A citizens’ association for social support?
I have been thinking a lot about how I and others use Twitter and other forums for sharing thoughts, ideas, knowledge and information. For me, Twitter has been a great connector and I have had opportunities through those connections that I would not otherwise have had, from writing and editing opportunities to the invaluable sharing of different forms of knowledge and experience, especially from those with experiences of having social work and other forms of support and/or intervention in their lives. I am immensely grateful to all those concerned. Thank you.
If I’m honest, the voices I appreciate the most are the ones less heard. That’s the bit of Twitter that really speaks to me. Often the messages are difficult for a social worker to hear. But is from those experiences we stand to learn a great deal. Learning what works is at the core of social work learning. But it is just as important to be open to learning from what doesn’t work. As I said in this earlier blog, for social workers being uncomfortable is part of the deal. We should be uncomfortable about a great many things. We need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. That’s the space we occupy. The space of reasoned, informed critical and ethical challenge. That’s not a comfortable place.
There is no one truth, no ‘right’ way. There is the law, and social workers must uphold it. But, aside from that, good social work is whatever it needs to be to uphold and promote the rights and interests (and, for those of us working with adults, the will and preference) of those we hope and aim to support.
One of the dangers of social media is that we naturally gravitate towards those who we agree with, or who agree with us. That has undoubted benefits but it also carries the risk of creating self-contained affirmation loops. By this I mean, if we interact predominantly with people whose views accord with our own, we may experience interactions that challenge our view of things as anomalous or, worse, as affront. Crucially, we also close ourselves off from the benefits of learning from various and divergent perspectives.
What is common among many involved in state support services (such as they are) is the desire to improve the things for people who need that support. Between us, we have many and varied ways of looking at and approaching the issues. Some of you reading this have experience of receiving social support, some are or have been or will be employed or professionally involved in providing it, some are carers, some work in other areas, some combine some or all of these. What unites us all though is that, as much as we are any of these things, we are human beings and we are citizens.
In the midst of a crisis of unprecedented scale and scope mutual aid is taking the form of local, regional and national citizen-led groups springing up here and throughout the world, on- and off-line. It has been said that mutual aid is built on the (big word alert!) dialectical synthesis of autonomous individualism and corporate collectivism. Another way of putting this might be: joining with others to express and amplify our individual power while recognising and working with the tensions within the relationship between individual and group concerns.
I once suggested that the British Association of Social Workers becomes an association for social care and opens up its membership to the public. I know this was naive. But I like to cultivate a bit of naivety. Why shouldn’t we imagine things that seem improbable? How do we move beyond the obstacles before us if we don’t imagine what’s on the other side?
Since then, I have been thinking about whether there would be benefit in something like a citizens’ association for social support. I note the brilliant work already going on in adult social care through the Social Care Future organisation and its parent organisation In Control. In particular, I want to uphold the inspirational example of the Care Experienced Conference, though the care experienced citizen-led review of children’s social care we hoped would arise from it appears a distant dream. Not for the want of trying, but for the want of the political will from those who could have worked to make such a review reality. Nevertheless, CareExpConf’s legacy is one those involved ought to be extremely proud of. It was an unprecedented and inspirational coming together of experienced citizens and we could learn a great deal from their excellent example.
As children’s social care and social work reform continue apace and long-awaited reform of adult social care gets underway, I wonder if there is also a need for more joined up action in the form of a broad-based coalition of citizens and groups— a shared, inclusive space to promote knowledge, transparency, accountability and understanding in social care and social work for people of all ages and needs, one that could build on and amplify these messages? Imagine the learning for all concerned. Imagine the possibilities for mutual aid.
What would be social workers’ — or other professionals’ for that matter — role within that? How would such a collective manage the power dynamics inherent in co-production with citizens who have been disempowered and disenfranchised by systems that are too often experienced as working against, not for, or — as it should be — with them?
The first thing I would say about that is that not all social work goes on in our day jobs. Many of us are engaged in social work activism in our spare time. This is still social work, though not statutory or paid (usually) social work. It is social work as a form of concerned citizenship. So, while we can never fully equalise power imbalances in our day jobs, we can, as concerned, informed citizens, work in concert as equal partners with common purposes and missions in joint enterprises, in our activism outside of paid employment.
This is an explicitly political act. Many are calling out for fundamental change. Part of that change will arise from people self-organising and simply doing things differently; communities looking after each other as far as possible without state intrusion. But there are times when state actors do have a mandate to intervene and so reform must also focus on policy. A citizens’ association for social support could have an explicit political focus — not party political, not beholden to a particular ideology, save the belief that as a general rule people know what is best for them — seeking to influence policy through concerted action involving publications, lobbying of MPs and policy-influencers, and collective advocacy.
I haven’t really got further than that. I’m interested now in finding out what others think. We have seen time and again how the voices of those most affected by social care policy are too often the least heard. We have seen how social work leaders have been silent while actions are taken that erode the rights of people in vulnerable situations. Some have been more active in their complicity. This has a corrosive effect on the principles and functions of transparency and accountability, and in our faith they are even achievable, never mind a given.
How can we amplify our voices as concerned citizens with a stake in social support systems, in a way that is egalitarian, open and representative of our diverse identities, needs and interests?
