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Report: SWAN North East Conference

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After an introduction on the current impact of the government cuts on the north-east by Terry Murphy (Teesside University) there were presentations from Don McDonald from our sister organisation ‘In Defence of Youth Work’  and from SWAN founders Michael Lavalette (Liverpool Hope University) and Iain Ferguson (University of the West of Scotland) on the history of SWAN and the need for radical and critical theory in the social work field.

Workshops were held on working with youth and in communities and working with an understanding that perspective of asylum seekers and refugees. There were also a number of workshops on understanding the theory and application to practice of ideas from radical and critical social work.

The meeting passed two motions on the current situation in Palestine as experienced by a former student from Durham University and on the current illegal detention in conditions of modern slavery by African asylum seekers in the Sinai desert. After lunch, which provided good opportunities for networking, the conference was drawn to a close with a presentation from Sarah Banks on the challenges of achieving ethical practice at a time of recession.

Participants came from across the region including social work and youth organisations from both the Tees and Tyne areas of the region and from Teesside, Durham, Northumbria, new College Durham and Bolton universities.

There was extremely positive feedback for the conference and a determination to build upon the SWAN network in the North of England comment on the conference are contained at the end of this report.

We also have links to relevant Websites and Open Access (Free) Journals on the themes of radical and critical practice in all its forms for  all those interested in looking further at the issues involved.

Full text of the two motions passed at the conference are as follows:

Motion One
This meeting of the Social Work Action Network (North East ) notes its solidarity with Summer Abu Zayed a former student of Durham University’s Youth & Community Work programme in her essential work with the children, young people and families of Palestine under what is currently the fourth day of a bombardment which has left at least 52 people including 11 children dead. The meeting also notes its solidarity with North East support organisations offering humanitarian and human rights support to Palestine and refutes any suggestions made that such humanitarian and social support of the Palestinian people is in any sense anti-Semitic.

Motion Two
This meeting of the Social Work Action Network (North East) calls on the UK Government to express its concern to the Egyptian Government and other Regional Governments over the human rights and safety of refugees particularly from Africa held in conditions of illegal detainment in unofficial private prison facilities in the Sinai region and subject to cruel and inhumane treatment including extorting ransoms from relatives and friends through the use of international Western Union transactions.

A full report of the conference, including radical, free resources is available to download below this article. Terry has produced a ‘rough guide’ to putting on a SWAN regional event sharing his experiences developing this conference, also below.

 

Solidarity with social workers in Palestine

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‘This meeting [17.11.2012] of the Social Work Action Network (North East) notes its solidarity with Summer Abu Zayed a former student of Durham University’s Community and Youth Work programme in her essential work with the children, young people and families of Palestine under what is currently the fourth day of a bombardment which has left at least 52 people including 11 children dead. 

The meeting also notes its solidarity with North East support organisations offering humanitarian and human rights support to Palestine and refutes any suggestions made that such humanitarian and social support of the Palestinian people is in any sense anti-semitic.’

 

This message of support was subsequently sent to Summer, who sent this gracious reply in the last few days:

 

‘Dear Sarah, Anne, SWAN members and all,

Thank you very much for your great support and for spreading awareness about the current Israeli violations of the UN conventions and human rights of civilians and children in Palestine. I also would like to show gratitude and respect for your understanding and appreciation for the importance of APPLIED social sciences in making changes in the conflict areas such as Gaza Strip. I have been using the childrens & youth work tools to debrief and ease the suffering of the children around me such as discussion, drawing, colouring, role-playing, singing and telling stories, with a consideration for family atmospheres of course. This experience helped the children to form a different perception about bombardments and airstrikes, and move on from panic stage to making fun of the terrifying shells at some points. In a conflict area like this and a situation like that, sometimes I have to go beyond using activities (such as listening, playing or talking) and rather make a deep reflection for common faith and culture to use them as a positive influence. And for that, I’d always flash back [to] the classes about personal and professional development in my mind when we worked on faith and creativity at Durham University; and also go back to the fieldwork experiences. I don’t mean to be so much detailed about what I’m doing but I only mean to stress the significance of my learning experiences in the UK and assure my gratitude.

Finally, I will make a wish to have the opportunity to meet and greet you all face to face, if I get the chance to attend the graduation ceremony in January, and if I ever get alive from this situation. We are all following up with the news at the moment as there are some news about a possible ceasefire. We all need this ceasefire as the number of losses in people has raised to 100 killed, and more than 854 injured – most of them are children- according to the ministry of health and to the newspapers.

I’ll leave you with SOME pictures (Warning: it includes pictures for distorted, dead, and injured children)

http://newspalestina.blogspot.com/2011/01/blog-post.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5W4UglUeKY&feature=youtu.be

Best Regards and good luck in your valuable work,

Summer Abu Zayed’

 

 

Accommodation for SWAN Conference 2013

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Booking your accommodation well in advance of the conference is advisable and is also likely to be cheaper than booking closer to the time.

 

Backpacker hostels:

London Bridge/Borough area:

St Christopher’s Inn hostel (tel 0207 939 9710) :

http://www.st-christophers.co.uk/london-hostels/london-bridge-inn

http://www.st-christophers.co.uk/london-hostels/london-bridge

Dover Castle (tel 0207 403 777):

http://www.dovercastlehostel.com/index.asp

St Christopher’s Oasis – female only hostel (tel 0207 939 9710 ):

http://www.st-christophers.co.uk/london-hostels/london-bridge-oasis

Elephant & Castle area:

Safestay(tel 0207 703 8000):

http://www.safestay.co.uk/en/london-city-south/

Waterloo area:

Steam Engine

http://www.bestplaceinnwaterloo.hostel.com/

Youth Hostel Association:

http://www.yha.org.uk/places-to-stay/london

More hostel information:

www.hostels.com

 

Hotels (from £57 upwards):

http://www.ibis.com/gb/booking/hotels-list.shtml

http://www.london-city-hotel.co.uk/

 

University Accomodation:
 
General:
 
 
LSE (central London approx £30 per person for twin room):
 
 
International Students House (central London from £43):
 
 
Roehampton University (approx 1 hour from South Bank University by public transport, guest rooms from £34 per night):
 
 
or telephone 0208 392 3698

 

General London Accommodation Information:

http://www.visitlondon.com/where-to-stay

 

Couchsurfing:

http://www.couchsurfing.org/

 

Public Transport to the conference:

London South Bank University is a short walk from Elephant and Castle, where there is both an underground and national rail train station and stops for several bus routes. There is more comprehensive travel information, including accessible public transport options on the Transport for London website (see link below).

Transport for London Journey Planner:

http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/user/XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2?language=en

Justice for Daniel Roque Hall

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A number of SWAN members have signed a letter to the Ministry of Justice about Daniel’s experiences and to call for Daniel to serve the remainder of his 3.5 year sentence in an environment fully capable of meeting his needs, or tagged at home. Please read the copy of this letter below which will be sent on 31st October. If you would like to add your name to the letter before it is submitted to the Ministry of Justice, please email swanlondon [at] googlemail.com by the end of Monday 29th October stating your fulll name and organisation.

Daniel Roque Hall

Please also join the vigil
1pm, Thursday 25th October
Ministry of Justice
Petty France
London SW1H 9AJ

Alan White produced a good blog article on Daniel’s experiences for New Statesman which you can read here and the statement on Daniel’s situation from Ataxia UK – the national Ataxia charity – here.

Click here for the Justice for Daniel Roque Hall facebook page.

Click here to sign the Justice for Daniel Roque Hall petition.

SWAN understands that John McDonnell MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons calling on the Home Secretary to intervene in Daniel’s case on humanitarian grounds. Please contact your MP and ask him / her to sign EDM 631; there is an outside chance it may lead to a debate in the House of Commons.

Finally, please see the video below made a couple of months ago, when Daniel was still in Wormwood Scrubs.

 

SWAN Conf 2013: Call for papers and workshops

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‘Defeating the politics of austerity: creating an alternative future’

Call for Papers and Workshop Proposals

As we move towards 2013 and society becomes increasingly unequal with social protection perilously eroded, the neoliberal consensus around austerity is starting to falter and fracture.

Social workers and care employees work with families and communities struggling with the cumulative impact of cuts: parents who are forced to choose between feeding their children and paying the rent; people who are out of work or forced onto ‘workfare’ programmes; disabled people who are vilified by the government and media as unproductive scroungers while having their support for independence and employment snatched away from them. Whilst retrenchment deepens, marketisation progresses in social care as multinational companies such as Serco, G4S and Virgin profit from welfare delivery.  Meanwhile, the UK government ‘s collusion with News Corp, rate-fixing by Barclays Bank and the reduction of the top rate of tax on the rich all underline social injustice and feed the anger of people already enslaved to paying for an economic crisis caused by a pursuit of the free market.

Social workers and social care workers are themselves attacked through redundancies, pay cuts and higher workloads; many struggle to practice ethically whilst expected to work with the context of welfare cuts.

Yet social workers and service users are also witnessing and participating in the fight back to defend the welfare state. Likewise, they are involved in social movements that are developing alternative visions of social care and welfare based on collective benefit.  This year’s SWAN conference will provide an opportunity to share strategies in the struggle against cuts and marketisation of services, and to challenge the hardship these create. Join social work and care practitioners, service users, carers, educators, students and other activists to defend, debate and create alternative visions of social care and welfare.

We welcome papers and workshop proposals on the main conference themes:

•    Privatisation in care (e.g. G4S, Virgin, Atos): alternatives to outsourcing
•    The disability movement
•    Anti-racist/anti-fascist social work practice
•    Work with asylum seekers
•    Women and the cuts
•    User-led groups and community campaigns
•    How to do it in practice: radical social work in 2013 in state and voluntary sector social work
•    Radical social work education
•    Big society vs big state – should we take sides? Big Society, community social work and the role of the state in the provision of social work services.
•    Other themes relevant to the conference

We would like to encourage activists and practitioners as well as academics to submit ideas.  We hope to have workshops where people can engage in debate as well as having more formal papers presented.

Please send proposals (200 – 300 words) to swanconf2013 [at] gmail.com by 31st January 2013 and indicate the aims of the session, whether presentation or workshop and the content.  Please include a cover sheet with your name and contact details.  You will receive confirmation of whether your proposal is accepted in early March 2013. All those who are accepted to present at the conference must book a place at the conference.

Make payment for SWAN conference 2013

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FEES
The fees for the conference are as follows:
£15 Students/service users
£25 Practitioners
£35 Academics
£65 With institutional support /Solidarity price
Free For asylum seekers

If you can, please pay the solidarity price. This enables us to charge less for those on low incomes. 

SWAN is committed to facilitating participation of all those interested in its activities.  Please contact us – swanconf2013 [at] gmail.com – if you have concerns about costs.

 
PAYMENT
There are three ways to book for the SWAN Conference 2013:

1. PAYPAL

In order to do this you must have or register for a PayPal account.

– Visit https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/send
– Login to site or register new account
– Select ‘Send Money’ tab
– In ‘To’ box, write swanconf2013@gmail.com
– In ‘Amount’ box, enter the relevant fee for the ticket you are buying (see above) – ensure currency is GBP – British Pounds
– Click continue and pay.

NB: Paying by PayPal will charge you a small fee on top of the regular charges. Do not worry about the suggestion that you have paid Social Work Action Network West Midlands – we are reusing a PayPal account from a previous SWAN conference.

2. BANK TRANSFER

Please log in to your online bank account and transfer the relevant amount to:

Account Name: London Social Work Action Network (SWAN)
Account Number: 20244231
Sort Code: 086001

3. CHEQUE

Please make cheques for the relevant amount payable to’London Social Work Action Network (SWAN)’

Please then send the cheque listing details of your name and email address (for us to confirm payment) to:

SWAN Conference 2013
HSC Faculty
London South Bank University
103 Borough Road
London
SE1 0AA

 

BOOKING CONFIRMATION
You will receive an email from swanconf2013@gmail.com when you have booked a place successfully (i.e. you have registered and completed payment). Please bear with us as the nature of the payment processes – especially receiving cheques and paying them in – takes some time.

‘Doing Radical Social Work Today?’ free workshop on 17 October, Birmingham

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The speakers are Liz Davies and Phil Frampton, both social care campaigners. Liz Davies has worked tirelessly as a Social Work Campaigner, from her exposure of child abuse scandal in Islington when Margaret Hodge was then Council Leader, to her support for the Jersey child abuse survivors. She was an expert witness for Victoria Climbie’s social worker. Phil Frampton was born and raised in care. A lifelong campaigner, Phil is the author of several books including the critically acclaimed ‘The Golly in the Cupboard’.

The event takes place in Room 714, Muirhead Tower, University of Birmingham from 16.30 – 19:00 (food and light refreshments are available from 16:30.

To reserve a place – email swanwestmidlands [at] googlemail.com

Please the flyer below for more information.

Reflections on the Rochdale Report

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The main recommendations of the Report from the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board (RBSCB) focus on the need to raise awareness of sexual exploitation and grooming amongst young people, more training and clearer procedures for professionals working with children and young people at risk, closer links with communities and improved multi-agency working.

These proposals are fine as far as they go. In important respects, however, they dodge the real issues.  Awareness-raising work in schools, for example, like youth work in general, has in the past usually been carried out by voluntary organisations which are funded by local authorities.  Voluntary organisations, however, have been amongst the main victims of the Coalitions’ cuts. Where they do continue to receive funding, it is likely to be only for direct work with service users, not for the kind of preventative work which reaches young people more widely.

Similarly, more training and clearer procedures sound good but in the absence of additional resources, these can simply become a means of shifting the responsibility – and the blame – onto already hard-pressed front-line workers (‘she’d had the training – she should have known’ or ‘he failed to follow procedures’).  

It’s ironic that the report should call for closer links between professionals and the community. Back in the 1980s, community social work was precisely about trying to build these kinds of links.  Since the introduction of the market into social work and social care in the early 1990s, however, the trend has been towards locating social workers in huge call centres, often run by private companies like BT or SERCO and very far from the communities they are supposed to serve. One of the saddest parts of this report is where it discusses the fear and isolation these young girls felt.   For them, with a couple of exceptions, none of the major agencies involved – and especially the Police and the Children’s Social Care Service – were interested in listening to them.  

That underlines what is perhaps the main point of the report. Very few professionals – and least of all the police and the Crown Prosecution Service – were really prepared to listen to what these girls were saying, let alone act on it. Astonishingly, children in their early teens, several of whom were in residential care, were seen by these agencies not as victims of abuse but as ‘perpetrators’, making sexual choices.  That reflects the reality of life for many young people who end up in care due to neglect, abuse or family problems and are then seen not as kids in need of help and support but as ‘problems’. And a combination of cuts and a contract culture which requires voluntary and private organisations to cut staffing levels even further means there is even less support for them than previously.  It’s perhaps not so surprising then that in 2009, two 14-year olds walked out of the residential care home they were staying in near Glasgow and threw themselves from the nearby Erskine Bridge. If there’s one lesson to emerge from this experience – it’s the need to listen to – and act on –  what young people in need are saying, not the alleged ‘political correctness’ of hard-pressed frontline workers.

Critical and Radical Social Work: An international journal

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Policy Press describe the publication as:

‘An exciting new journal that will promote debate and scholarship around a range of engaged social work themes. The journal publishes papers which seek to analyse and respond to issues, such as the impact of global neo-liberalism on social welfare; austerity and social work; social work and social movements; social work, inequality and oppression, and understanding and responding to global social problems (such as war, disasters and climate change). It welcomes contributions that consider and question themes relating to the definition of social work and social work professionalism, that look at ways in which organic and ‘indigenous’ practice can expand concepts of the social work project and that consider alternative and radical histories of social work activity. As a truly international journal it actively encourages contributions from academics, scholars and practitioners from across the global village.’

Critical and Radical Social Work Journal is available free online during 2013SWAN believes that Critical and Radical Social Work: An international journal will support those across social work and welfare by providing a radical perspective and ideas for practice. Policy Press issued a call for contributions to the journal in May 2012 which remains open.

Critical and Radical Social Work will be available online for free during 2013, its first year of publication. To sign up for this free online trial, please email tpp-crsw-trial@bristol.ac.uk with your full name and contact address. You will receive an acknowledgement and an alert when the trial begins in April 2013 when the first issue is published.

SWAN hopes that a formal launch for this title will take place at the 8th National SWAN Conference at London South Bank University on 12-13 April 2013. In common with the theme of this year’s conference, which addresses alternative futures for social welfare and social care, the first issue will consider what the ‘future of social work’ may be in the years ahead.

Similarly, next April a new series of six short edited texts from Palgrave Macmillan entitled Critical Issues in Contemporary Social Work, is released. These address the following areas: personalisation, the crisis in mental health, poverty and inequality, ethics and politics in social work, children and families social work, and the crisis in social care. We hope these books will also be available to buy at the conference.

Social Work in Palestine – 2 November 2012, Durham

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The event will also feature renowned social work academic, Lena Dominelli of Durham University and Sarah Sturge from the Palestine-UK Social Work Network.

The event is free and open to all social workers, students, educators, policy makers and others to look at how links are being forged between Palestine and UK social workers and how they can be strengthened.

Please download the flyer for the conference below.Social Work in Extremis: Lessons for social work internationally

Related to this topic, Michael Lavalette and Vasilios Ioakimidis co-wrote the book, ‘Social work in extremis: Lessons for social work internationally’, published by Policy Press in 2011, which looks at how social work has responded to the social, economic and political circumstances of a number of countries. The book fosters the spirit of international social work solidarity. 

The volume contains the chapter ‘Popular social work’ in the Palestinian West Bank: dispatches from the front line, which looks at the success of grassroots welfare projects in the West Bank despite poverty, oppression and occupation.

Defend social work students at London Met Uni

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A London Met international social work student may face deportationOne student, on the BSc course, has been moved to a different course related to safeguarding; not the social work qualification they paid for. The other student is on the MSc programme – this person has almost finished their course with the exception of their final placement. The lecturers feel that this person is unlikely to be able to find an alternative course within the time available. This latter student, like many of the hundreds of current other non-EU students, could be deported to his/her country of origin, without gaining any qualification from the course that he/she paid for and which the state funded.

For SWAN, opposing this decision is a matter of social justice.

It is unjust for those studying; this will have a serious effect on the education and longer term prospects of these students and possibly the families and friends who have supported them to gain the qualification. Such students have paid for a qualification they may not receive.

It skews the purpose of the university and the relationships within it as it places a responsibility on the institution to police their students on behalf of UKBA (who appear to be responding to a populist anti-immigration mood). The students are innocent of any alleged immigration breaches.  UKBA’s move echoes the government’s PREVENT agenda which placed a comparable responsibility on universities to identify and report extremism among students. Should this be the role of a university? What does it do to the relationship between lecturers and students?

It damages international, cross-cultural learning and exchange. Social work is an international profession; welcoming the experience of students from across the globe is a necessary part of the efforts to understand and address global social problems such as poverty and inequality.

Please sign the petitions calling for an amnesty for the London Met students here:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/londonmetamnesty

and

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/amnesty-for-international-students-at-london-metropolit.html

Please also attend the demonstration on Wednesday 5th September 2012 from 13:00 at the Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF.

SWAN London

—

NB: Subsequent to the publication of this article, Community Care wrote this piece making reference to SWAN:

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/05/09/2012/118499/Social-work-student-faces-deportation-following-London-Met-visa.htm

Comment: social housing and the right to not be uprooted for others’ ‘safer investments’

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The right to not be uprooted for others’ ‘safer investments’

Policy Exchange think tank Director Neil O’Brien told the BBC: “I don’t believe anybody has the right to live in the most expensive parts of town.”

Last week as a member of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group I attended the ‘paupers’ funeral’ of someone who had not lived in as expensive an area of London as that in which I have now lived as a social housing tenant since 1984. Former KUWG member Nygell Firminger had left the KUWG on getting a job a few years ago, then fallen on even harder times when he told the jobcentre what he was doing and they sanctioned him. And then his mum died after being assessed by Atos Healthcare as ‘not disabled enough’ to be eligible for disability benefits; he had been her main carer. He had reportedly attempted to resolve his rent arrears to Genesis Housing — an ‘Arms Length Management Organisation’ — through a voluminous file of correspondence, yet was evicted after an appeal in which his legal aid support capitulated. Then, in April, he broke back into the flat in which he had lived most of his life and apparently committed suicide. He would have been 45 on 16 September. His inquest will take place in November.Banner of Kilburn Unemployed Worker's Group

Nygell’s life and passing as a council tenant and artist without a sponsor might not have meant anything more to Policy Exchange Director Neil O’Brien or Housing Minister Grant Shapps than the creation of a vacant home. Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group draped Nygell’s coffin with a KUWG banner as a token of ‘state funereal’ respect.

Now Euro-currency-phobic investors from mainland Europe invest in London properties and Central Government has cut the funding to social landlords to the point that my own landlord started to ‘consider’ selling my home without consulting tenants. My pre-1989 Housing Act, ‘secure tenancy agreement’ prevents the sale of our poorly maintained, below ‘decent homes standard’ house ‘on the open market’. Now that I am a long-term ‘survivor’ of the UK benefits system, and as surely as my name means ‘noble protector’, I am more determined to ‘give back to society’ by helping to expose what blinkered lives are led by those who would rather deny poor people the amenities associated with ‘more expensive’ areas. Associating with other KUWG members has added considerably to the value of my life, and the struggle to maintain my existing tenancy has strengthened the links between my one-roomed-flat neighbours and myself.

Against a sharp rise in the number of ‘pauper’s funerals’ as cuts in UK Central Government-funding bite more and more at the economically vulnerable, I wonder, how many ‘pauper’s funerals’ have the Director of Policy Exchange or the Housing Minister attended lately?

The rhetoric of Shapps, O’Brien and the ‘free market’ is that poor people have fewer rights than those who have money. But KUWG members know better by knowing each other.

‘Raymondo of KUWG’