Social Work Don't Work for Me

I have promised a good friend of mine (and an even better friend of my good friend Pies, if you know what I mean...) that I would blog about something I went through life never knowing enough about. "Everything" I hear you cry? Well, no, just social work.

I was, like we all were, a person who left school wanting to get stuck right into the very heart of people, and the very heart of society. I had always loved working with vulnerable people, and studying social work at university seemed like a good idea at the time. The truth was, and continues to be, that I always wanted to study music, but I was told that as a singer my voice wasn't mature enough. Well, now I can hardly sing a note without it hurting, and I haven't performed for 2 years. I would have thought that social work required more maturity.

It's quite remarkable how little attention social work and care gets by governments and the press. Whatever happens to the NHS or the slightest change in the routine of our schools manages to grasp the public's attention, but as with most things, and sadly more so over the last year of SNP cuts, the most vulnerable people within our society have been cleared to make way for the middle-class masses.

It didn't take long for me to realise that I was very small for the world of social work. On placement I would sit in a secure room facing a drug addicted father with an illegitimate child who couldn't afford the bus fare home, and I was the one, I, that public school 18 year old boy from Edinburgh, who had to pretend I understood his situation, and that I could in some way represent him in the path that lay ahead.

One of the things that angers me so much about nationalism, is that I feel it has adopted our public debate, when the real line of politics lies between charity or justice.

Conservatives believe that acts of good will are to made on a charitable basis, while Labour believe that acts of ensuring people have health care, equal opportunities and representation are acts of justice.

Maybe the reasons I chose social work were too selfish. I thought I would be good at it would see the light in dark situations, but I never did, because so often there was no light or goodness to be seen.

Society is sometimes like me at the gym- I spend a lot of time on the weights and machines that I'm good at because it makes me feel good and that I am achieving, when actually I should be training on the machines which I find hardest, because that makes me stronger. Maybe social work for me was just too hard a machine.

I think our country needs to turn its head an awkward angle, and start to pay attention to the world of social work and front line care.