What we learned about social work in England by visiting America

By Seanna Lassetter, Kelly Tighe and Professor Jon Glasby

In the summer of 2017, a spate of gang-related shootings hit the headlines in Chicago. News of new fatalities came almost every day, and at least 101 people were shot over the July 4 weekend alone, 15 of them fatally.

On a day where two young men were fatally shot, social workers, managers and elected members from Birmingham were in the area, visiting a local children’s home and walking down the street where the shootings took place shortly afterwards to meet local volunteers and community representatives.

‘Safe Passage’ volunteers who put on high-vis jackets were on the streets at the start and end of the day to make sure that local children made it to and from school without being caught up in the violence. We also met local mums running an impromptu candy stall on the street near the school, so that children were still able to buy sweets on their way home, in a simple but powerful protest against the problems.

This was just one of many challenging situations we encountered during the Tri-City Social Work Exchange.

Believed to be the longest running scheme of its kind, the scheme was established in the 1990s between social workers in Chicago, Birmingham and Hamburg.

Learn globally

Birmingham champions the exchange on the basis that good practice knows no bounds, and that we must share experiences globally to reflect, learn and improve locally.

While social work is an international profession, too few practitioners get the opportunity to travel and learn from colleagues working in different systems and contexts.

This year, we witnessed some high quality relationship-based professional practice, which was person centred and appeared less preoccupied with time/resource constraints and carrying out set tasks.

Although we work in a different system with different demands and approaches, this still raised the challenge of how we create the time and space in our own practice to do these things well.

Political light

Community organisations working in deprived neighbourhoods often employed ‘credible messengers’, usually people who had grown up in the area concerned and who were experts by experience. By recruiting local staff, agencies were boosting local employment, but also giving themselves a better route into local communities by working with trusted intermediaries.

While the agencies we visited had a key role in providing services, many also saw their role in a more campaigning and political light than in the UK, with a focus on community organising and supporting local people to advocate for their own needs.

At the same time, we saw much that was troubling to a UK and a German audience – not least the prevalence of guns and the existence of neighbourhoods which felt almost completely segregated on ethnic grounds.

The latter felt particularly uncomfortable to a Birmingham delegation so accustomed to diversity in our city of 100 languages and a Hamburg delegation working so hard to welcome refugees and asylum seekers.

Higher status

While social work felt higher status in the US than in the UK, it also felt more dominated by a medical model, with a strong emphasis on neuroscience and on medication.

In one service for young people with mental health problems, the children were aged five to 19, and all of them had a mental health diagnosis and were on various medications. Crucially, this was a residential service for children who had difficult family lives, not a specialist mental health facility as such. For all residents to be medicated (and some from such young ages) was a surprise to a Birmingham group who are accustomed to working against labelling and medicating children wherever possible.

People who were victims of abuse were seen as suffering ‘trauma’ and were expected to face a series of future health problems because of the neurological changes that were believed to have taken place during key phases of their development (for a critique of this emphasis on neuroscience, see Blinded by science by David Wastell and Sue White).

Role of the state

Above all, we were surprised by some of the differences we saw in terms of attitudes to the role of the state.

Although lots of people were working hard to provide counselling to children who had been the victims of violence and abuse, for example, there seemed to be much less recognition that the state could have a role to play in tackling broader issues like poverty, gun crime and violence.

Here, the group questioned whether the symptoms rather than the causes of these difficulties were being addressed, and found a contradiction in seemingly highly interventionist approaches to individual issues (e.g. mental health) and an apparent absence of social interventions.

Hamburg delegates had similar worries, which gave space for wider reflection on European practice perspectives and how these may differ from our US colleagues. While some of the services we visited seemed well resourced, there were strict eligibility criteria, with lots of people from deprived communities who might have needed such support seemingly unable to access them.

Chicago had also been in a budget deadlock for three years and counting, and funding restraints were biting deep, with many community organisations struggling to retain staff. While we have similar financial challenges on one level, at least we have a budget – and indeed it wouldn’t be feasible for a local authority to operate without setting an annual budget.

Pride

Interestingly, international delegates at the final conference celebrating international sisterships were also impressed by the legal frameworks and local policies we have around topics like mental capacity, adult safeguarding, child sexual exploitation and the rights of children and young people to participate in decisions affecting them.

While we might usually take these for granted, we came away with a significant amount of pride about some of the things we do well but never realised, as well as some positive practice to emulate, and some questions to ask of our own approaches.

People often look at other systems hoping to find a ‘magic answer’ that we can import and use to resolve our own challenges. In our experience, these seldom exist – and most countries are struggling with similar underlying problems.

However, visiting a different country undoubtedly gives you a new lens with which to look (both more critically and more sympathetically at the same time) at your own system – and this feels an invaluable development opportunity. As the Tri-City Social Work Exchange celebrates 20 years, we hope this international learning and friendship continues for many more years to come.

Seanna Lassetter, specialist practitioner safeguarding, Birmingham council

Kelly Tighe, team manager, Birmingham council

Professor Jon Glasby, School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham