17. True Help is an Art: relational work in practice
Shame, pity and guilt in public policy
We want to help others. It is a natural human instinct. But how to support change in the lives of others? Can we manage the anxiety of not intervening? Can we be courageous enough to really face the problems of others and then know when and how to act. This is Relational Work.
Amy is a “relational worker”; her role is unlike any existing role within our existing welfare services. Her core skills and modus operandi cross traditional boundaries. Health problems, troubles at school, with the law, in the family or at work, a desire to make change in any area of our lives: relational practice moves across these borders.
Amy knows how to listen, to hear the person behind the problem. She knows how to be ‘relatable,’ in other words how to be herself, to bring human warmth to every inter-action without crossing inappropriate boundaries. She also knows — and this is the most challenging bit — how to support others to make their own change. Amy does not offer sympathy, she does not solve your problems for you. But she is fully engaged in the practice of change.
I see in Amy someone who deploys with ease the basic tools of the designer; tools for visioning, to create the sticky steps towards action, to have difficult conversations, to measure progress in a way that is personally meaningful.
Relational work represents a shift in power: one that puts us the citizen in charge of the change process; one that offers the citizen the skills and support to grow capabilities and flourish.
The vital ingredients are listening and relating. This is the process that allows change to happen. Then there is the content — the core role of fostering capabilities. The process is often copied but without the nurturing of capabilities, change does not happen.
Those who manage services in the welfare state have become masterful at re-badging old practice with new labels. This is a survival tactic: when money becomes scarce, we can re-name old things so they are captured in the glow of the contemporary fashion. Whether the work is good or bad funding follows.
So let me be clear Relational work is not another name for a personal worker. Relational Work is not about changing the methods of referral, joining up services or putting the ‘patient’ at the centre. These might be important but they are not sufficient. Relational work represents a shift in power: one that puts us the citizen in charge of the change process; one that offers the citizen the skills and support to grow capabilities and flourish.
The relational workers emerged from Participle. The idea came from many sources: design, social work, teaching, and health. The training is practical. You have to learn through experience, through trial and error, through facilitating real life situations. Change is the result of a shift in power and the lack of traditional professional boundaries. It isn’t for the faint heated.
‘Aren’t you colluding?’ someone asks Amy in a workshop? It’s a good question. ‘No’, Amy, responds, ‘I know where the relationship begins and ends, we are here to help you, not me, but I can still be authentic and I can still share my personal development’. Amy knows where the boundaries are. In fact she may be colluding less than the 20th century professional who promises a cure when there is none, or falls back on sympathy when some frank talking is what it really needed.
This is a way of working without hard and fast rules. It is a way of working which might seem almost fantastical in a world where we no longer trust teachers to independently assess their pupils’ abilities and where doctors refer most of their patients with non medical symptoms on to hospital at an annual cost of over £3 billion because they are so concerned about the consequences of getting it wrong, that they no longer dare rely on their professional judgement. It is certainly a way of working that many modern managers would see as risky. However, again and again, often in almost impossible circumstances I have seen how, allowing the struggling person to define their own path, with open and kind support, allows change to happen that is meaningful and lasting.
Hilary Cottam is writing a book on the future of The Welfare State to be published by Little Brown in 2018
