Celebrating Rural Social Work Conference

11 March 2020

Working with communities in a rural setting: workshop

Facilitated by Kerry Musselbrook, Project Manager, Iriss

This parallel session ran twice with some twenty participants in each workshop. It began with a presentation by Annie Bryant, Criminal Justice Social Worker from Dumfries and Galloway on social work with Gypsy Travellers in Scotland. Annie gave a brief history and then outlined issues that will be encountered by social workers when working with people from this minority and historically oppressed group. Her knowledge base was gained from personal experience and lifelong interest in such matters, and study for her final year dissertation prior to social work qualification in 2019. Annie’s premise being that some cultural understanding and sensitivity is required for a social work practice that is both just and effective.  

She offered an example from her own current practice of a tool currently used for assessing the risk of re-offending by CJS workers: under this members of the GT community will always score highly because of their lifestyle rather than intrinsic risk itself – some adjustment is needed by workers to avoid discrimination and oppressive practice. Annie’s discussion in both sessions was followed by contributions from participants who shared real experience with members of this community, demonstrating both issues and good practice. You can read Annie’s paper with her reflections on how social workers can work well with this community. The second contribution was on the work of the Dumfries and Galloway People in Mind (PIM) organisation which works with people referred by Health professionals who have serious mental health issues across the region. Area Manager Emma Scott began with an exercise that had workshop participants thinking about their own responses to a “bad day” and then went on to describe the work of the organisation which has centres across the area and some thirty staff. She was then joined by Lori Adamson, a social work student on placement with PIM who talked of her experiences and learning. Lori talked of an occasion when she unthinkingly talked about a conversation with a user when she described being “driven crazy” – to be questioned by a listener on how she could know what it was like to be crazy – a lesson in sensitive choice of language.  Questions and contributions again centred on experiences of participants in this area of work.

The final contribution was by Colin Turbett on how the model of Community Social Work (CSW) fits with good rural practice. Colin spoke of the tradition of CSW in Scottish social work, why it has been buried by other not always positive pre-occupations, and the need to rescue it in order to promote preventative and rewarding practice that meets the needs of communities, creates connections and develops and generates capacity.  Although this is a model of use across all types of communities, it fits well with rural ones because of the nature of the social worker’s place and skills as discussed elsewhere in this conference. Policy and legislations drivers from Scottish Government have presented opportunities for such developments. The second session had some time for participants to explore this theme but there was a controversial note of caution from a senior manager present who contended that underinvestment and political interference in rural services precluded some innovations.

Colin Turbett