Talk on personalisation, social justice, citizenship, individual service design and the welfare state. Given to MSc and BSc student social workers at Huddersfield University, November 2014.

1. Social Work and
Personalisation
talk by Simon Duffy for social work students at
Huddersfield University, 10th November 2014

2. Know how to take things. Never
against the grain, though they’re
handed to you that way. There
are two sides to everything. If you
grab the blade, the best thing will
do you harm; the most harmful
will defend you if you seize it by
the hilt.
Baltasar Gracian

3. Agenda
9.15 Introduction - some personal background
9.45 Exercise on individual service design
10.30 The reality of social services
11.00 Break
11.15 Exploring key concepts for social work - a bit philosophical
12.45 Lunch
1.45 Exercise on creativity in individual service design
2.00 What you need to know - a bit practical
3.15 Discussion
3.45 Break
4.00 Social work and the welfare state today - a bit political
5.15 Finish

4. Dr Simon Duffy

5. Photos from “Christmas
in Purgatory”

6. Citizenship model

7. Personalised support

8. Keys to
citizenship

9. Self-directed
support

10. Personal budget

12. an exercise in
individual
service design

13. You have had a serious
car accident. It has left
you with significant
disabilities, including some
brain damage. You will
need help with many daily
activities and help to make
some decisions.
1. Who will help represent you?
2. What will you do with your life?
3. Who will support you?
4. Where will you live?
5. How much will your support cost?
Work in pairs
and discuss
You are still the same
person, with all the same
interests and preferences
and you still have all the
relationships you had
before.

14. 160
120
80
40
0
Who will represent you?
Network Professional

15. 100
75
50
25
0
What will you do with your life?
FT Work PT Work Vol. Work Education Love

16. 160
120
80
40
0
Who will help you?
Natural PA Service Voluntary

17. 140
105
70
35
0
Where will you live?
Family Friends Alone Service

18. 30
22.5
15
7.5
0
How much will your support cost per year?
0 <10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60 60-100 >100
figures are in £1,000 per year

19. How important will the people in your be life now?
120
90
60
30
0
More Less Unsure Same

20. 50
37.5
25
12.5
0
Will you be happy?
Yes No Not Sure

21. Freedom Network 76 Prof. 10
Life FT 10 PT 60 Vol. 11 Educ. 53 Love 13
Help Natural 94 PA 71 Service 48 Vol. 10
Home Family 76 Friends 3 Alone 4 Service 1
People More 67 Less 2 Unsure 9 Same 6
Happy Yes 39 No 20 Unsure 30

22. Social work in practice

24. The relative risk by different environments

31. We spend people’s money for them
on things they wouldn’t buy for themselves

32. English data 2003-2005, first In Control pilot

34. How do social workers in adult social care
use their time?

35. Mostly on assessment
and planning…

38. 44 women with complex needs

39. Of 44 women working with WomenCentre:
Managing a serious health condition 64%
Finding a safer place to live 27%
Living with childhood abuse 51%
Didn’t finish their education 76%
Recent experience of domestic violence 85%
Fractured family (for those with young families) 66%
Children have experienced abuse (for those with children) 55%
Living with a severe level of mental illness 55%
Living with some mental illness 91%
History of drug or alcohol misuse 52%
Victim of crime 41%
Perpetrator of crimes 39%
Worried by debt or lack of money 65%

40. Service label N Urgent problem N Real need N
Victim of
domestic violence 55 Debt 50 Better self-esteem 64
Mentally Ill 39 Housing 48 To overcome past
trauma 54
Criminal 35 Benefits 46 To manage
current trauma 51
Poor Mother 33 Health 37 To stop being
bullied 50
Misuses Alcohol 24 Rent 32 Guidance 50
Uses Drugs 22 Criminal Justice
Advocate 24 Relationship skills 45
Violent 19 Dentistry 8 Mothering skills 26
Chronic Health
Condition 16 Others 3 Others 1

41. Exploring key
concepts

42. • What’s wrong with the Professional Gift
Model?
• What does personalisation really
mean?
• What’s the difference between
personal or individual budgets?
• Why invent self-directed support?
• What is citizenship and Independent
Living?
• Why we need rights as well as needs?
• What are the keys to citizenship?
• What is social work?
Exploring the
meaning of key
words and
concepts.

43. 1. The Justice Problem

44. Honour can exist anywhere, love can exist
anywhere, but justice can exist only among
people who found their relationships upon it.
Ursula Le Guin

45. All social values - liberty and opportunity,
income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect
- are to be distributed equally unless
an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these
values is to everyone's advantage.
John Rawls

46. Equality of income is
important, but it is even
more important that we
treat each other as equals:
whatever our differences.

47. 2. The Institution

48. At the age of 23 I visited
an institution. The
experience was life
changing. I wondered:
• What a dreadful
place!
• What amazing people!
• How come I’ve never
met anyone with a
disability before now?

49. The long history of
institutionalisation,
abuse and the
Holocaust reveals that
we are capable of great
evil, especially when:
• We are frightened
• We find a scapegoat
• We dehumanise our
intended victim.

52. 3. The Phoney Community

53. Sometimes we just replaced the institution with
another institution, but without the park.

54. Services come as a ‘professional gift’ which the
person cannot shape or control.

55. There are eight levels in charity, each level
surpassing the other. The highest level beyond
which there is none is a person who supports a
Jew who has fallen into poverty [by] giving him
a present or a loan, entering into partnership
with him, or finding him work so that his hand
shall be fortified so that he will not have to ask
others [for alms]. Concerning this [Leviticus
25:35] states “You shall support him, the
stranger, the resident, and he shall live among
you.” Implied is that you should support him
before he falls and becomes needy.
Maimonides

56. The power and control
given to those who help can
become toxic.
The challenge for our
society is to find out how to
support each other without
degrading each other.

57. 4. Innovations & Ideas

58. Personalisation
Does that word
actually add
anything?
I can’t see that
it has a helpful
meaning.

59. Real and valuable
innovations emerge as
people, inspired by
values and visions, craft
thoughtful solutions for
real problems.

61. Self-directed support and
individual (or personal)
budgets was an effort to
shift the whole system
towards the citizenship
model by converting
services into entitlements.

63. In reality the shift towards
‘personalisation’ has been
undermined by its ambiguity
and by the lack of real
power or effective legal
rights for disabled people.

64. 5. Equality, Diversity &
Citizenship

65. We are different and we are
equal. And our differences
are good - in fact they are
essential for a decent
society. So why do we find
it so hard to reconcile
difference and equality?

66. “How could men be
equal in the eyes of
God and yet unequal
in the eyes of the
Psychologist?”
Michael Young in
The Rise of the
Meritocracy

67. The most promising ways for a society to avoid
widespread differences in self-esteem would be to
have no common weighting of dimensions; instead it
would have a diversity of different lists of dimensions
and weightings. This would enhance each person’s
chance of finding dimensions that some others also
think important, along which he does reasonably well,
and so to make a non-idiosyncratic favourable
estimate of himself.
Robert Nozick, Anarchy State and Utopia

69. We do not have to acquire humility.
There is humility in us.
Only we humiliate ourselves
before false gods.
Simone Weil

70. Citizenship is not about having
some common property like a
certain kind of brain or a
passport. Citizenship is the way
in which we come together to
make sure that we all belong
and know we belong.

71. Aristotle explains that
a community is not
made out of equals,
but on the contrary of
people who are
different and unequal.
The community
comes into being
through equalising,
'isathenai.' [Nich.
Ethics 1133 a 14]
Hannah Arendt

73. We create equality
between us by creating a
universal framework of
rights, duties and
freedoms. But citizenship
demands more than just
‘equal rights’.

74. We must create practical
solutions to support and
enhance citizenship for all:
1. Planning
2. Decision-making
3. Money
4. Housing
5. Help
6. Community
7. Relationships

75. The keys to
citizenship are
the practical
social
conditions of
self-respect
and dignity.

76. 6. Needs, Wealth & Rights

77. Needs are important. But many needs cannot
be met unless people are able to meet their
needs for themselves.

78. And if we do focus on meeting other people’s
needs for them we can undermine capacity.

79. Pippa Murray has
developed a model of
‘real wealth’ or
capabilities:
1. Resources
2. People
3. Community
4. Gifts
5. Spirit

80. You could no more
make a city out of
paupers than out
of slaves.
Aristotle

81. 7. Next steps

82. We are beginning a
new phase of thinking
and action, one which
demands:
1. A focus on real and
effective legal rights
2. Less jargon and more
commonsense
3. Organised political
power to challenge
and direct.

83. Although we keep ‘taking the institution with
us’ we can still make progress. The final stage
means tackling the institutions of the mind - our
prejudices.

84. Not only must we close
down the community
institutions we must
also start to reduce the
problems built into our
welfare system.

86. We need to
redesign the
welfare system
so that it
supports and
sustains
citizenship,
family and
community for
everyone.

87. Social workers are key
agents of positive change.
But they will need to
develop their role in the
coming phase of
development.

88. Social work’s
business is
citizenship and
justice.
Its field is large
and exciting.

89. Christ does not call his benefactors loving or charitable. He calls them
just. The Gospel makes no distinction between the love of our
neighbour and justice. In the eyes of the Greeks also a respect for Zeus
the suppliant was the first duty of justice. We have invented the
distinction between justice and charity. It is easy to understand why.
Our notion of justice dispenses him who possesses from the obligation
of giving. If he gives, all the same, he thinks he has a right to be
pleased with himself. He thinks he has done good work. As for him who
receives, it depends on the way he interprets this notion whether he is
dispensed from all gratitude, or whether it obliges him to offer servile
thanks.
Only the absolute identification of justice and love makes the co-existence
possible of compassion and gratitude on the one hand, and
on the other, of respect for the dignity of affliction in the afflicted - a
respect felt by the sufferer himself and the others.
Simone Weil

90. What questions
should we ask?

91. do you know
about
advocacy
this in
confidence
what do you
want to do with
your life
what do you
know of your
rights
What is
important to
you
what do you
expect of me
can you
manage…
What are
priorities
What do you
need to live
independently
how are
you…
what would you
like to be doing
in the future
Who is
important to
you
what about
your money?
what support
do you already
have

92. fruitful questions flow from an understanding of your purpose
there is no tool for creativity other than your whole humanity

93. Making citizenship real

95. What is the point of our
work?
If we are not helping each
other to be citizens what
are we doing?

96. What is citizenship ?

97. Citizenship can sound very
grand, but it’s a simple idea:
We’re all equal
We’re all different
& the best society is one
where we all work together to
respect and value everyone

98. Citizenship is also very
practical
Everyone can be a citizen
Everyone can contribute
& the best support
strengthens
citizenship for all

99. 1. Purpose
• Citizen’s have a sense of
purpose - a meaningful life
• People’s sense of meaning
has many sources
• We must listen and look for
meaning in the right places
• We each have purpose - we
just don’t always know it

101. Nan & Direction

103. This is not
person centred planning

104. Help & Connect in Newcastle

105. 2. Freedom
• People have a right to be free
• But we need relationships with
others to be free
• We need to provide help with
information, communication
and good representation
• A man in a desert is not free -
he’s just alone

110. 3. Money
• People need the resources
necessary to be citizens
• The chance to earn and save
• Money for services is really
the person’s entitlement
• People only do things for us
for love or money - why not
have both?

112. John-Paul & Money

116. 4. Home
• People need a home of their
own
• That means living with the
people we want to
• Safe, secure and private
• Going into a home - means
losing your home

119. Then the old Vainamoinen put this into words:
“Strange food goes down the wrong way
even in good lodging;
in his land a man's better at home loftier.
If only sweet God would grant
the kind creator allow
me to come to my own lands
the lands where I used to live!
Better in your own country
even water off your sole
than in a foreign country
honey from a golden bowl.”
From the Finnish epic poem: The Kalevala

120. 5. Help
• Citizens need help - its not
independence that build
community but dependence
• But help must be good help
• Supporters need to
understand what good help
demands
• If you need nobody you're no
use to anybody

123. Individualise Everything

124. Choice Support & Southwark
Council achieved over a 5 year
period a saving of 30% in the cost
cutting up the block contract into
personal budgets and treating each
person as an individual, using
technology and cutting central and
salary costs.

131. 6. Life
• Life is made by living
• Work, play, volunteering and
having fun
• Life happens in community
• But it really matters that you
are in the right community for
you

136. The lame rides a horse
the maimed drives the herd
the deaf is brave in battle.
A man is better
blind than buried.
A dead man is deft at nothing.
A Viking Poem from the Havamal

137. 7. Love
• We all need love - life without
love is hell
• Love comes in many forms
• We need to understand how to
nurture and encourage love
• Love is what creates
citizenship and new citizens

139. Margaret & Love

143. In order to create there
must be a dynamic force,
and what force is more
potent than love?
Igor Stravinsky

145. 1.Get good at listening for direction
2.Build relationships that liberate
3.Get clear about entitlements
4.Respect and deepen roots
5.Be flexible - in the extreme
6.Get stuck into community
7.Look out for love

146. Social and
political
realities

148. [The ill-fated
Pruitt-Igoe
housing project]
Government
doesn’t always
know best

160. Justice lives in poverty.
She survives. She measures
What is necessary.
She honours what ought to be honoured.
She seeks out clean hearts, clean hands.
She knows what wealth and power
Grind to dust between them. She knows
Goodness and the laws of heaven.
Aeschylus