Things get real
I’ll admit to writing this while I’m angry, so I may take it down or modify it later (‘doing a Cummings’ as it’s now known). For now, it stands as a testament to how I’m feeling about a number of things pertaining to life and work, which under current conditions are increasingly hard to distinguish.
I first want to acknowledge that my personal feelings right now pale in comparison to those whose lives have been touched more directly by COVID. I am fortunate that this has not been the case for me or my family, aside from having the strong suspicion the virus was in this house late March/early April. If it was, it left us without inflicting lasting (biological) damage. Others have been directly impacted by the worst this virus brings, and each has their own way of dealing with the loss and pain that comes with it. I keep coming back to this moving piece, in particular.
I’m also acutely aware that, as I write, the issue of endemic racism in Western society is once again at the fore for the worst of reasons and that the last thing we need, really, is another white man opining. So, I write and publish this selfishly, to get this stuff out my head and off my chest because both are on fire. But just cos I think these things are important doesn’t mean I think they’re more important than any other issue, even though it might seem that way at times. We choose our battles because there are too many battles to fight. And I have always fought mine with fire, for better or worse.
The hidden pandemic
Feelings of guilt and shame are also playing into this self-regarding fug, if I’m honest. Many adult social workers, like me, are interacting remotely with the people we hope and aim to support, with their families, their carers and, in many cases, the care homes and other group living situations in which many of them live.
The true picture of devastation wrought by COVID in care homes is only beginning to emerge. Those who work and volunteer in them have described scenes of isolated suffering and dying, distress often compounded by the challenges to understanding presented by cognitive illness, learning disability, mental health and/or brain injury. This on top of the near-absolute disintegration of the world that they knew, the world that had all the anchors and cues and routines and assurances that gave shape to the day, and supported their identities, even as those identities were under threat by their condition and, it must be acknowledged, by a life in a 24 hour care setting. Even I, hearing these things second-hand, find them too painful to dwell on and so I will not repeat them here. But those stories do need to be told, and heard, otherwise the true extent of the human cost of the pandemic will remain hidden from view, just as the lives and loves and achievements and fears of those who reside in group homes have historically and conveniently been kept away from the collective gaze for as long as such places have existed. And that is a very long time indeed.
The burning shame I feel when I think about how, as a social worker, I have made decisions that have effectively consigned people to spending the rest of their lives in situations which more than once they have described as a prison, knowing that it is likely some will have contracted COVID with the distinct possibility they may well have died from it. While I am satisfied that in every case I did what I could to give effect to the person’s will and preference by exhausting other available options, I still choose to work in a system that limits those options on the basis of resources in a country in which there is more than enough money to end the health and wealth inequalities that beset the lives of those we are for. We all know that the money is kept away from those that need it most by an unjust regime that favours the entrepreneurial self above all others. A system designed by capable and connected people will never work for the disabled and the marginalised, despite what those people would have us believe — what they may well believe themselves — because in using their capability and connectedness to become society’s leaders they fail to recognise and deal with their own privilege, denying the disabled and the marginalised the means to exercise their will by having the chance to design their own systems.
Much of the work I’ve done in relation to residential care has been in the context of S21a DOLS appeals — when a person formally challenges in the Court of Protection the state’s decision to put them in care — an important legal safeguard for persons said to lack mental capacity to consent to being in care. Again, I am satisfied that I did everything I could to exhaust other available options but the stark truth is that by the time I met many of these people precious time and opportunities had been lost in the intervening time. Their condition may have worsened since they went into care, or they may have lost their home or, tragically, a companion or spouse. In some cases, it appeared people had been taken to the home by a social worker on the pretext of going somewhere else (such as the bank or post office, for example) or had been told they would be there only temporarily, only to be left there. The first is, in my view, unforgiveable; the second perhaps more understandable in a system where such assurances are often given in good faith but it later transpires there are no other options available, or the person is allocated a different worker due to staff turnover, organisational change or a service model of assess, provide, review and transfer/close. But we still choose to work in these systems and I’m sorry to say that these things happen more frequently than we as a profession care to admit. And, while there are shining examples of good individual and organisational practice, there are also many examples of a system that makes it all too easy for us to work contrary to people’s interests.
While I understand the impulse to uphold social work as something to be proud of in these times, especially as many practitioners feel vulnerable to the risks associated with COVID and the new world we live and work in, I have at times felt angry and frustrated when seeing social workers advocating for social work first, while literally hundreds of workers in our health and social care systems succumb to COVID, as well as thousands of people living in care homes, a high proportion of which due to decisions we have made, albeit often without any other available option. And I have felt bad that I have felt that way because of the hard work that is going on, often out of sight, on many, many fronts in this unprecedented set of circumstances. But my anger stems from my sense that we are quick to blame the systems we work in but reluctant to acknowledge the part we have played, and continue to play, in those systems, the ones that put people in care and leaves them there very often, even under normal circumstances, literally to die.
I think it’s time we reckoned with that, collectively. Certainly, if we are to be part of finding the alternative ways to support older people and people with disabilities to live the lives they choose that must surely come out of the learning from this national tragedy, this national disgrace.
That’s all I can manage to say on this for now. I’m sorry if it’s upset anyone.
‘Opportunity in adversity’: Crisis as pretext
Rage is the only word that comes close to the feelings I have in relation to the exploitation of the COVID crisis, both by corporate players and by reformists in our education and social care systems, in some cases in cahoots, as a pretext to accelerate and advance agendas while we are otherwise (pre)occupied. Global management consultancy, Boston Consulting Group, already represented in many LAs’ social services departments through its front operation, Frontline, and which seeks to ‘reimagine government’ through its think tank the Centre for Public Impact, has previously used the term ‘opportunity in adversity’ which says a lot about the firm and its offer to clients.
One of these under cover of COVID moves is what is known as Statutory Instrument 445, a sweeping set of changes which has been appositely called ‘deregulation on steroids’ by a prominent children’s rights campaigner. SI445 has prompted widespread concern, including from people in the care experienced community, and I urge anyone reading this to educate themselves on the issue and consider joining the campaign to scrap SI445. It has been particularly painful to see how the concerns of care experienced people and practitioners have been effectively dismissed and ignored by children’s social work leaders and key players, who have so far not engaged substantively with the concerns raised. Notably these include the chief social worker for children and families, the principal children and family social worker network (which, it seems, exists solely to promote and advance the reform agenda of the chief social worker, appointed by Michael Gove in 2013) and the CEO of the largest single provider of social work training in England, Frontline.
As none of these key influencers have backed calls to scrap SI445 it is reasonable to believe they likely support the changes. That being the case, they should be able to provide a compelling argument in support of SI445. But they haven’t, and that in my view is a damning indictment on their capacity and/or willingness to show true leadership and responsibility at a time when these things are needed most. At the same time, I believe their capacity to show leadership of the sort needed is compromised due their financial and ideological intertwinements with their DfE and corporate overlords. Whatever the cause, the net effect is the corrosion of trust.
UPDATE #2: Consultation launched on reinstating most children in care duties relaxed during Covid
Academisation-by-stealth and backdoor outsourcing
I was already concerned about the rapid rise of the Oak National Academy, an online home learning platform which recently appeared as if out of nowhere and was up and running in two weeks with the ostensible aim of supporting schools and students during the coronavirus lockdown. The Oak was immediately financially backed by Google and publicly approved by the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson. Less publicised is the fact the academy received in short order £300k of funding from DfE for start up costs. The rapid emergence and wide take up of the Oak is remarkable, and concerning, for its content has not been subject to any rigorous scrutiny or prior consultation with the sector. Paul Whiteman, general secretary of NAHT, has sounded a measured note of caution regarding the Oak and rightly highlights issues around the accessibility of digital platforms for children living with social disadvantage.
It’s worth noting that the principal of the Oak is married to the CEO of Frontline, himself a director of an academy trust. Both are Teach First alumni. The Oak principal left his teaching post after two years to enter the civil service via the Fast Stream as a policy advisor during which time he worked on ‘a number of policy priorities including school reform, post-16 participation and special educational needs and disabilities’. He then went on to a post as part-time assistant head teacher at Heysham High School, to ‘support the leadership of a challenging secondary school during a period of turbulence’ which he did ‘[p]art-time alongside founding the Institute for Teaching.’ His tenure at Heysham High School lasted from 2014 to 2016, and is notable for the fact that during that time the school’s Ofsted rating went from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘inadequate’. In 2018, the school closed, adopted academy status and changed its name to Bay Leadership Academy.
The Oak National Academy has arrived at my child’s school which, given the above, is frankly beyond the pale as far as I’m concerned. We have withheld our consent to our child using this platform and are actively engaged in questioning and resisting this move by the school, which in fairness can’t be blamed for using the DfE’s ‘recommended’ platform. However, they should also be made aware of the concerns held by many, including those in the education sector about this project. A key concern of mine is that the Oak was posited as lockdown-only solution yet our school has said it will be used to support children on their return. The speaks to the questions I already had about what happens to all this infrastructure when it is no longer needed. I have a strong suspicion that the Oak will be — was always intended to be — a going concern. Watch this space.
The same law that allowed the Oak to receive DfE funding in short order without the usual tendering or procurement processes has been used to give £1billion in government contracts in the time of COVID, some of which were botched to the detriment of the public, as was the case with Deloitte’s role in the testing scheme. (That’ll be the same Deloitte that provides pro bono support to fast track mental health social work training scheme Think Ahead — while there’s nothing to suggest any link between these two things I do question the wisdom of allowing global management consultancies access to any part of our public services by dint of their pro bono and financial support for fast track public service training schemes — they’re business relies on networking and insider knowledge after all.)
UPDATE: Oak National Academy gets £4.3m to stay open next year
RELATED DEVELOPMENT: Teach First to find Covid catch-up mentors
Children’s social care reform: Blueprint or whiteprint?
I’ve been hearing chatter about the imminence of a renewed push for the Boston Consulting Group/Frontline produced ‘blueprint’ for children’s social care, widely debated on its launch last year and which failed to make the impact its authors envisaged. This article appeared a month ago, hosted on BCG front the Centre for Public Impact’s website, and looks very much like an attempt to set the scene for the return of the ‘blueprint’, this time framed as ready-made solution to the challenges of delivering children’s social work in the time of COVID.
It is not my intention to engage in debates about the merits or otherwise of the ‘blueprint’. As with many things touted by reformists, it undoubtedly has merits, just as there are always drawbacks. My concern is the provenance and authorship of the piece. Why is a global management consultancy with a yearly revenue of $8.5billion so heavily involved? Some say altruism, or ‘corporate social responsibility’. But, if BCG have the interests of disadvantaged people at heart why did it facilitate the capture of Angolan state assets by Isabel Dos Santos and why does it support the Saudi regime with many projects, including defense procurement while that same regime bombs Yemeni civilians? It seems altruism is selective. The answer more likely lies in what consultancy CEOs call ‘corporate statesmanship’, which is every bit as chilling as it sounds. Unelected, unaccountable super-rich white people intervening in public affairs… Haven’t we enough of that already? Isn’t that the very thing that got us to where we are right now?
It is my resolute belief that this ‘blueprint’ should be resisted at every turn, not because it is without quality or merit as an idea in and of itself, but because it has been largely authored by an organisation who, in my opinion, due to its activities in Angola and Saudi Arabia (to give just two examples), simply cannot be trusted to promote the public good.
Further, it is not unreasonable to suggest that global management consultancies, being largely run and manned by mostly white, mostly male, people, are very effectively maintaining and consolidating the power base of white, male hegemony through their ‘corporate social responsibility’ activities, ‘social impact’ schemes, ‘fellowships’ and ‘leadership development programmes’, which, by targeting ‘top graduates’ and the ‘highest calibre’ people, ensure mostly white folk get into positions of corporate and civil influence and mostly white men get into the most influential positions, with a few exceptions in terms of race and gender to prove the rule.
I urge anyone who is interested enough to have got this far to look at the current key players in education and social work reform. What’s wrong with the picture you see?
The shed
The picture at the top of this post shows the shed I partly demolished on the day I wrote this. As I was working, I kept thinking of things I have now put down here, and more that I have since forgotten. I took a picture for the blog, thinking there was some message to be gleaned from it, some metaphor that would illuminate the whole, tie everything together in a neat packet of meaning. But there isn’t. It’s just a picture of a half-smashed shed. Beautiful in its own shoddy, knocked down way. A shed a poet might write an imagined history for. A shed that’ll make way for something else, as yet undecided, unformed.
But just a shed, at the end of the day.
