Humansolutions Bulletin - July 5th 2018

Not a textbook, a hands-on manual of practice – a practical guide from one of the UK’s most respected social work authors.  Divided into thirty sections, each covering a key area of practice, this essential handbook will be invaluable to newly qualified social workers, students on placement and more experienced workers and managers wanting to get the best results.  

A much-used literary and dramatic device is for it to be apparent to the reader or viewer that someone has strong feelings (of love, for example), but is not expressing them and is losing out in some way as a consequence. As the plot develops, the feelings eventually become known and they all live happily ever after, or not, as the case may be. But, outside of the world of fiction and drama, the question of when and how to express feelings is a significant one. Some people can go to the other extreme and blurt out their feelings inappropriately, leading to embarrassment for themselves and others. So, the two extremes of ‘Keep your feelings to yourself’ and ‘If you…

Ramses Underhill-Smith set up Alternative Care Services, which provides home care support to LGBTIQ+ adults in London, after a friend contracted HIV. “He was living in New York and when the carers discovered he had HIV they refused to touch him. He was really distressed and I decided I wanted to do something about it. It made me think: What will happen to me when I get older?” says Underhill-Smith, who is transgender. What occurred to Underhill-Smith’s friend is not confined to the US. Underhill-Smith cites examples of homophobic behaviour he has come across in the UK: in one case, a man who was being looked after by nuns found they would only wash him with a mop when they…

Glenn French wanted to know the truth. After hearing countless employers saying, “We don’t have that problem here,” he decided to canvass every trade union and labour organization in Canada. He wanted to know if violence in the workplace was an issue.  In the mid 1990s, he mailed surveys to hundreds of unions, from the fishermen in the west to the loggers in the east, and he was overwhelmed with responses. “I was inundated with the answers to the questions that I sent, but people began to send me information that I didn’t request, such as security reports, occupational heath and safety statistics, near misses, their opinions, their surveys and it was quite impressive,” says French. “Clearly it was an…

Our culture is obsessed with happiness, but what if there's a more fulfilling path? Happiness comes and goes, says writer Emily Esfahani Smith, but having meaning in life -- serving something beyond yourself and developing the best within you -- gives you something to hold onto. Learn more about the difference between being happy and having meaning as Smith offers four pillars of a meaningful life. Click here to read more

You can train your brain to think better. One of the best ways to do this is to expand the set of mental models you use to think. Let me explain what I mean by sharing a story about a world-class thinker. I first discovered what a mental model was and how useful the right one could be while I was reading a story about Richard Feynman, the famous physicist. Feynman received his undergraduate degree from MIT and his Ph.D. from Princeton. During that time, he developed a reputation for waltzing into the math department and solving problems that the brilliant Ph.D. students couldn’t solve ... Click here to read more