At the annual GSCC conference today. As one of the final speakers implied by identifying herself as a registered social worker thus distinguishing herself from all the other speakers, one increasingly wonders whether anyone associated with telling social workers what their job is and how it should be done has ever actually done the job themselves. They have a newish director who is a former civil servant (are we to regard the social care professional registration body as just another civil service job?) and a director of strategy who realised the problem. He concealed what he was a director of in the two councils he worked for, presumably not of anything to do with social work, because of how he described his job in a glorious example of what John Harris calls businessology, that is turning everything that isn’t business into business. This is it: ‘[Mick Lowe] is responsible for helping to set the organisation’s strategic direction through policy development, business planning, legal services, communications and business development’.

The wonders of social work were revealed by a television producer advertising herself by showing excerpts from tomorrow night’s television programme about a deprived child and his trying-hard-to-cope mother, avoiding showing what the social workers actually did, presumably because it was confidential. Any social worker could show you a dozen such people, and this presentation as part of the major conference of the professional registration body discredits the GSCC. Here it is, speaking to the people it registers and whose professional value it is supposed to uphold and it gets a television producer who has nothing to say to advertise her wares to people who are actually doing the job.

Another thing about this conference is that it is free if you apply early enough (and inaccessible if you don’t); as one of the attenders said to me: ‘how much of our registration fee is going on this?’ Another attender said to me that this was the only training event that she was going to this year, as her local authority allocated no money to staff development, and here is the GSCC promoting staff development as a basic requirement for professional practice, with this and that programme and set of requirements. So what is it doing about the benighted attitude of many local authority employers to training and professional development? And the lack of money that the government is putting into social care professional development? If you work in the NHS, continued education is taken for granted and funded: why is social care different? I met another group who missed the minister’s speech because their local authority let them come, but wouldn’t agree to fund peak rail fares. Well I suppose that’s business for you.

Harris, J. (2003) ‘Businessology’ and Social Work, Social Work and Society 1(3): http://www.socwork.net/2003/1/debate/400/index_html/?searchterm=Harris

In a session (the GSCC conference) on PQ education we were regaled with all the latest schemes, but these are all about GSCC delivering for the government advanced training doing what the government wants social workers to do. None of this is directed towards the development of specialisms such as palliative care social work. A forensic social worker raised this from the audience, one of the more dangerous and complex areas of social work, but not economic for the GSCC to tackle. I had a private word with Graham Ixer and the answer was the same on palliative care social work. A competent GSCC would be looking at education in the most complex areas of the profession, as well as doing what the government says.

Inevitably a session (GSSC conference again) on personalisation; again no social workers actually speaking; apparently only policy wonks can be trusted to be on message. Obviously true, since the guy who said what a lot of people were thinking was just ignored. But it is true that this shows every sign of being just another fad, dreamed up by people from Demos to implement new Labour thinking in these benighted social services. Where is the real money to enable a hugely increased number of people to have real choice and real control over their lives?

Interesting article in today’s Family section of the Guardian, which describes children’s various reactions to the death of their pet: ‘I don’t mind if Wilson is dead, but can I keep him to stroke?’ ‘Do you mean you’re just throwing him away’ ‘I suppose you’ll put me down if I get ill, too’.

Interesting feature in the Guardian (G2) about older women who die from anorexia, usually seen as a young woman’s illness, often about being in control when things seem out of control. ‘A place of safety from adult life,’ is one judgement. Is death the ultimate placxe of safety? – usually approaching death is about uncertainty. Or is a lifetime of denying oneself food, also denying something about oneself?
Hilpern, K. (2008) A lifetime of denial. The Guardian (G2) 29.04.08: 6-9.

News today that death rates in women under 50 have stopped falling and may even br rising probably because obesity is leading to higher rates of heart disease and diabetes. BBC News item: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7375941.stm

All the news about Herr Fritzl’s ‘cellar family’ has led a French woman to say she was raped and abused by her father for years, so it’s not just an Austrian habit. Of course this is true, and it makes me even more keen to make sure colleagues visiting people at home keep their eyes open for child abuse, even if their main role is end of life care. We are all responsible.