I had originally planned for the first blog post to be about the social work Assessed and Supported Year in Employment. However, I received and read Mark Finnis’ book: Independent Thinking: Restorative Practice.
Despite all of my best efforts and despite the never ending and never encouraging ‘to do’ list pinned to my wall, I could not put the book down and I could not stop reading out loud - what I thought to be- hilarious and insightful quotes (to the dismay of my computer engineering partner).
So, on my walk today -whist my thoughts were literally running ahead of me- I decided I would put them into writing.
Not only to help me organise my thoughts, but to help me consciously and explicitly identify the restorative and relational messages within the book, what they have meant to me, and what I have learnt about my own practice/organisation.
I’m sure you’re wondering,
‘So what?’…'tell me, why is this book so great?’... and ‘please get to the point, what has it made you think?’. Well, these questions will all be explored below.
Helpfully, Mark’s book is excellently written, he has made the text accessible and the subject approachable by balancing a conversational whilst informative tone, making the book/subject less intimidating to engage with. The books approachability helps him capture and communicate the importance and impact of relational and restorative practice (interestingly, it appears, to me, to be relational/restorative practice… in writing!!).
Mark mixes his expert academic knowledge with real life examples of restorative and relational interactions in an educational context. The conversational and nurturing tone used to explore case studies of restorative practice in action invites you to actively and critically reflect on your own practice, organisational context and relationships (with families we work with, colleagues, friends and personal family).
I have found his use of real-life examples helpful in understanding what restorative practice looks like and how I need to re-consider and re-shape my own practice moving forward... so it can resemble something more restorative!!
Although the book appears targeted to educational professionals, it does not take a lot of effort or brain power (both of which I often lack on a weekend) to apply to a children’s service and child protection context- interestingly, this exercises additionally enabled me to broaden my reflections, towards a more holistic understanding of the restorative model.
Instead of having my horse blinders on and just thinking about practice, it made me think about the impact and contribution of the wider organisation and also the wider multi-agency team.
Whilst reading this book, it stirred a few emotional moments for me- times where I had to stop and unpick what was triggered and why. Upon reflection, I wondered if it is because the topic of restorative and relational practice centres vulnerability (and the power/strength of vulnerability/uncertainty) of professional, children and families at its foundations- please go and watch Brene Brown’s documentary on the power of vulnerability and showing up… she will change your life.
It also made me reflect on what was lacking (relationally) in my last role and what impact this had not only on families, but on me personally and professional. Mark has helped me understand that we need sufficient and protected time with families to build trusting and helping relationships, and to invest in the social capital of children and their families- however, from my experience, this is becoming much more difficult due to an increase in need due to the current pandemic.
Not only that, but I also wish managers had the capacity to put our working relationships at the centre of interactions and invested in our relationship capitol.
In addition to facilitating some profound moments of restorative and relational realisations, the book triggered a more critical reflection that I had to capture on my voice notes. They went a little like this…
Firstly, having attended Mark’s training and then reading his book, it led me to ask the following question:
How do our organisations/employers expect us to challenge ourselves to put training into practice (and to be challenged by Mark in training, to be challenged by other professionals and to be challenged by families in practice) if they do not explicitly provide the support or space to do so?
As mark says high challenge + high support = changed practices and behaviours.
This reflection triangulated with my reading of Neil Thompsons book ‘Surviving and Thriving in Social Work’ where he discussed spirituality within our professional and personal world (not only religious spirituality, but our personal goals, sense of belonging/purpose, morals and wishes). For me, feeling as though I do not have the right space or support to exercise training in practice, and explicitly have the opportunity to reflect with a colleague or manager about the outcome of my attempt, dampens my professional and personal spirituality as I feel like a box ticking robot. I feel unable to provide any sort of personalised or helpful service and unable to improve my practice.
For me, moving forward (having further triangulated my reading and having watched her Netflix documentary ), I am going to take a leaf out of Brene Brown's (literal) book by being brave and vulnerable enough to show up to the arena (with the likelihood of failure and vulnerability and in increased possibility of success and growth), communicate my disappointment and the weighty disconnect between my professional values and what is happening in practice, to not only my line manager, but also the senior management team- as after all, I can’t be the only one feeling this way.
It has also made me reflect on the importance and responsibility- having read Mark’s book and attended training) to guide, integrate and as mark would say… model… relational and restorative practice.
Secondly, Social work managers and (practice/academic) educators should invest in social/relational capital with their staff and students There are so many times in the office where I did not know the face of most people within the organisation, subsequently I felt overlooked and unimportant as it felt as though they did not know we existed, yet we worked tirelessly to help families. This has only become more evident during covid- where we now don’t see our service manager and our principle social worker no longer does laps of the office floor.
Thus, it made me think, if managers and educators were to invest in our relationships not only would this ignite a sense of belonging and connectivity, but it would also help create a safe space where we can confidently and safely challenge decision making to unpick what is happening (for us and families) without triggering the enshrined defensive and blame culture that persists in social work. Instead, this approach would be investing in relational and social capital, normalising a restorative and relational culture of high challenge with high support. All of which benefits the children and families we work with, as well as us and wider society (who is really missing out here?)
But what good is a critique without suggestions anyway?
For me, social/relational capital could be built in an organisation by taking small steps, some of which have been inspired by Mark’s book. For example, invest in relationships with a quick MS teams message, ask us what we are doing over the weekend or how we plan on spending any annual leave, send an email to each team to let them know you see them working tirelessly and let them know the impact their hard work has had.
Or, even better, do what the school in Mark’s book did, ask the line managers (or in social work, ATMs) to note good practice- times when staff have gone above and beyond, times when they have persisted yet feel defeated, and times when you have appreciated them for just being there- so this could be shared every quarter with social worker either through their service manager or principle social worker. We need recognition and to feel appreciated for the work we do, we are only human- and our own families often do not understand (and cannot understand due to confidentiality) the emotional demands our profession.
Thirdly, the book has triggered questions such as:
do senior and middle managers practice restoratively and relationally with their staff? How could they practice restoratively and relationally with their staff? What would the impact be if this was done explicitly or implicitly?
And I am always drawn back to modelling.
Within Mark’s book, he discusses the importance of ‘modelling what we are teaching, or we are not teaching at all’. This has made me think about the multi-layered children services management system and how restorative/relational culture can be embedded within an organisation if modelled by ALL the management layers. This is instead of asking front line employees to attend restorative training and then placing the onus and challenge on them to implement across a team or service without providing the right level of support to embed this practice culture. Just sounds like swimming up-stream, right?
So, if we are surely to practice in a restorative and relational way as an organisation, this style of working needs to be modelled from as high as Director of Children Services and trickled down to the families we work with (or if we are Shreck- we could think of it as being restorative in all layers of the onion with the family at the centre!). See below this approach in written and image form.
Person teaches person
family >child
social worker >family
social work middle management > social worker
senior management > social work middle management
central government > senior management
society> central government
One solution I have thought of to aid middle management in modelling restorative and relational practice could be management and practitioners negotiating what supervision will look like instead of using an un-personalised and generic form (of course this will not be true for all of you, I can only speak from experience). This could help supervision become a collaborative and negotiated space- where we can invest in our relationships and confidently challenge one another (with high support)- it could feel less like a tick box exercise that could be used against us if we were to become over worked and instead would become a space to repair and explore harm and relationships. Thus, I could have confidently explored the restorative training or confidently stated I wished for it to be explored in the future.
Next, checking in and checking out circles at start and end of the week- could this be done across children services teams (Youth Engagement Workers, Family Service, Youth Offending Team, Children with Disabilities Team, Long Term Team, Leaving Care Team) – not only would this have the benefits of feeling listened to, explicitly practicing restorative and relational practice and actively strengthening our problem solving/support skills- but it will also enable us to build relationships across the children service team- this could reduce silo working, strengthen relationships across the whole service, create a better and more effective multi-agency culture and subsequently improve outcomes for children.
Finally, I have also reflected on the challenges of completing the ASYE year within a global pandemic against the principles of restorative practice (high challenge and high support as the principles of ALL good practice). This leaves me in awe of ALL of my colleagues (students, NQSWs and experienced SWs) as across services we are seeing such an increase in the way we are challenged (increase in the complexity of difficulties faced by families, increase in the number of families needing support, needing to use our time as efficiently and effectively as possible, and a reduction in the services available) and yet the support front line workers are offered appears to be fading away.
I must stress, in my experience, this reduction in support is not intentionally done, however appears to be reactional to the Covid-19 pandemic and can be impounded due to a lack of management experience/investment in supporting colleagues.
For example (in my experience at a time when the organisation was overstretched and seeing an increase in referrals), managers did not have the time to offer informal supervision, they are replying to emails whilst on a call with you, they are not offering engaging and critically reflective supervision and they are asking you to work with families that you do not have the experience for. This at times made me feel alone, unsupported and unheard when asking for support. I did not feel there was the space or time to talk about this- thus this is the importance of listening as managers (listening with the intent to understand as opposed to respond… or listening as opposed to replying to emails in the background!!)
As you can see, I was left to ponder a lot after reading Mark’s book. If you are lucky enough to have purchased and read the book- please do get in contact and let us know what it has made you reflect on, realise and want to change.
Thank you for reading!
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