During the first part of my time as Chair I had the pleasure of working alongside Luke Geoghegan, who was elected to Council at the same time as me, as Chair of the Finance and Human Resources Committee. After being re-elected with me in 2016, Luke stood down having become our new Head of Policy and Research, where he is developing a tremendous programme of work together with Policy and Research Officer, Godfred Boahen. Between 1998 and 2008, Luke was the Chief Executive at Toynbee Hall, the first Settlement in London’s East End, where Clement Attlee worked before the First World War. I feel a strong connection with the East End Settlements now myself, living near to them and being a frequent visitor to Oxford House and St Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green. This is a companion post to my previous “From Attlee to eligibility criteria”, in which I looked at the balance in social work between collective and individualised approaches. Here we focus on the former, beginning with an exploration of how the Settlement Movement helped to develop social work as community work.
BASW is standing with our American colleagues, the National Association of Social Workers, in condemning President Trump’s policies that led to the practice of separating migrant families at the US-Mexico border.
This penultimate Chair’s Blog post has been jointly written with Karen*, a young mother whose child was removed from her care, who I have previously interviewed for an article in BASW’s Professional Social Work magazine.
Solution-focused practice has strong connections with social work, and it is the approach I have specialised in for a large part of my working life, so I am delighted that my latest joint blog post is with fellow solution-focused practitioner, Suzi Curtis, who is a clinical psychologist. With her colleague, Steve Flatt, Suzi is hosting this year's UK Association of Solution-Focused Practice conference in Liverpool on 14th-15th June.