The role of children’s services in a tumultuous world

Introducing the latest episode of the Relational Social Work Podcast, Hannah Bedford, team manager and co-host of the podcast said, ‘ We’re thinking about unrest in society and some of the division in society quite recently where we have had racism, Islamophobic riots, and gender inequality; across the world there is a lot of division around people’s views on immigration. What is the role of children’s services?’

‘Our children and young people are more vulnerable to appeals from the far right. We are all living in the same world but our world is very different from theirs. We have to be really, really curious,’ Dr Beverley Barnett-Jones, associate director for system and impact at the Nuffield Observatory, said. People do not start out as racist, she added, rather ‘people are being groomed and educated that way.’ From the social work perspective, the focus was that ‘their social and emotional development is really harmed. It is…not about saying to people I don’t agree with your political views.’

More generally, she said, ‘ It’s inevitable you are going to be impacting on, affected by, and reflecting on, working with families and children and in communities which are all subject to those political contexts…whether they are party political or just the way the world is organised; just the distribution of power and across the way our society operates, and just the inequalities that are there ¬– ‘So you can’t not be impacted on as a social worker.’

Consultant social worker and podcast co-host Richard Devine, said, ‘It feels like a tumultuous time and I feel disheartened by what we are seeing in the US and European countries with the rise of the far right…It has made me look inward and at what social work is always about -- that reflexivity and constantly challenging your own views and finding ways to hold them with compassion for others and love for others…and finding ways you can have a meaningful dialogue…It’s very difficult to facilitate those conversations.

‘It’s also about identifying and finding compassion for others. That begins with compassion for the self and understanding that I have a lot of ideas and values that are conflicting, reflecting on my own inadequacies as a human being.’

Tim Fisher, practice lead for the charity Kinship, said, ‘The thing for me is that the charity is really connected with the community. It’s Important that if we are going to ride this out and deal with the highs and the lows, we have to collaborate with people who have different types of experiences to us, and that can help us.

‘I am here for groups – literally, I am going to one here in Birmingham and I find that going to these kinship groups is just amazing; there are so many different people from different walks of life. They’ve all got different experiences but they do share that love in common and that kindness…kinship is about empathy, not just grandparents and sibling carers. I think we all need kinship to survive these tumultuous and troubled times…and maybe sometimes we don’t value kindness or kinship enough. That kind act – sometimes we step forward when other people step back.’