A while back, I picked up 3 small guide books in Tesco’s charity bookshelf, all on the theme of social work. I work in that general field, back office, so I figured it would be helpful just to do a bit of quick reading to garner a bit of background knowledge.
This 150-page guide for social workers, written in 1976, was one of the most insanely complicated books I’ve ever read. Author Zofia T. Butrym immediately jumps to the conclusion that we’re all fully qualified and trained already, and that we’re well versed in ‘Kantian philosophy,’ ‘the orthodox Marxist view,’ and who ‘Etzioni’ is. Combine this with no glossary, some italicised undefined German words and some ‘well-known social thinkers’ (named, but we’re told nothing else about them) and you get the impression you’re reading some archaic, high-level guide for toffs who would probably have been suited to NHS management roles back then, rather than patient-facing. In which case, why would they need this book?
Suffice to say, there’s no glossary. On the issue of words, a lot of the language used wouldn’t fly today: references ‘handicap’ (nobody is playing golf here) and ‘subnormal persons’ cause a cringe, plus a ‘reluctance to acknowledge the prime importance of moral values’ is blamed on ‘a decline in religious faith.’
Between 1970 and 2015, the Roman Catholic Church received more than 900 complaints involving over 3,000 instances of child sexual abuse against more than 900 individuals connected to the Church, including priests, monks and volunteers. In the same period, there were 177 prosecutions resulting in 133 convictions. This is according to The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
I think we can safely confirm that religion and moral values aren’t in the slightest bit connected. Shit, my childhood vicar and teacher went to prison in 2014 for abusing boys in the 1970s.
Let’s not forget that the most atheist countries, like those in Scandinavia, have some of the lowest crime rates.
To be fair, Butrym acknowledges there are ‘errors in such an equation’ and ‘morality is an inherent part of human nature.’
Further archaisms include a report indicating there are ‘2 distinct categories of social worker – university trained and non university trained.’ This was before Labour abolished grants, turning universities into businesses, who subsequently churned thousands of people out with useless and ill-informed degrees (like mine).
That said, this mid-70s book already recognises ‘this age of scepticism and materialism’ before the yuppie culture of the 80s and the social media obsessions of the 2010s onwards. Maybe some things don’t change.
An early point made in the book is one of the most striking for me. Way back in 2010, after I’d received my psych assessment diagnosing me with memory difficulties, I was briefly transferred to the Learning Disabilities team in Adult Social Care. Short term memory difficulties is a disability – a condition that has a long-term detrimental effect on my day-to-day activities – and what I would describe as a ‘learning difficulty.’ It’s difficult to learn anything.
However, the Learning Disability team in Social Care, in any town, will deal mostly with 2 distinct conditions: Generalised Learning Difficulties, and Autism. I have neither of these. So, my time in this department was bound to be challenging.
When the Social Worker – we’ll call her MJ – first contacted me, she arranged to meet me in a coffee shop in the middle of town. At the time, I thought nothing of it. Once I got there, though, I realised I was in the middle of the town that I’d grown up in, gone to school in and done bar work in. I knew a lot of people there. Anyone could have walked in and started asking questions.
MJ turned up, immediately sceptical about the situation. 'When I saw your information,' she claimed, 'I thought, how am I supposed to know what to do?'
She was perhaps toward the end of her career. Did I really want to explain to her the challenges of working in marketing when you aren’t qualified, you have no clue how to make money, you’re friends are verbally abusing you and passing it off as banter, you have no cooking ability, you’re incessantly arguing with your family and every girl you date loses interest in you pretty much immediately?
None of this was going to fit the field into which she could give viable advice.
I suggested that it might be good for MJ to act as kind of a broker – to help me to find the people that would know how to advise me. She seemed sceptical about this too… and then told me she’d be able to see me once every 3 weeks.
Months of this went by before I grew a set and sat MJ down, and confronted her over the numerous things that were neglected. By this time I’d got a flat (that she had, to her credit, helped me to bid on), but months later it was undecorated because I had no idea how to do this. How do I use a steamer or hang wallpaper? How do I organise bill payments? What benefits should I be on as a disabled man? How do I budget? Shop for food? Cook meals? My body (which had been in exceptional shape until I’d moved out) had fallen apart, I’d put on 5kg, the one girl I’d changed my Facebook relationship status for (to this day, even) had dumped me, and my ‘friends’ in Oldham were slagging me off over Facebook.
I’d also been assigned a Housing Support Officer (brought in to oversee my move-out from the parents’ house) but she did nothing, and claimed these above issues were all the responsibility of the Social Worker.
MJ’s response to this was that she was ‘not a provider of solutions.’ Then she called me spiteful.
I filed a complaint against her and was taken out from under her ‘care.’
Now, let’s get back to this Nature of Social Work book. Very early on in the book there are references to different ‘models’ of social work, a ‘representation of structure,’ of how to administer care for the different people who need it. One of these is ‘The Problem Solving Model.’
As Butrym puts it, ‘life consists of problem solving activities. For much of the time, human beings are engaged in these activities without being consciously aware of their challenge to themselves. It is only when, for some reason, their usual equipment for meeting life situations fails them that they become aware of being faced with a problem. When this happens, new resources for dealing with the situation have to be mobilised.’
It’s taken me 13 years, but I can confirm that, albeit I was in the wrong department, MJ was definitely wrong about the nature of her own role. This leaves me wondering how effectively she supported her other clients – those with generalised learning disabilities and autism.
I’m glad this book is over. What an excruciating – albeit occasionally enlightening - read.
