Every day, we change. We move (slowly) toward the person we’ll end up being.
Not just us, but our organizations. Our political systems. Our culture.
Are you more generous than the you of five or ten years ago? More confident? More willing to explore?
Have you become more brittle? Selfish? Afraid? …
The sixth edition of the bestselling textbook Anti-Discriminatory Practice has now been published and the second edition of The Professional Social Worker
The Professional Social Worker
Other titles by Neil Thompson are available from here
Neil Thompson Amazon author page
Having little or no sense of control is a key factor in stress. People who are under immense pressure will often not get stressed while they have some degree of control over those pressures. At the same time, some people can face fairly modest levels of pressure, but be highly stressed because they have little sense of control over the circumstances they are in. Control, or our sense of control, will often be the difference between being stressed and not. A vicious circle can easily develop in which feeling stressed affects our coping abilities and then we feel that we have less control. Our sense of control goes down and down.
Similarly, control is a factor in anxiety. People who are feeling anxious much of the time will generally have concerns about control – feeling very uneasy about either what they can’t control (what is often referred to as ‘worry’, emotional energy going into things we can do little or nothing about) or what they can control (often referred to as Angst or anguish – anxiety about making the wrong choice or getting a decision wrong). Worry and anguish can be very different, with different causes and different consequences. However, what they have in common is our sense of control (or lack of it). Feeling anxious can make us feel even less in control, and so another vicious circle around control develops – anxiety begets anxiety …
Public spaces can be overwhelming for an autistic person trying to deal with too much information.
Many autistic people and their families give up using shops, restaurants and other high street outlets because they do not find them accessible, and their worlds shrink. These are places other people might expect to visit without a second thought. We found out that:
The British Retail Consortium represents over 80% of the UK’s high street. We’re asking them to work with their membership, which include some of the country’s biggest retailers, to make the high street autism-friendly. Show your support for a high street accessible to all – sign the petition now.
Realistic workloads and ongoing emotional support are essential if social workers are to manage stress and perform their job effectively, according to new research. The study examined the relationship between emotional intelligence — the ability to identify and manage emotions in oneself and others — stress, burnout and social work practice. It also assessed whether emotional intelligence training for social workers would reduce their burnout rates over time.
Race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust launch new report on Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) population’s attitudes
Ethnic minorities in Britain have very different views on immigration and Europe, according to a new report by the Runnymede Trust.
The report (called ‘This is Still About Us’) uses high-sample surveys and focus groups across several areas to explore BME opinion.
A memorial statue believed to be the UK’s first in honour of a named black woman has been unveiled in London.
Mary Seacole was a Jamaican-born nurse who cared for wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War in the 19th Century.
The statue’s completion follows a 12-year campaign which raised £500,000 to honour her.
The sixth edition of the bestselling textbook Anti-Discriminatory Practice has now been published and the second edition of The Professional Social Worker
The Professional Social Worker
Other titles by Neil Thompson are available from here
Neil Thompson Amazon author page
It is Edward de Bono’s name that is most closely associated with the notion of lateral thinking, although the basic idea behind it (the importance of thinking creatively and not getting stuck in tramlines) long predates his work. What de Bono did was to put the ideas across clearly and effectively.
In our day-to-day lives we generally rely on established ways of thinking and behaving. Life would be intolerable if, at every step of the way, we had to think consciously about what we are going to do next or how we are going to do it. Established patterns are needed for dealing with mundane, routine matters. However, the price we pay for this convenience is that there is a danger that we will get stuck in those routines (‘tramlines’, as they are often called) when we need to be thinking more reflectively about the situation we find ourselves in. This is where lateral thinking comes in …
Bob Holman, who has died aged 79 after suffering from motor neurone disease, earned a unique place in social work, when, in 1976, he resigned his professorship in social administration at Bath University to become a community worker on the city’s deprived Southdown estate. He saw his affluence and position as inconsistent with his Christian faith. He and his wife, Annette, and their two children, Ruth and David, moved from a comfortable middle-class area in the city to a home next to the estate and he started the project where he then worked.
Ironically, this thrust him into far greater prominence than university life afforded, as he published widely to propagate ideas forged by his experiences. His advocacy, as well as the way he lived his life in a disadvantaged community, earned him many admirers, within and outside social work; some saw him as almost a secular saint.