This article considers the relationship between the resettlement worker and the client. It first appeared in the Resettlement Handbook 1998 and was taken from a collection of papers by the late David Brandon, 1941-2001.
David Brandon was physically abused as a child, became a homeless teenager living on the streets of London and in Salvation Army hostels, and was mentally ill for many years. He worked with Christian Action running a hostel in Greek Street, Soho, helped on the TV programme Cathy Come Home and was one of the founders of Centrepoint.
For more information on David Brandon, homelessness, advocacy and zen in the art of helping, see the Infed website pages
The articles and source material is acknowledged against each section.
Introduction | Building trust and respect | Communication skills | Empowerment | Issues
"We learn, when we respect the dignity of the people, that they cannot be denied the elementary right to participate fully in the solutions to their own problems. Self-respect arises only out of people who play an active role in solving their own crises and who are not helpless, passive, puppet-like recipients of private or public services. To give people help, while denying them a significant part in the action, contributes nothing to the development of the individual. In the deepest sense, it is not giving but taking - taking their dignity. Denial of the opportunity for participation is the denial of human dignity and democracy. It will not work."
From Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 1971
Without a solidly based relationship, the technicalities involved in the process and stages of resettlement operate in a vacuum.
In Geoffrey Randall and Susan Brown's report The Move In Experience (Crisis, 1994), among the more important reasons given for the satisfaction of clients with resettlement services were:
The resettlement service:
was "Always there..."
did its best to
"Make time to see you..."
"Is approachable, friendly and caring...".
It is important to have a non-judgmental attitude, have a focus on learning together, and be clear about the role and boundaries of our work. David Brandon and Annie Hawkes in Speaking Truth to Power (1998) speak about the process of care planning:
‘Pay close attention through good, careful and creative listening:
Observe very closely.
Be holistic rather than partial and pathological. People are always much more than just a list of syndromes, however complex. The nature of people is always more important than the nature of their problems.
Help people to understand the vast labyrinth of professionals and services, and sometimes the competing ego battles.
Believe and act on the rights of homeless people.
Put them first, and work under their direction.
Steadfastly oppose a massive professional colonialism, which thinks it ‘knows best’.
Seek out and provide information: both concretely and clearly, avoiding jargon which hinders fuller involvement.
Skilfully advocate and negotiate for improved services, breaking down the barriers against people who have ‘no fixed abode’.
Confess ignorance and learn from mistakes.
Talk with and listen to relevant staff, relatives and many others in seeking more knowledge.
Believe in potential of all people, despite what their casefiles might record.’
Interviews
Personal views and judgements
Avoid thrusting your personal experiences onto people in distress like a frantic insurance salesman. Premature or inappropriate sharing of common experience may just make the other person hold back. One appalling example was a probation officer who, within two minutes of first meeting a young offender, delivered this pitch: “I am a Catholic you see. That gives me a moral sense so that I can resist temptations like taking other people’s cars. Have you ever thought of going to mass?” He was evangelising in the worst possible way. The fact that he owned a car probably much more of a safeguard than any ‘moral sense’ protecting against joy-riding!
Preparing yourself
“Begin with a serene mind” is an instruction in a Japanese motorcycle manual. It is even more important as a maxim for helping people than for repairing Hondas. You can always begin with a motorcycle or get a new part. A messed-up interview can be a further barrier to further communication.
If you rush, the whole process will probably be hurried and cramped. However much or little time you have, give it wholeheartedly to the process of helping, which means complete concentration. At the start of each interview, leave everything else outside the room. Put aside your worries about the huge gas bill which arrived that morning through your letterbox; leave behind the concern about a friends illness or the annoyance of being ticked off by a traffic warden. Any echoes of those feelings will certainly hinder communication – others will sense those fleeting feelings within you and see them as obstacles. All those problems can only be coped with later.
Stay quiet within yourself. Begin with a Beginner’s Mind – posing no obstacles to whatever is being communicated. If you feel under attack, note the seeming attack and the rising defensiveness within yourself, but just for that moment avoid becoming overtly defensive or hitting back. Learn to be angry without hatred and discipline.
Discipline your body by sitting reasonably upright without sagging or slumping. A distressed person needs close attention in order to tell his or her story well, and if you are slumping this could communicate clear messages about your low level of caring and boredom.
Keep your breathing reasonably slow and regular even though it will change naturally during the interview. Your contributions are better unhurried. Try to maintain a form, rhythm and balance in all you communicate, both verbally and non-verbally. Good interviewing is like good dancing or Judo: it constantly changes direction but always maintains complete balance.
Relating to people
‘If you have nothing to say, then say nothing or comment that you have nothing to add. Do not speak simply because you are afraid of looking stupid or are nervous about silences. Helping is based on genuine communication, not on empty chattering.
Stress the positive and optimistic elements in your dealings with distressed people who often have buckets of pessimism thrown over them. We tend to underestimate the capabilities of both people with learning difficulties, and those with mental health problems: these labels can obscure, for those who look carefully, immense and unique talents. We can easily become chronically pessimistic about those who are homeless. Being confronted with continual pessimism can sap both hearts and minds.
It is easy to see some things that people do and say as crazy. Life is rarely that simple. Even the seemingly maddest things can make sense. Take this piece by Ben Silcock, mauled in the lion’s cage at London Zoo:
“There is a stigma and illusion about victims of modern psychiatry. They are often peoples whose minds do not co-ordinate with modern thinking. They are put on drugs, locked up and their minds are caged like lions. The fact that I climbed into the lion’s den is not as far as I am concerned a sign of my insanity. It’s more a psychiatric reaction to seeing my fellow human beings locked up. Basically I am a religious man. I decided that I was going to pt myself in the hands of God and let fate decide my future. I suppose I was also testing my life.”
(Silcock, 1993)
There is disturbing wisdom in that passage.
Search out the gifts and resources within people wherever you can, rather than their problems. I have recently been meeting with a group of psychiatric patients a prospective editor to discuss the nature of their poetry. I was surprised at the differences between their response to me as an editor and as a social worker. To me as a social worker they highlighted their deficiencies, but to me as an editor they emphasised their considerable talent for writing because they wanted their poetry published. Achievement was important not disability.
It is vital to respect the personal wisdom of others. Frequently professionals actually undermine the wisdom of clients and patients by covertly stressing the extent of their own understanding. That process can encourage dependency. Real helping assists others to uncover their own wisdom. It should not serve simply to convince clients of how clever you are. The process of helping people to develop their own wisdom means throwing away carefully worked out theories about human nature and superficial judgments on how others should or should not behave. Any fool can say what ought to have happened; the real trick is to communicate what can now take place. Not what ought to happen but what can or is happening.
Don’t provide further evidence for feelings of persecution, manipulation and deceit. Tell them as directly as possible how you feel, both about them and about their situation. Avoid humouring them if only for the damage it does to you. If someone sees green goblins in the bookcase and you do not, tell them so but avoid useless argument. Jollying people along with “never mind” and “you’ll be alright” will do neither them nor you much good. There is no point in repeating platitudes parrot-fashion.
If you are out of your depth, bring in someone else with different skills and knowledge. There is no reason why you should have to deal with everyone and everything. If you are coping alone with a range of different situations and people, there is probably something seriously wrong with you. You need help.
The community is rich in people with a wide range of personalities, skills, knowledge and experiences. They can enrich your life and love of other people.’
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Brandon suggests that we need to encourage the involvement by service users in running services. He proposes four major steps:
Better information
Information systems in the field of mental health and homelessness have been poor. Psychiatry must be amongst the few professions that retain the principle of withholding information from customers on the grounds that it might upset them! Not telling people might tend to make them more anxious and even paranoid!
Our services should resemble good travel agents. They should provide basic and free information on everything. Users and their relatives need to have some control of the various options. Information is the beginning of that growth of control and genuine ‘informed consent’. It undermines the current control by professionals.
More consultation
We should listen more intently to what people have to say, and develop structures which provide them with more influence over services. That means everything from the simplest suggestion box to effective complaints procedures to places for users on service committees. Newly developing services should be based on good market research from people likely to use the facilities, rather than an assumption of professionals ‘knowing best’. Even in the best services there is a regrettable tendency to plan and develop, for example, a psychiatric day centre and then ask people what they think of the quality of the service and to help manage it. Involvement at that stage is much too little and too late.
Files are an important symbol. Too often they are full of professional jargon and incomprehensible initials that disempower service users. Essex Social Services have been pioneers in open access: keeping many files in homes of clients, which has proved very helpful. Personal files should increasingly become property of the person they are about. Instead of gathering dust in the office, staff could encourage users and their relatives to read and write notes in them. In that way, they do not simply become staff and project property. Some files could go on tape cassettes because many more people can listen to a personal stereo than can read written notes.
Another major barrier is the ubiquitous project office. We need either to close them all down or make them into a genuine service resource.
Increased advocacy
We need to develop external systems of control over the immense power of staff. There are well-established systems – self-advocacy, citizen advocacy, legal advocacy, and peer advocacy. Survivors Speak Out, the collective advocacy group has achieved great influence in a short period of time. The important element in all of these is that they should be independent of service providers.
Democracy
We need to develop services that are serious about users being citizens and the practice of real democracy. The key question concerning power is always who appoints the staff. That is always the most effective litmus paper of genuine democracy. Users should be encouraged to manage budgets, and become powerful influences of policy. In the drug field, as in Phoenix Houses, there is already a strong tradition of former drug addicts becoming influential staff members.
‘Service professionals, like nurses, doctors and social workers, suffer from a huge problem of vested interest. They are most frequently employed by the services complained against. Although they cannot be advocates, they must still have an important advocacy role
It is important to continue raising the considerable issues of role conflict and lack of independence within the various professions, especially where they are directly employed by service providers. That raises difficult problems about the serious cost to individuals in a culture where services are so defensive.
It has been a large part of the heritage of homeless organisations to emphasise people on the street as victims. Traditionally that is how they have made much of their income. Currently we are moving monumentally towards a more social model of much disability, mental illness and substance abuse linked with homelessness. In plain terms we look less at the so-called ‘personal tragedy’ perspectives beloved of the media and rather more at the major movements that change social security benefit systems, and demolition of lodging houses, and the obstacles to access presented by service systems – like appointments for example. Advocacy becomes central, not counselling, so that we can increasingly recognise the so-called ‘victims’ as survivors and partners.
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