'Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans' - John Lennon

The tragic events unfolding in Oslo this weekend remind me of the great responsibilities that can fall to Directors of Social Work when we least expect them to.

I can picture some of the terrible activities that some of our colleagues will be doing. Opening up at the weekend, checking registers, sitting with bereaved and a larger number of worried, potentially bereaved, desperate to know if their son or daughter has been found. Helping with the management of the army of families, spectators the worlds press. Providing support for identification of fatalities, counselling of bereaved and practical rest centre management will all be underway as I write.

These terrible duties came my way twice when working for Nottinghamshire in 1989, in a period of four months. First there was the British Midland flight 92 which crashed on the M1 motorway in what became known as the Kegworth Disaster in which 47 died and 74 were injured. It was a Sunday evening and my colleague, David Whitham who ran social work at the Queens Medical Centre, saw the news on TV and drove to work just to see if there was anything he could do to help. He ended up not going home for six days and nights and being engaged with our support, for some three months.  Just as that was standing down, Nottingham Forest met Liverpool FC at Hillsborough in Sheffield on April 15th. I was Area Director for the Forest ground and we noticed in the following days that huge crowds of people were gathering in shock and distress. Apparently many of them had been booing and jeering the dying at the other end of the ground, believing that they were rioting and holding up the start of the match. Realising that this was not the case and then discovering the true horror of 96 dead was too much for many to bear. They came to their home ground, laid tributes and wandered around dazed and bewildered.

I went down to the stadium and talked to Brian Clough about it. He agreed to make some Executive boxes available to us and to open up the ground to us so we could offer a service to these 'dazed and confused' football fans. It proved to be a good arrangement as these largely male, largely unfussy people were able to get a coffee and a biscuit, then sit looking straight ahead at the football pitch and - using it as an analogue for Hillsborough could say "I was seated there, the Reds were over here, we saw them coming down....." and so on. The didn't need to offer eye contact and gradually they could talk their story out to a stranger they were not likely to see again and go home a bit brighter (and safer). For most the service was complete in a couple of weeks but for others the need was much greater and for a small few a clinical need was discovered.
Clough was not an easy man, and unlike Kenny Dalgleish he didn't want to acknowledge what he saw as 'mamby pamby fussin'. But he let us do it and was good enough to acknowledge that it had been important.

That was an incredible period when in 1988 Aberdeen had the Piper Alpha Disaster, later that same year in Dumfries and Galloway the Lockerbie Air Disaster and then in 1996 the Dunblane massacre which occurred within the last month of Central Regional Council's existence. These and other events raised the profile and importance of the welfare dimensions to emergency response and a wider acknowledgement of the damage that can be done by post traumatic stress if supposedly hard men are left to stifle their emotions.

I am sure we are all thinking of Oslo this weekend and I shall write on our behalf to Kari Skive Stuvoy, my Norwegian equivalent this week to share our solidarity and our condolences.

Andrew

"Excuse me Sir, can I have a word?"

When wandering around Glastonbury Festival in thick mud and driving rain last week, I was accosted by a BBC journalist."Excuse me Sir, can I have a word?" Saga, it transpired,  had issued a press release claiming that of 150,000 tickets sold for the festival, 15,000 had gone to over 50s. He had the nerve to ask if I was one of them and whether I would go on Radio Somerset to speak about my experience. Being me I accepted. It got me thinking about how we urgently need to promote a different view of an ageing population as a time of opportunity and older people (yes, like me) as a valuable resource. We need to shift the discourse away from 'demographic time bomb' and 'perfect storm' to a richer, fuller understanding of the largely untapped resource that the ageing baby boomers can offer Scotland as they begin to step down from full time paid employment in increasing numbers.

In Scottish Borders we held an event last week - ‘Made to Measure: Local Needs and Local Services’- using a new place-based model, based upon the Integrated Resource Framework (IRF) from Scotland and the English experience of Total Place. Services are being redesigned across the Borders, area by area, starting first in the Cheviot locality which includes Kelso, Jedburgh and surrounding areas. At this event it was striking to note the demographic of the participant attendance - the average age of those prepared to get involved - yes it was an even higher proportion than at Glastonbury.

July is going to be a very important month for ADSW. On the 14th we hold our first Executive at our new base - Verity House in Edinburgh (the new COSLA office). This will allow any members (up to 3) who need to teleconference to do so - just let Sophie know. The agenda will be out at the end of this week and will contain the Petch Report on the evidence base for effective integration in adult social care. The draft report is rich with examples and evidence - the good and the bad - and should offer you some useful arguments to take forward locally.

What follows is even more important- a report on proposals for our pitch to government on the future of adult social care. We want your careful consideration and support. The ideas within this paper have been crafted by a group led by our Vice President, Peter Macleod and offer, in my judgement, the best opportunity we have to influence government on this issue before ideas congeal into a legislative or policy programme in the autumn.

If the Executive approve the approach it will be road tested immediately when, on 15th July, I attend the Health and Social Care Integration Meeting which has been convened by Scottish Government as a congress of all leading interests to make progress on the issue. We are well placed to exert influence; we have made effective alliances with key partner agencies and I now look for your support.

Finally, I met David Brindle in Cardiff recently when representing you at the ADSS Cymru conference (good event) and berated him for planning a Guardian Public Services Summit in Scotland without seeking our involvement (who does he imagine reads The Guardian in Scotland). The agenda will examine and explore the implications for public services of a period of economic turbulence and severe spending constraint. Some of the many questions to be debated include: how can we foster innovation to reform services; is joint delivery a viable option for Scotland; can social enterprise really be a scale solution?

David was generous when challenged and I will be speaking at the event.

Andrew

What is to be done?

the 'big speech'

Slowly emerging from a weekend of sleepy lethargy following all the excitement of the last week. I hope you enjoyed Conference this year, I was pleased to see so many colleagues there and to see such good attendance at plenary sessions. I hope this means you found it as interesting as I did. I had the conference filmed and I think it would be worth cutting a few 3 minute 'You Tube' type movies to spread the news of some of the good bits - let me know what you think and I will put them on the website (or Sophie will to be fair). All the presentations from the 3 days are now avilable on the ADSW website.

In case the news hasn't reached you yet, Peter Macleod was duly elected as our new VP at the AGM and within 24 hours he gave a barnstorming speech on the ADSW Manifesto and 'what is to be done'. Peter is leading for us on the work to evidence arguments for an outcomes approach to change and he will have been as pleased as I was to hear Professor Alison Petch of IRISS giving a talk on the evidence so far. It was most impressive, especially so as her work has not been under way for more than a month. The session with Sarah Gillinson seems to have fired the imagination with her talk on Radical Efficiency. A diverse series of international examples were given from Sweden and USA to rural India and Rwanda of engaging community enterprise to delivery effective outcomes for communities. Pat Kane challenged us to answer why we have no 'public intellectuals' in the mould of Robert Winston - someone who springs from a given profession, is identified with it, but can occupy a broader public space and enter wider debates. I'm not sure that he's entirely right but there are not too many and this does have a relationship with how we are perceived. (Pat tweeted on Thursday 'Great 2 meet the social workers at ADSW Conf. Crieff.') This brings me to the session with Jon Snow; I don't know about you but he fired me up with renewed interest in new media. We have had a Facebook page for some time - Social Work Changes Lives - and Harriet has been a good contributor but we need to reconsider how we use it. Furthermore, we don't 'tweet' and yet Scottish Govt, COSLA, Holyrood and most leaders in Scotland are getting involved - even Pat Watters is now commenting in this way. I propose that we make this good and encourage our council employers to open up to this technology. Speaking of Jon, he has written to say how much he enjoyed our conference. I have tweeted the Substance Abuse research to Jon at the request of the Standing Committee and he has promised to read it and pass it on to the New Horizons Day Centre in Camden where he has been involved for nearly 40 years.

I received an email from Yvonne Robson bearing good tidings regarding the new Minister for Social Work - apparently she is a social worker - Angela Constance MSP . Angela’s Wikipedia entry says Angela Constance (born July 15, 1970) is a Scottish National Party politician andMember of the Scottish Parliament for Almond Valley (formerly Livingston) since 2007. She was born in Blackburn, West Lothian, and raised in Addiewell and West Calder. While studying at the University of Glasgow she was elected President of Glasgow University Students' Representative Council. Before her election to Holyrood, Constance worked as a social worker and was a councillor for West Lothian Council where she was the SNP spokesperson for children services and lifelong learning. She also stood for the SNP in the Livingston by-election, 2005. This is very encouraging for us and I will be looking for an early meeting. Another interesting change given the lead commissioning proposals lastFebruary, is that Shona Robison is to move from Public Health to Commonwealth Games and Sport. Her place is to be taken by Michael Matheson MSP for Falkirk West. Michael is a registered OT and we have the curious prospect of working with a social worker and an OT as our key contacts! Adam Ingram was a constant supporter of social work and in particular, Changing Lives and I wish him well, but these changes offer encouragement.

Finally, I was particularly pleased to meet three day delegates at Crieff. Bob Grieg, Roberta Christie and Aileen Hutchison. They had travelled from Leven, Fife on Wednesday to support me on the day of my big speech. We first met at Leven ATC in May 1974 when I started work for Fife SWD as a day centre instructor and I have never forgotten the lessons in life that they and their friends taught me.

Bob Grieg, Roberta Christie, Andrew Lowe and Aileen Hutchison