For some time now, one of the workspaces in which I practice has been in some dissaray.  Different projects, people and events churn through this workspace.  It makes for an exciting and interesting space but I find myself regularly becoming irritated and angry by what I experience as impingements on my working space and time.  
I have recently been exploring the skills of nonviolent communication and so decided to reflect on why I was feeling disregulated in this particular workspace.  

I realised that I have a need for safety.  Safety as it can be found in being able to rely on others for help.  This particular workspace, as exciting and interesting as it is, does not provide me with a sufficient sense of safety. 
This need for safety at work is primarily linked to a need for emotional and social safety.  A sense that my emotional safety is important.  That I can safely express myself and feel supported whilst working with others.

The need for safety and protection, for solidarity is a universal need.  Manfred Max Neef identified 9 common human needs and they provide a useful template for reflection.  The video below explains these needs.

My next step is to express my need to my colleagues at this workspace.  Finding the right moment is important if it is to be effective.  Not seeking to solve, blame, judge or contest with others. I need just to express this need of mine.
I am certain that, on hearing my need, ways to accommodate my need will emerge.  

Over the past few years, it has become increasingly clear that many of us men are living our lives without a deeper motivating purpose.  This can be seen in the passionate intensity so many men have for various fashions, fads and strange ideological movements.  The unthinking greed and consumption of things is astounding to me.  We consume everything including our life experiences.  In a sense we are consuming ourselves.

So may men I meet these days seem to act like children in grown-up bodies.  It really is sad.

Becoming a man is not just a naturally occuring status.  It is a complex social and cultural achievement.  We become men within a social context. 

Our culture needs to offer the following for men to flourish:

1. It needs to pay appropriate attention to men.  Not to give them undue status or subservience but simply pay attention to them and their lives.  To really "see" them as persons rather than a collection of roles.
2. The culture we live in needs to reward the giving and receiving of appropriate affection from and to men.  
3. There needs to be space for men to truly flourish in our world.  Not just to perform or to misbehave or "do" things.
4. Men need to be accepted and acceptable in our public discourses.  Too many tropes belittle men or are about the unnacceptable male in our popular culture. 
5. Finally, our society needs to appreciate men and manliness as a vital, creative and life-affirming element of our world.  We tend to focus on the destructive aspects of men to our detriment.

​All these things come together when we ask our boy children to engage in rites of passage into manhood.  How are you supporting the boys in your life to become men?

I recently came back from a home visit and was reflecting on the experience.  It gave me rich and deep insights into that family, the roles various members played and the functioning of the whole family system.
It has been a surprise to me that some social workers avoid home visiting.  They seem to think that social work can be done without reference to the home environment in which their clients live.  
Please don't get me wrong.  I have worked with homeless people and with people living in a variety of precarious circumstances.  I am not referring to "home" as a stable, comfortable  bourgois space.  By "home", I refer to the place or places where a client sleeps and lives out their days.  One client with whom I worked, lived his days in a public park and spent his nights on a night bus as it wound its way through the streets of London.
Wherever possible and maintaining human dignity, it really is important for a social worker to visit clients in their homes.  In the case of my client on the night bus, this involved accompanying him on the bus and giving him dignity as he settled-in for the night.
Spending time visiting our clients in their homes allows us to do a number of things all at the same time.  For one it helps us to understand the person better as they function within their context.  This practice, when done skillfully, builds trust between the social worker and their client.  Home visits also allow social workers to engage in systems of change with the client and witthin the client's frame of reference.
Please understand that home visits are not easy or simple social work interventions.  When done in a brusque and judgemental manner, a home visit will cause much damage to the relationship between client and social worker.  Home visiting is a highly skilled form of intervention and takes practice to do well.

The organisation supporting a social worker doing home visits needs to have procedures and resources available to assist in making this intervention as useful as possible.  Such resources include time and space for reflection, health & safety procedures, supervision and transport.  Home visits should also have very clear objectives agreed before conducting them.  They need to be appropriate and focussed on specific outcomes.

In what ways do you think home visits help or hinder social work practice?

A few months ago I was working with a client who has been going through a torrid time with an ex-partner, the parent of her children.  The emotional ups and downs and court proceedings, coupled with financial uncertainty has been very stressful.  The children are also upset and increasingly "playing" one parent off the other.

What I noticed though in my engagements with the client was that she benefitted from conversations about the future she wants for herself and for her children.  Discussing her life plans, aspirations and hopes, somehow allowed her to imagine a life beyond the current troubles her and her children were experiencing.

I began to make sure that every session with her included a substantial focus on the future.  On her intentions.  These conversations seemed to have real-life consequences as slowly, she regained control over aspects of her life.

It's not that I actually did anything in this process.  My client did the work.  Really all we did do was deliberately, with care and in gentle conversation, pay attention to her intention.
She still has difficulties and still struggles co-parenting her children but somewhow things have changed for the better.  She seems more in possession of her life now.

The other day, a colleague of mine in the legal profession asked me for advice about a client.  The client has been depressed for many years and has had many interventions from a variety of medical and social services professionals.  Her ongoing abuse of alcohol and various drugs, coupled with bouts of depression has led her to the brink of despair.  My colleague fears that this person, who is clearly in great pain, will commit suicide.

I listened attentively but could not work out what exactly my colleague wanted from me?  We talked about depression, trauma, the effects various drugs have and their interactions with alcohol.  We also shared how personal transformation ultimately requires the person to want to change.  

I also shared my concern that my colleague may be wanting to "rescue" the client.  We discussed the drama triangle and how toxic that relational game is to real  personal transformation.

As I walked away from this interaction, my sense is that nothing really had changed.  I wondered what use I had been? 
I guess sometimes simply accompanying colleagues and clients along their journeys without trying to rescue them is an important skill to practice.  

This stance of "witholding".  Of standing with. Of simply being with the other as Other can be difficult for those of us so accustomed to "helping".  We may in fact, be dignifying the autonomy of others when we allow them to live their own storied lives without our "help"? 
Obviously I am not suggesting we refuse to assist people in imminent danger to themsleves and others.  It just seems to me that sometimes caring less and standing back from rushing in to rescue others whilst nonetheless accompanying them as they live their own lives, is the best we can do?