[Interview] Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor is registered manager of a residential home and a company trainer. He works with young people with attachment difficulties and delivers training on the subject to foster carers, social workers and residential childcare workers.

He is the author of A Practical Guide to Caring for Children and Teenagers with Attachment Difficulties (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2010).

In this interview, Chris Taylor talks about his work:

How did you first become involved in working with children and young people with attachment difficulties?

I had a 15-year career in industry and, having worked through two recessions, I was feeling a bit jaded with commerce. A broken hip from a cycling accident gave me time to think about my future. My own children were young teenagers, and I believed I had something to offer adolescents, and that I would be motivated and rewarded.

I found a job as a 'house a parent' (it's 20 years ago, language was different) in a therapeutic community. I don't think I really knew what I was getting into. The model of working was psychodynamic, but attachment wasn't the dominant paradigm. Many of the children in the community had been severely neglected or abused. They were often traumatized and struggling to find an internal representation of safety. All this was then acted out in desperate and often self-defeating attempts to resolve their insecure past.

I'd read [John] Bowlby's work in the late 60s and I, as I began to explore ways of understanding the troubled and vulnerable children in the community, I began to think more deeply about how their attachment pattern was deeply intertwined in their difficulties and their presenting behaviors: their developmental pathway.

How does understanding attachment help childcare and social workers?

I think we have to caution against suggesting that an individual's attachment is a catch-all for their current condition.

Development is a pathway, and each individual is where they are because of a huge and complex array of innate and environmental factors acting on each other. However, that basic biological drive to be close to the primary caregiver for safety, comfort and reassurance is a powerful mechanism in an individual's early development. Although initially the attachment relationship is a descriptor of the dyadic relationship between child and caregiver, as the child becomes older, the pattern of attachment becomes increasingly an aspect of their individual functioning.

Our attachment history affects us all, and children who have had sub-optimal early care are likely to be anxiously attached and to carry this anxiety as a self-fulfilling prophecy into other relationships, developing behavioral coping mechanisms that may make them difficult to care for. If the caregiver is also frightening, the child cannot organize their coping strategy in a coherent way. Such a child presents a huge challenge to be adequately cared for.

Understanding attachment allows professionals charged with this task to unpack the child's adjustment and work out ways of responding to the child that answers their attachment need and switches of the child's self-defeating behaviors. Understanding caregivers' attachment history can give us insight into the kind of support they may need to adequate parent a trouble child.

Would you be able to tell us about your work in a therapeutic unit?

For the last 10 years, I have managed a four-bedded therapeutic unit. In that time, every child who has been resident has had some degree of attachment difficulty. The children (or young people) may access individual psychotherapy, but, helpful though that can be, therapeutic means something more than that.

The model is one of supporting and enabling development whilst challenging maladaptive coping mechanisms. We promote a holistic, planned environment that provides a secure base for the child to explore their past and current relationships in the here and now. Working as a symbolic attachment figure, the staff team provides the sensitive attunement to enable the child to begin to use information from both emotions and cognition in a flexible way, to gather a coherent understanding of their attachment history and gradually possess 'earned security'.

We also think about the staff's needs from an attachment perspective. The children we care for challenge the secure representations of their caregivers; support needs to be matched to the internal pressure exerted on the caregiver by the child's coping mechanisms. Adult attachment models provide a powerful framework for doing this.

What developments have been made in the area since you first started working with children with attachment difficulties, and what is your hope for the future?

Many foster-carers, residential workers and social workers are now hugely interested in attachment theory, which has become one of the foremost paradigms in child development. It is now more common to see at least an attempt to think about the child's current experiences in the light of their attachment pattern.

I think some fostering agencies have gone a long way in thinking about both the foster child's and the carers' attachment styles when trying to make placements. I also now see more placement decisions in residential care where the child's attachment needs are mentioned, but there still seems to be little serious thought about what to do with this. What this means is that there is often a description but little idea what may help, perhaps a vague idea that something therapeutic is required.

I'd hope that in the future we may continue to develop holistic, psycho-social models for promoting recovery; children develop anxious attachments in their first relationships, recovery takes place in supportive and enabling relationships and social environments.

I also hope that the resources careful and effective work requires are forthcoming; social area budgets are going to be under pressure, but these children deserve a chance to have useful and fulfilling lives.

What are you currently reading in your spare time?

I like to have two or three books on the go for spare time reading, and often my leisure interest reading rubs up against my work.

I'm currently reading Bedlam: London and its mad (Catherine Arnold). As well as unraveling historical social constructions of madness, it's an engaging social history from mediaeval to recent times.

I'm also reading Jarheads (Anthony Swofford), the author's account of living through the fear and boredom of the first Gulf War, and Opening Skinner's Box: great psychology experiments of the twentieth century (Lauren Slater). The experiments are familiar, but Ms Slater writes about them in a way that makes you think you were part of them.

(c) Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2011

This article was first published in the Jessica Kingsley Publishers Social Work Newsletter in January 2010

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• What would Carl Jung make of 2011?, By Mark Vernon, BBC News Magazine, June 6, 2011
• Rhidian Hughes [Interview], Conversations with Writers, May 25, 2011

[Interview] Rhidian Hughes

Dr Rhidian Hughes has worked in applied health care as well as social care research and has an active interest comparative policy, methodology and ethics.

He has lectured widely and has spoken at a number of national and international conferences. In addition to that, he is a visiting senior lecturer at Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine. In addition to that, he is also a visiting senior researcher at Institute of Gerontology, King's College London.

Books he has authored, co-authored or edited include:

• Drugs: Policy and Politics (Introducing Social Policy) (Open University Press, 2006); 
• Reducing Restraints in Health and Social Care: practice and policy perspectives (Quay Books, 2009);  
• Rights, Risk and Restraint-Free Care of Older People: Person-Centred Approaches in Health and Social Care (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2009), and 
• Ageing in East Asia: Challenges and Policies for the Twenty-First Century (Comparative Development and Policy in Asia) (Routledge, 2009).

In this interview, Dr Rhidian Hughes talks about the work he is doing:

How did you first become interested in the field of gerontology and restraint in particular?

Before going to work in palliative care I read for my Doctorate in social policy. The main focus of my work at that time was on finding ways to improve end-of-life care for older people.

I then went to work for the Commission for Social Care Inspection during its existence between 2004 and 2009. The focus of my work changed as it required me to take a whole system look at how care is planned and commissioned as well as how it is delivered and experienced by people using services. Many of my studies included a focus on older people, including people with dementia and complex needs.

We were charged to follow up on a Government Health Committee report on the neglect and abuse of older people and a specific recommendation which asked the Commission to publish its findings on restraint. Preparing this report for the Commission sparked my interest in the use of restraint and this edited volume.

Your new book, Rights Risks and Restraint-Free Care of Older People takes an international look at the topic across a range of health and care services. What do you think are the main differences between the UK and other countries in Europe or North America in relation to restraint?

Thanks to some early pioneers, the United States was the first country to take a long hard look at the use of restraint and to develop a number of innovative restraint reduction and eradication approaches. Many of the principles underpinning these approaches remain current today.

Progress in other countries has followed, although at a different pace. Arguably the UK has lagged behind other countries in the attention afforded to this topic and the lack of domestic research has been criticised, a point made in the book. What is positive, however, is that the UK is beginning to take seriously the need to develop our evidence base on the abuse and neglect of older people, and important studies are underway.

What do you think are the main challenges facing those working with older people?

We all need to be challenging any use of restraint. It is a practice that merely contains issues at particular points in time. Restraint does nothing to address the underlying causes of people’s behaviour.

The book underlines the importance of taking a person-centred approach to enable the perspectives and needs of older people to be addressed, so that the precursors to behaviour that give rise to the use of restraint are identified and acted upon early enough.

To achieve this vision requires the right complement of well trained staff, good leaders and services that put people at the centre of their care.

Getting these basics right will enable us to make some important inroads to improving older people’s experiences of care.

What are you reading at the moment?

True Tales of American Life edited by Paul Auster -- a fascinating collection of short stories all revolving around anecdotes that were written by listeners to a radio show in the States.

I am also dipping into Pennine Way because, one evening in the pub, I committed to walk it.

(c) Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2011

This article was first published in the Jessica Kingsley Publishers Social Work Newsletter in December 2009

Possibly related articles

• Elderly care: Where now for the NHS?, by Helen Briggs, BBC News, February 15, 2011
• Gordon Jack [Interview], Conversations with Writers, March 12, 2011
• OECD: huge elderly care bill threatens family ties, By Tim Ross, The Telegraph, May 22, 2011

[Interview] Gordon Jack

Gordon Jack is Reader in Social Work at Durham University. He has more than 30 years' experience in social work practice, education and research with children and families.

His work includes The Missing Side of the Triangle assessing the importance of family and environmental factors in the lives of children (2003, Barnardo's); Child and Family in Context: Developing Ecological Practice in Disadvantaged Communities (2007, Russell House) and Hitting the Ground Running: The survival guide for newly-qualified child and family social workers (2010, Jessica Kingsley Publishers).

In this interview, Gordon Jack talks about the challenges faced by newly qualified social workers:

How did you first become involved in social work?

I think I probably have to blame my mother for that. I come from a family of five children, but despite the demands that this obviously placed on her, my mother has always found time to do regular voluntary work with disadvantaged or vulnerable groups of children and adults as well. I suppose this is where the seeds of my future social work career were sown.

What inspired you to write your new book The Survival Guide for Newly Qualified Child and Family Social Workers: Hitting the Ground Running?

I had been involved in social work education for many years, so I was well aware of the difficulties social workers face in the early stages of their carers, when they are trying to manage the pressures of their day-to-day work at the same time as continuing their professional development.

Together with Helen Donnellan, I was responsible for the delivery of a post-qualifying child care social work programme in the far south west of England, and we were interested in finding out more about how newly qualified practitioners were coping during the transition from student to established professional. Having completed the study, which involved a series of interviews with social workers (and their managers), we realized that the results carried a number of important messages, and that there were very few resources available to help newly qualified social workers in the early stages of their careers. The book is intended to fill this gap in the literature.

What do you think are the main challenges currently facing newly qualified child and family social workers?

The social workers in our study told us that the transition from the protected environment of being a student to that of a qualified worker was often extremely challenging, at both a professional and a personal level. In particular, they found it difficult to cope with the change from an emphasis on developing their learning and achieving best practice as a student, to the demands of heavy workloads and an emphasis on meeting deadlines and seemingly endless record-keeping (often involving cumbersome IT systems) as a qualified worker.

Whilst help with the practicalities of managing individual cases through supervision was appreciated, many newly qualified staff found that the need for critical reflection on their practice, as well as recognition of the emotional demands of the job and the importance of continuing professional development, were not so well recognised.

If you could give a newly qualified social worker one piece of advice what would it be?

I think it is important for newly-qualified social workers to understand that they won't be able to develop a successful and satisfying career, in which they can make a sustained and positive contribution to the well-being of the children and families they are working with, unless they make sure that they look after themselves.

It is also important that their employers are providing appropriate supervision and support arrangements and opportunities for continuing professional development that recognize the person within the developing professional.

(c) Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2011

This article was first published in the Jessica Kingsley Publishers Social Work Newsletter in November 2009

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• Zoë van Zwanenberg [Interview], Conversations with Writers, February 11, 2011
• Munro review: we need less bureaucracy, more social work, by Professor Sue White, Guardian Professional, February 7, 2011
• The challenges for social work by Simon Duffy [Guest Blog ~ Personalisation], Be Inspired!, May 22, 2010

[Interview] Zoë van Zwanenberg

Zoë van Zwanenberg is director of Zwan Consulting and project coordinator for the Centre for Confidence and Well-Being.

She is also the author of Leadership in Social Care (2009, Jessica Kingsley Publishers).

In this interview, she talks about her work:

How did you first become involved in social care?

I first became involved through my work with the National Health Service in the UK, where I was head of organizational development and I was involved in developing partnership working at a strategic level. When I then moved on to become chief executive of the Scottish Leadership Foundation, I was asked to undertake a study into leadership and management challenges in social care and support the development of a national approach to leadership development for the sector in Scotland.

What do you think are the main challenges currently facing social care practitioners and managers?

The current financial situation is going to give double pressures to both practictioners and managers, demand for services is likely to increase as demographics increase the elderly population, and unemployment and debt add problems for children and families. At the same time, budgets for service provision are going to be squeezed -- practitioners and managers are going to have be to be very focused about focusing provision without loss of quality and relationships with partner agencies are going to become even more important.

These are leadership and management challenges for practitioners and managers.

Clarity of purpose, clear direction, standards and focus on outcomes will have to drive work, with relationships as the key ingredient.

Why are leadership and place-based development so important in social care?

If we see leadership as being about clarity of purpose/outcome and the ability to align different individuals to a shared vision of what that should be, this is clearly core to the work of social care staff, as they work with individuals and families to enable them to achieve the best that is possible.

Place is, in my view, critical as the particular circumstances and context for each family and individiual are an essential element of understanding their issues and their ambitions. Work with individuals and famillies is never context free, and ensuring that we have a clear focus on place and on ensuring that work is specific in that way, we are more likely to be able to set realistic amibitons and align services to meet those desires.

The issues are different if you are working with a family in an inner city sink estate to if you are working with a family on a remote island, and these two extremes are just the outer ends of the spectrum. We need to work at all points along the spectrum and to understand what the impact of the differences are on both what we do and how we do it.

Could you tell us about the Centre for Confidence and Well-Being?

The Centre for Confidence and Well-Being was established in December 2004. Originally set up as a company limited by guarantee it was later granted charitable status on educational grounds.

The Centre's mission is to help bring about a transformation in Scottish culture so that it supports more:

• Optimism (for self, others and Scotland),
• Self-belief (an important ingredient in "can-do" attitudes),
• A "growth mindset" (essential for people to realize their potential),
• Resilience ( required in helping people keep going when life is difficult),
• Positive energy (essential for relationships, team working and collaboration),
• Sense of purpose/meaning (important for motivation and well-being),
• Giving (an antidote to a "me" centered world and a source of personal energy and inspiration), and
• Wisdom (important for leadership, good decision-making and for advancing the confidence agenda).

The Centre's work is guided by the following principles:

• Creative and entrepreneurial,
• Positive and optimistic,
• Rigorous in our approach,
• Values led/committed, and
• Guided by common sense.

The Centre has a history of providing the following:

• Robust research,
• Reports and documents that can influence policy and policy makers,
• Reports, documents and books that are user focused and accessible to the general public,
• Seminars and conferences that bring together leading edge research with issues of practical application, and
• Management and delivery of multiple projects.

The Centre works with a small core group of professional staff supported by a range of specialist associates. The Centre has well developed web resources to support its work and a dedicated secretariat team.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare-time?

I am chair of Scottish Ballet and the arts are my real love, so I spend much of my time listening to music, reading, going to ballet, opera, concerts and theatre and art galleries. With what time is left, I work in the garden, sew and spend time with friends travelling, mainly in Europe.

(c) Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2011

This article was first published in the Jessica Kingsley Publishers Social Work Newsletter in October 2009

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• Reforms will make cash tills ring and leave us all the poorer [Opinion], By Gail Adams, Nursing Times, February 11, 2011
• In social care, leadership is not always top-down, by Louise Hunt , The Guardian, March 16, 2010
• Jan Horwath [Interview], Conversations with Writers, December 27, 2010

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[Interview] Mike Stein

Mike Stein is a research professor in the Social Policy Research Unit at the University of York.

He has researched the problems and challenges faced by young people leaving care for 25 years and has published extensively in the field. He has also been consulted by government, local authorities and voluntary organisations on the development of leaving care services in the UK and internationally.

His books include What Works for Young People Leaving Care? (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004); Leaving Care: Throughcare and Aftercare in Scotland (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005); Young People's Transitions from Care to Adulthood: International Research and Practice (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2008) and Quality Matters in Children's Services: Messages from Research (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2009).

How did you first become involved in researching the challenges faced by young people living in, and leaving care?

I was working as a lecturer in applied social studies at Leeds University in 1978 and was asked by two social workers if I would help them to run a group for young people in care, the Leeds Ad-Lib group. They wanted someone from ‘outside’ of social services and I agreed.

I had, in the late 60s and early 70s, worked in probation, and then a children’s and social services department.

At my first meeting of Ad-lib, the topic was ‘leaving care’ and one young person asked, "What is it like after you leave care, where do you live, who will help you?"

There was silence from everyone in the room.

I thought I will go away and read up on this, but I couldn’t find anything at all.

As a group, we invited young people who had recently left care to come and talk about their lives after care – which proved both helpful and disturbing. And, in view of the lack of literature, I decided to write a research proposal to the ESRC which led to the first English study, published as Leaving Care (Stein and Carey) in 1986.

Since that time I have had continual funding and excellent staff researching the experiences, services and outcomes of young people as they make their journey from care to adulthood. Most recently this has included our international work Young People’s Transitions from Care to Adulthood: International Research and Practice.

What are the challenges faced by those providing services for young people living in and leaving care today?

The main challenges facing those responsible for providing services are:

• First, providing all young people in care with the stability and continuity in their lives in order to enhance their well-being;
• Second, that young people have opportunities to maximize their potential - personally, socially, educationally - given their often very poor starting points on entry to care;
• Third, to ensure that they have more gradual and supported transitions from care to adulthood, more akin to the journey travelled by most young people – most of whom stay around the parental home until their mid 20s, and can still rely on their families for support (I have white hair to prove this!); finally, that young people, wherever they are living, have a more consistent high quality service – that they are not the victims of territorial injustices which may result in inequalities in life chances.

How do you think the media representation of social work and social care is affecting the profession?

Some of the ‘media representation’ is a gross ‘misrepresentation’. For example, the view of the state as an ‘awful parent’, reinforced by much of the press and recent television coverage, is a gross over-simplification which is not only wrong but also contributes to the circumstances in which vulnerable children may be put at greater risk by being left in their families. This simplistic view devalues and stigmatizes young people who live in care, as well as those who care for them. It may also make it more difficult to attract and recruit social workers to this very important work.

Research studies we have carried out during the last 25 years show that despite their very poor starting points, some care leavers will successfully ‘move on’ from care and achieve fulfilment in their personal lives and careers; a second group will ‘survive’ and do quite well, given assistance from skilled leaving-care workers: they may also move on successfully but it often takes longer. This leaves a third highly vulnerable group of young people who have a range of complex mental health needs and will require skilled assistance into, and during, adulthood.

Crude outcome statistics which are used to condemn the state in blanket fashion fail to recognise the progress made by young people, including major achievements, such as getting back into education after many years, furthering leisure interests and vocational skills, and, often for the first time, developing consistent, positive and trusting relationships with adults. But no outcome boxes to tick!

Can you tell me about your recent work, Quality Matters in children’s services: Messages from Research?

There has been a lot of attention paid to indicators and outcome measures in children’s services. But the quality of services has received far less priority – even though a body of research findings shows that the quality of care received by children and young people – the quality of relationships with their carers, and those that make those relationships happen - is strongly associated with their future well-being.

The Overview captures the learning from nine research studies focusing on very different topics. Each chapter includes: a discussion of the main findings; examples of promoting quality drawn from practice; the key implications for policy and practice; a summary of the integrated working issues arising from the research; and finally, questions for children’s services, identified at a strategic, operational and practice level.

The final chapter brings together those findings that either go across the nine studies, or have wider implications for the development of quality children’s services. This includes a discussion of the aims of children’s services, the quality of care and well-being, and social work practice and quality services. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how those working in children’s service can ‘make quality’ happen by: identifying and sustaining quality; collecting and modelling systematic data; carrying out quality assessments; developing integrated working; having coherent policies, procedures and processes; and, training and workforce issues.

What was the last book you read and what are you reading at the moment?

I often dip into books, especially about cricket, politics, beer and jazz – I play jazz piano, badly, drink real ale well, and the main side I support is my local Pudsey St. Lawrence cricket team!

I am currently reading two books, Towards the Light by A. C. Grayling which is about the struggles for liberty and rights. My son bought me this to assist with a social history I am writing, about the rights movement for young people in care.

I am also reading, Walking the Brittany Coast by Judy Smith, as I love walking, and am in year five of doing just that!

(c) Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2010

This article was first published in the Jessica Kingsley Publishers Social Work Newsletter in June 2009

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