Relational Worker, does it resonate?
Mel Smith and I decided to use the Relational Worker paper as the starter for conversations with people in the field to explore the idea of this Substack, the legitimacy at the border of relational workers. We asked people: does it resonate?
The conversations were rich and fun. We summarise the learning into seven points.
1. System identity
Relational workers are not defined through what they do, the relating; rather to how this relating is perceived by the system. People told us they have been considered a problem due to their bending of orthodox rules of being with others who need help. When you deviate from the norm then you become, in the eyes of the system, a maverick or a rebel.
Often a problem, a maverick, a rebel; seldom a person whose relational skill gets to accompany someone else on their journey to recover their sense of self.
2. Life as it is / life as we imagine it to be
Some people commented on the schism between life as it is -which they found the paper depicted well- and life as we imagine it to be. How often we design ways to respond to need built on the latter and with little attention to the former. As one of our network members said, the role of a social worker may be constructed to deal with parenting but in the real world that may be the result of living under stress and overcrowded conditions.
Designing with a life as it is principle in mind means gazing outward, focusing on but going beyond relationships to deal with the wider set of factors that stay in the way of people living the lives they want.
3. Shifting
The paper spoke to people about several shifts that relational work demands. From pretending we can fix people, a natural, default position when we see someone in need of help, to connecting. From a systematic, comfortable way of working to one that adapts to context and is uncertain, hard, risky. From obsessing over independence to acknowledging the need for interdependence, welcoming what we all do in our private lives, that is to depend on each other when we need it.
Shifting will take time when the whole society functions in the opposite way.
4. What is professional?
The question of what it means to be professional has come up in our conversations. The behaviour of relational workers has been labeled by others working in the system as not being professional. It was not clear to them (or us) what was the standard used to make these assertions. We expect the conversation over the next period to delve into an exploration of concepts such as profession, professional, and professional conduct. What do they all mean, and what are their implications for legitimising relational work?
Just as Abraham Flexner asked in 1915, ‘Is social work a profession?’, will we be asking, Is (should) relational work (be) a profession?’
5. Power(less)
There is a myriad of power dynamics at play in relational working. Sometimes due to past hurt people who need help exert the only power they have when in contact with another, and that is to say no. No to meeting, no to sharing, no to showing who they are. The relational worker expects and knows how to navigate it. The system exerts a lot of power on relational workers who have to comply with rules and guidelines that at times sit at odds with forming healthy relationships. In turn, relational workers can feel powerless in a system that misunderstands their work, at best, and tries to control it, at worst. But in our conversations we heard about another power dimension; it’s the one that comes from knowing someone deeply, gaining knowledge about the needs and wishes of another who often has backed away from everyone, themseleves included.
The power of relational workers lies in their border position, of being granted access to understand what life as it is feels like for the person in need of help.
6. Who steps over the border, who stays, who goes
The relational workers whom Mel and I spoke talked about who stays and who goes. They referred to the existence of a ‘macho culture’, that only the strong ones manage to stay and still do their work despite the system. But at what cost? This brought us back to one of our first conversations around loss of self of relational workers. Who decides to place themselves in a context where you trade your sense of self in exchange of helping others to gain theirs?
So we ask: who steps over the border? who stays? who goes?
7. Character of relational workers
The paper deals with sets of skills that relational workers display and use in order to trigger a mechanism by which people change how they feel, think, and act. But what about the character of relational workers, those qualities that are not trained but come from previous experiences that clearly set some people apart from others, even amongst relational workers? The humility that characterises some, or their appetite for life, or humour.
Why don’t we talk more about the character of relational workers?
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Note: this next sets of blogs are written based on the learning from conversations with the slowly emerging network of relational workers. In an ideal world, this work would be a funded project that would allow us, at a minimum, to be more creative with the learning, for example adding people’s voices to accompany the written words.
But since Mel and I are living life as it is - exploring legitimacy of relational workers using our limited resources - what you will get is, we hope, an insightful, albeit dull written summary of the learning.
This is life as it is for you.
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Read here an outline of the problem we are trying to solve and the vision of the work.