9 - Learning from contemporary experience: reflections on the examples from across the UK

Summary

Introduction

Chapters 5–8 have offered five very different examples of practice from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England. This chapter will look at what they can tell us about what is happening on the ground and what the potential might be for further developments of community social work (CSW), as well as, given the separation made in this book, how they might encourage community-orientated practice. It looks at commonalities, that is, factors found across the board that might be considered crucial to such developments, as well as others that mark out difference, with some explanation about why they might have emerged. This includes funding mechanisms and their effect on sustainability.

Common factors for creating CSW

The first thing that might strike the reader of Chapters 5–8 is that although the five initiatives or examples of practice that are described fit with policy in their respective nations (see later), all were the result of individual inspiration that was picked up by others and carried forward. The individuals involved, whether they were initial drivers or joiners, would all subscribe to values of social justice and a wish to make the communities they work in better places than they found them. All were, to various degrees, unhappy with the models of service delivery that have become embedded in practice: care management and models concerned mainly with risk. In Fife, Torfaen and Carmarthenshire, the bureaucratic requirements of employing organisations have been adapted and reworked so that they are a means rather than an end in themselves. It is refreshing to find that individuals willing to stand up to and challenge accepted but quite obviously flawed orthodoxies can be found at all levels within organisations responsible for statutory service – from the front line to senior management (the Leeds and Northumbria models of assessment mentioned in Chapter 3 offer imaginative ways forward even if not part of a CSW model). The workers in all the settings described are proud of what they do and care very much for their communities and the people they work alongside.