The tele prog about the Reverend Exoo and his friends who sit with (and encourage?) people while they commit suicide (see 12th May) presents a very ambiguous picture of an enthusiast for assisted dying who does not see the ambivalence and uncertainty in people. Worrying that controversy about assisted dying produces more enthusiasts like this.

Every time I come to this part of the world (Opole conference), I am struck by the importance of the Romanies as a community of concern for Balkan and central European countries. The word is often translated as gypsies or travellers, but Romanies are an important ethnic minority in many European countries. A really quite passionate paper from Dr Piotr Sikora from Opole University on a lot of things but I focused on how services have been provided to achieve what political and professional opinion says is needed, better education, rather than focusing on what the Romany community might want, which could well be more support for family living. I would guess also that developing employment that Romanies can use to reduce their poverty and working to develop more creative family life might well eventually lead to a demand for and achievement of better education. However, targeting services on the problems that the government worries about does not work unless you also respond to what the people you are trying to help need. I suspect better healthcare would also help, but this was not the focus of this conference.

Among the UK contingent (Opole conference) are representatives of Garth Care Homes in the Midlands. The proprietor is here mainly talking about care and training for care home staff. You can tell this is good because she has turned up with two colleagues who are obviously along for the educational experience and do not have to give a paper; not a lot of proprietors or indeed NHS, social care or university organisations would be so open to giving staff experiences. They have developed supported housing, day and domiciliary care and a range of other supports in their area alongside a fairly small care home. This is what we hoped for when creating the community care system in the 1980s and ’90s; it is significant that she and her husband are social workers, although of course they employ a lot of, obviously quite impressive, nursing staff. The nursing influence, with its emphasis on physical care in a residence has not done well for the care home sector.

To Poland for a conference at Opole University on Adult Services in the EU, which rounds off an EU project in which St Christopher’s and Trinity Hospice and some others have been taking Polish students, mainly of social pedagogy. This is the form of European social work that the UK does not have, although periodically some administrator or politician finds out about it and thinks we should introduce it, Currently, they are thinking about this again in DCSF (the Department of Children, Schools and Families). However, there are also things like rehabilitation pedagogy, which can add to thinking about social care for adults. I suppose the question is whether you need to create a whole new profession and a lot of divisions, when the Anglo-American form of social work is still the main one worldwide.

However, it is interesting that Opole University have picked up the idea of adult services as a topic. The subjects of the conference also raise a few interesting topics: there’s a paper on anti-discriminatory practice in relation to Romanies, and material on skills development and education in counselling-type interventions. We are in a university conference centre, a charming and historic Polish castle, where a saint was born, and which shares its campus with a health spa, where you can do all sorts of hydrotherapy. This apparently is mainly frequented by visiting Germans.

I do my paper today (Opole conference) and get carted off for an interview with Opole radio on how the UK arranges for care for older people, in particular whether they have to pay. Answer yes, and they don’t like it because it runs down their capital and they sometimes have to sell their house, or at least they fear that. It almost makes older people refugees from the community in which they have lived for so many years. I also think that the UK system sees people as individuals paying for individual care, whereas much of the reaction is actually because people see themselves as part of families, and they see it as the family’s house and the family money. However, I don’t say this because I think this is too complicated for a translated interview on Polish radio.

Pic of the pavilion lawn, St Christopher's Hospice, last year

The Guardian has an extended feature today about a Reverend Exoo who is helping people to commit suicide by staying with them while they do it (‘I make it look like they died in their sleep’ Jon Ronson, Guardian 2: 4-6). It seems there is going to be a tele prog on his activities next week. The article raises some of the questions about assisted dying, particularly helping people to get through depression and psychiatric illness, rather than accepting at face value an expressed wish to die. Exoo seems, by the manner of his involvement, not to accept and respond to the ambivalence of many of the people who talk about committing suicide but do not want to fulfil their talk.

Pic of the entrance to St Christopher's Hospice

Another edition of SCLondon (http://www.socialcarelondon.co.uk/home.aspx), now the fourth issue, falls into my inbasket; published by a former BASW worthy, John Buttle, who has also worked for Care and Health, the website and former magazine publisher . SCLondon is mainly about training and getting training money, seems to be for independent (ie private sector) providers. A world of jargon here, expecially because this edition is about getting EU grants. As yet mainly an advertising glossy.

A pic of the St Christopher's Education Centre, last year.

I see the new guy whose job is to try to make people aware of NHS management research from the Service Delivery and Organisation (SDO) Programme of the NHS is called a Director of Knowledge Mobilisation. I am putting this up for the prize for silly NHS-speak job titles, but actually they have a good newsletter and website with lots of research information and reports about how to organise healthcare services better: http://www.sdo.lshtm.ac.uk.

Joan Rapaport joan.rapaport@kcl.ac.uk of the Social Work History Network (anyone can join and get emails) draws my attention a new book on the history of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at the University of St Louis Missouri: http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/11620.html . One of the best known schools of social work in the world.

Although known to the general public as a founder of the National Trust, Octavia Hill was one of the most famous founders of social work, associated with the controversial policies of the London Charity Organisation Society. Today there is an interesting article in the Guardian by Tristram Hunt on how her helping policies connected with her environmental work – basically about the importance of open space for dignity and respect for working class people. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/06/past.housing