whether we reached the potential we thought we had then and if we took the predicted direction. Decided that the teachers predictions were well…..wrong. Love these meetings. Back to the music. Excellent. Some not my taste but good. Kate Rusby did a beautiful set and Cregan and Co and Le Vent du Nord rocked it. COLD cold evening, needed woolly hat and gloves.

Saturday. How quickly the last day comes around. Festivals are fleeting joys, a time limited oasis away from our usual lives. We sit in the rain and sun, stand till we ache, cheer, dance, wave paper hankies for Richard Digance’s biggest Morris dance ever, wear strange colourful clothes and hats, paint our faces, make new friends, meet old friends, drink too much or not enough, eat food that should have a health warning, suffer chemical toilets and go home happy but sad it’s over till next year. For the musicians it’s a great festival in the run of summer festivals , just another gig? Not this one, this is different, this is “family” , this is the Fairport tribe.

Oh well. Same time, same place, next year. See you all somewhere down the road.

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

July 26, 2018July 26, 2018 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 Pier

care leavers, change through music, Getting older, music, social work and child care, Uncategorized

Stuck on an incoming tide.

June 11, 2018 Jenni Randall

Oh my ……..I have been quiet of late. It’s all been rather hectic, in a good way I hasten to add. Change is one of those life events that scares most of us although there are many who, probably whilst denying how difficult it is, talk about it as “a good thing” or”just an opportunity to be grasped”. There’s a school of thought that reckons we are in a constant state of change and I can subscribe to that in a very broad sense but believe me there can also be a severe lack of movement forward in one’s life . Without any technical term it’s “the state of stuck”. It is a position often not recognised until some movement has been achieved and one can look back. Psychological constipation maybe?

Here’s one of those Hemingway writing moments coming up…. just sit at the typewriter and bleed! I have just looked back at my last few years and begun to understand just how stuck I was. It was uncomfortable being in that place but even more painful to look back at my pathetic attempts to make my world more amenable. Don’t get me wrong it was not too awful or else I might have done something radical sooner. It was more along the lines of living in a cosy fog in a pretty graveyard. Nothing terrible, nothing challenging, no excitement, nothing to look forward to except more of the same. I lived in the prettiest town in a charming comfortable cottage among lovely people. How could I be dismissive of all of that? So many would happily choose just such an option with gratitude. My grandfather whose level of praise never rose above “nice” or “quite nice” was the most contented of men. He would have loved it . Perhaps surviving being in the Army Medical Corps during WW1 had much to do with it.

It’s a beautiful morning on the beach and the tide is coming in so are the fishermen with their morning catch. The beach is difficult to negotiate with the tractor to pull up the boats even with generations of experience. Gently shelving with a combination of soft sand and pebbles it draws the tractor down into impossible ruts rendering it immovable. A fisherman is clearly struggling to get enough traction to pull out his boat, the tractor is stuck and the tide moving steadily towards its height. Slowly the tractor disappears under the water no longer able to struggle and the engine sputters to a halt. The fisherman turns his boat to another landing-place to save his catch, his livelihood depends on it. The tractor will wait for another tide, rescue, repair and return to its work on the beach. The dog and I watch this drama unfold in the warming early sun.

I too was stuck on an incoming tide. Retirement and aging brought losses I could not have imagined. There’s much truth in not really knowing what you have until its gone. Trying to revive the scrap end of my career believing that my passion for my profession,my experience and former glories would carry me through left me frustrated and further devalued. Social work has changed, the tide of change had overwhelmed me but I was still struggling to stay afloat. It had given me up rather than me giving in gracefully. In my pretty cottage that was the person I had been, I could not see myself in another incarnation. Bricks and mortar however lovely can be a trap, a prison. My history with that cottage had made it so for me. So I moved my home, myself and all that I had been and would be to another landing-place.

Moving is something that I know from experience will give me new vitality and new challenges. Its pretty drastic and financially not always wise! But if it works….. and it works for me. Here, by the sea with the constancy of the tides, the sound of the rolling stones, the freezing east winds and the beautiful classic summer days, there is a new life. Age is a great driver, time gets shorter but it does not preclude another chapter to the exciting rollercoaster ride of life. I had given my self to my career. It had left me stranded and lonely. I now have my family close by and that is an absolute blessing because as a social worker I know the damage that the loss of family can bring more than most. They can bring a sense of belonging that can never be replaced no matter how good friends and acquaintances are, or how busy and successful you have become. I have shared the care experienced child and adult’s lack of real belonging in some ways until now. It is a loneliness of a different quality to that of not speaking to anyone over a whole weekend or going to the theatre alone.

My long-term partners death , whilst desperately sad, has released me from the waiting. I can share with those who wait for change to come to their chaotic childhoods, for parents to return and how the waiting prevents moving on. If only we could somehow all have the chance to leave the baggage of the past where it belongs. For those I have worked with in the care system and afterwards this is the most difficult aspect of recovery, a physical home and material things can be provided and measured but the psychological repair can take a lifetime and the services are simply not there for them . So the Kinder Shores project has been wonderful. Changing lives through music has been therapy for me too. My new relationship has opened doors for me to engage with music in a way that has brought me to a new world of possibilities, opened my soul to new creative possibilities and to new friendships. The Kinder Shores project for those who do not know is providing services for young adults who are care experienced. See http://www.kindershores.org for information and CD sales.

I will always be a social worker but now I can release myself to a new life backstage with music, theatre costumes, family, a great companionable partner to share these things with, the beach and even a boat on the Broads. A blog, a Charity and even a book which will now come unstuck too I expect.All these things seemed so far away a few years ago. But like the tractor I waited for a new tide, was rescued, repaired and came to a different landing-place.

www. kindershores.org

care leavers, folk music, leaving home, social work and child care

Kinder Shores and the power of music

March 16, 2018 Jenni Randall

Can music change things? I hope so or else I am definitely heading down the wrong path at the moment. Kinder Shores is a CD and a concert to raise money for a project to provide specialist counselling for young parents who have been in care during their childhood. To find out all about it go to http://www.kindershores.org.

There were two inspirations for this project. The first my years in social work and my continuing contact with those who were in care as children and young people. I am privileged to still know them. I know that they may leave care but it never leaves them. The issues that come with being separated from parents as a child continue on into adult life colouring a whole range of life experiences particularly those to do with relationships and parenting. I have long-held that if while in care more therapeutic help was available this would be partially resolved but I know too that sometimes we have to work on issues when we are ready. For some young people who, in their adult years, may want the help it is sparse in availability and certainly not specialist enough to deal with the specific issues about being parented outside your birth family. So this project is greatly needed in my opinion.

Having left care more than 30 years ago, and on the surface, a successful adult life, it was only when I became a father in my 50’s that I realised I still needed to talk about my childhood. I was lucky to have the ongoing support of my social worker who helped me through some of my issues. It amazes me that there isn’t counselling available to all care leavers. Not only to deal with issues that took us to care but often for the inhumane way we feel treated whilst in care, especially feelings of abandonment when we do leave, often without the skills to cope alone whilst so young.

These are the words of David Akinsanya brought up in care he is a journalist and campaigner now and they encapsulate perfectly the need for this counselling service.

The second inspiration came through my love of music. Much of the music in the folk and folk rock world is driven by exploration of injustices, by the world of the ordinary working man, of politics, of opening up emotion and feeling, and the need to change the world for the better . Often the songwriters observation of the world and people around them is unerringly accurate and it can connect us with feelings we have hidden, ignored, or that simply relate to our experiences in life. More importantly they can sometimes connect us to other people’s feelings and life experience bringing awareness and understanding. And so there was a song that provided the final push to get this project underway, when I heard this song I knew exactly what it was about. It speaks of so many of the young people I have met, of their pain, their anger with the world that has treated them so poorly. It tells too,of the complex nature of the “rescue” of any adult attempts to make their world safe and secure and of the nature of therapeutic endeavour in whatever arena. She’s the One written by Suffolk singer/songwriter Eric Sedge became both the inspiration and gave me the title for the CD, the concert and the project. Kinder Shores is exactly what I want to help to achieve for these young people, to find peace and tranquillity in their lives for them as individual adults and for their loved ones and children. The words speak for themselves , here are the lyrics reproduced with Eric’s permission.

She’s The One

She’s the one with bad behaviour,

She’s the one who wants to fight,

She’s the one with the reputation,

She’s the one who bites.

She’s the one with all the bruises,

Tears in her eyes,

She’s the one who talks the loudest,

Covers up with lies.

Hush now Babe, I know you’re Frightened,

Hush now Babe I know you’re Scared,

Don’t you know your Daddy Loves You,

Don’t you know we all care,

So breathe in and out again

I saw you drowning off the headland with the waves coming in,

Shackled to your history, chained by your father’s sins,

So I raced into the shallows, to set you free,

But the undertow from long ago knocked me off my feet.

And the waters near engulfed me, but life has made me strong,

So I pulled you from the wreckage of a life gone wrong,

And we built you the finest clipper, now we’ll be your faithful crew,

So set a course to kinder shores may your path be true

Hush now Babe, I know you’re Frightened

Hush now Babe I know you’re Scared

Don’t you know your mummy Loves You

Don’t you know we all care

So breathe in and out again Eric Sedge

So can music change things? Yes it can. It can change how individuals feel, it can provide comfort in difficult times, it can offer explanations, it can make us dance and sing, give us joy, share our happiness, it can inform, explore and inspire. This CD has a narrative to the tracks that explores the issues that face these young people gthe world often without the skills and support to cope but it also has songs that speak about the possibility that in overcoming the difficulties there will be a better future out there. This music informs and inspires hope. If we all come together and share this music it can change things for these young people and their futures.

For more information

http://www.kindershores.org http://www.reesfoundation.org http://www.ericsedgemusic.com

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

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

February 14, 2018February 14, 2018 Jenni Randall

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.

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.

christmas, Social work, child care and history of social work, winter festivals

When the world takes time to breathe: reflections on Christmas.

December 29, 2017 Jenni Randall

Nearby a father and husband is dying, the nurses and family are coming more regularly as the days pass. My first love posts messages between bouts of chemo and my life’s love died of self neglect and depression in an age of outcome driven social welfare unable to be reached by anyone. I switch on the TV for light relief and it reminds me of donkeys dying of thirst carrying their heavy loads of bricks, an albatross feeding its young with plastic from our seas, of orphans living on the streets, a toddler in a cardboard box on a main street seemingly invisible to passing shoppers, refugees with nothing and no home, the homeless and friendless. A friend posts on social media that for no apparent reason she is overwhelmed by a great sadness. I understand this. It’s Christmas.

I am driving home on Christmas Eve from Christmas celebrations , the cloak of darkness is pierced by homes and houses covered in light, trees flicker at me in the night and inside I picture the families relieved after hours of shopping but with that twinge of anxiety that something which will make the day tomorrow perfect has been forgotten. The cranberry sauce, or the rum butter or more likely the indigestion pills for tomorrow tables and stomachs will be groaning with food. This is the season of gluttony, of overindulgence, of celebration?? Celebration is often about feasting. I guess this harks back to a time when food was basic and for many in very short supply and for most just enough to keep body and soul together. Now it is not a rare and happy occasion to sample good, special or extra food but a time for eating and drinking ourselves into a stupor and of giving the supermarkets licence to tempt us to evermore extreme delights each year. Our overindulgence extends to present buying, to the yearly increase in the number of strings of lights attached to our homes, to the party bags and the number of gin varieties in fact to every aspect of what we could consider to be our already very well provisioned lives. So what exactly are we so heartily celebrating?

The possible options are numerous, the birth of a Saviour is one. Certainly churches see an increased attendance at Christmas and that can only be a good thing giving people a moments quiet and respite from the stress of world at Christmas. A festival of winter is another and certainly we need something to brighten the dark days of the year as we make the slow progress towards spring and the renewal of life. There is much talk of a time for families, of valuing the things that are important to us and of remembering those who we miss or are living away from their families. There are flaws in all of these , if you do not share the beliefs of the Christian church, are not in tune with the changing seasons and the natural world, have no family or are separated from them, are alone, old or ill then all these reason to celebrate become difficult to accept. Remembering the losses may become very real and only add to the sadness of the daily unhappiness. So what exactly are we celebrating?

Perhaps we are all using our overindulgence to celebrate or remember something special and unique to each of us and the trick is to work out what and how best to use this time of celebration. To do this we need, it seems to me, to rid ourselves of the prescriptive demands of materialism and to develop our own rituals and special moments throughout our winter festival. For me it’s great value is that it is a quiet time, a time when the world stops for a day or so and breathes, of calm and reflection. There is no other moment quite like it, driving home from a family dinner or a Christmas concert in the dark with no one else about, to quote the carol,” All is calm, all is bright.” In the brightness of that reflection I can only conclude that the message of these festivities for me is in the sharpness of the contrasts. That while I am grateful for my good fortune and can celebrate that in whatever way I choose it is also the time to recommit to ensuring that the world is a better place for all those who are sad, lonely or suffering. It matters not that this commitment come from questioning the overindulgent and wasteful materialism of Christmas. Dying, loss, loneliness and sorrow are in fact just the same whatever time of year the experiences visit us. It is sentiment that makes it seems worse. Or dare I suggest that these untoward events somehow blight the perfection we are led to believe is so important at this time of the year. It only matters that the desire to help lasts all year round. It only matters that we offer ourselves as agents of change , of help, company and solace at Christmas as at any other time. Just think what could be achieved if we all had a little less and used the money for charitable purposes throughout the year. Or all visited a lonely person on Christmas day or simply stopped to say Happy Christmas and chat to the homeless man who is sitting in the same spot as every other day of his life. It would be amazing.

I do hope that you all have had a very Happy Christmas and wish all my readers the very best for 2018.

Homes, Social work, child care and history of social work

Home Sweet Home?

November 11, 2017November 11, 2017 Jenni Randall

I have had many homes and many lovers as I said in my last blog, but it is the homes and not the lovers that are the subject of this blog! Maybe the rest will come later though perhaps not wise in the current climate. Several things that have happened recently have left me reflecting on the nature of “home”, a friend moving after twenty or so years from the house that had been her son’s childhood home, a visit to my “home” or do I mean “house” in Cornwall, a new chapter for a book about the meaning of home in relation to a children’s home, the movement of people across continents looking for a new safe home, the rise in homelessness and the crisis in the availability of homes.

“Home is where you hang your hat”

I don’t think so! I have put my hat on many a coatpeg overnight but in no way did it constitute home. That may be a sentimental quotation designed to make anyone who is somewhat transient in their lifestyle feel more settled and easier about their lack of a more permanent base. Indeed all dictionaries exclude temporary accommodation or residence from their definition of a home. This includes hospitals, prisons, care establishments and other institutions. This in itself is interesting as certainly care, nursing, convalescent and children’s homes have traditionally used the designation home. In the example of children’s homes this suggests that they cannot be that possibly amazing place we can know as home. This maybe supports the recent trend to transfer most public care for children to family based care.Both my research and experience would refute the idea that a children’s home cannot provide “a home “albeit temporary. There is a fundamental problem though with research which is based on individual experience and unable to be verified by any measurable statistical or quantitative evidence. What are we measuring? Does home mean the same to each person? Do we mean our childhood home, a geographic location, where our family live, does this change with phases in our lives, does it rely on the presence of certain people or possessions in that dwelling place, can one have more than one place that we consider as home? How we use the word may be relevant, do we mean somewhere that is homely or feels like a home even though it is not our main residence. It is certain though that our first experience of a place called home was as a child.

“Home is where one starts from” (T.S.Eliot)

Perhaps this is why it is, for better or worse, so fundamentally important to us all . Our home defines who we are throughout the various phases in our life, it is part of our self-definition and the public face that we choose at any point in time. This need to provide an outward facing expression of our life probably accounts for the need in some for houses so much larger than required or the placing of Georgian styled porticos and reclining lions at the front of ex local authority housing after the right to buy sell off. So if indeed it is the root of ourselves what makes it so critical to each individuals life. Home can be anything from a cardboard box to a million pound mansion but it is so much more than an estate agents description of the building. It is where we find sanctuary, peace , comfort, safety and where the relationships that are the most important to us are centred. It is where we learn about the domestic detail and patterns of living that will form the basis of our whole future life. In some ways home is a feeling rather than a description of a place which is why it is so difficult to quantify the elements that make it or to find set of general principles that would define it. Each of us has a sense of what makes our safe place, each of us can describe how it feels though increasingly it seems we choose descriptors that are to do with the style and materialistic content. However it seems so many images we might choose to illustrate home hark back to a less materialistic time and focus on family and friends gathered by the fireside in a picture of probably unrealistic nostalgia.

“Curses like chickens come home to roost” Old proverb

My memories of my childhood home can be easily brought to mind by the smell of Sunday lunch cooking as it takes me back to opening the back door after Sunday School to the warmth of a kitchen rich with roasting meat. While my memories of home are happy, warm , fun, and secure it is not true of so many. Children and young people for whom home represents fear, hunger, pain, uncertainty, anxiety or sadness can be taken back to those times equally quickly by a wide range of triggers. For those of us who have chosen to live alongside young people in care and to make a home base for them know how sudden these changes can be and how sometimes they can be seemingly inexplicable. An excellent songwriter and folk singer from Suffolk Eric Sedge captures this perfectly in a song called “She’s the One” when he talks of the “undertow from long ago” sweeping him off his feet when trying to reach a child who is drowning ” chained by the father’s sins”. We have to work from a very secure place ourselves to be able to work with these changes but I think we have to be prepared to recognise that whatever the horrors of that childhood place were it remains home to that child. Too often I have heard workers talk in disparaging terms about a child’s home, even tell the child that is was to awful a place to be a home. Just about every young person I have lived alongside has wanted to go back there and many do just that when they leave care. It may be a fantasy that it will be OK or that it wasn’t as bad as they have been told, it may be that they want to make it OK somehow. Whatever the reason right there are relationships with the most important people in their lives, right there was the beginning , the defining moments of their lives. It matters not what curses there were and or even when their return is treated like a curse they have to return , to try, to see, to learn, because it is their home and theirs alone.

Make yourself at home….make yourself a home….

As adults we can develop new contexts for our home with our own children, partners, friends, lovers, and so on. But as adults carers we have to develop a regime that will hold those young people for whom this coveted place home has terrors and at the same time teach them new ways of living in a place that may offer security, safety, warmth, and good memories. In this way they may be able to move forward to build homes in adulthood that do not repeat the patterns learned in early life but where they are able to hold that first experience safely. May be I have not answered my own question about what makes a home, but Debbie when I asked her about what made 11a Corve Lane Children’s home feel like home said “It was where I could curl up on the settee and watch TV”. Maybe there is an element of freedom and choice in the definition of home too. A place where we can be ourselves. It is an ever-changing idea, not constant but changing with time , memories, age and the people who come and go in our lives. A complex concept so much more than concrete and brick that underpins so much of who and what we are.

“She’s the One” Words and Music Eric Sedge on Plenty More Fish in the Sea Broadside Boys 2016.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: