The Latest Bulletin

No one has 360-degree vision. When we are focusing on something, everything else is out of focus, so there will be many important things that are there, right by us, but we don’t see them. That is fine most of the time, but on occasions it can be really problematic if we don’t make ourselves aware of those blind spots. How often have you felt like kicking yourself because, after the event, you have realised that you missed something significant and really wished you hadn’t? Click here to read more

The prime minister was still at the despatch box last week, having moments before announced that he and Nicky Morgan had asked me to review the residential care of children, when the emails, Linked-In messages, and tweets started to rain upon my phone. The deluge has continued reflecting, I think, widely held, passionate, but often remarkably conflicting views about residential care. Two of the social work professionals who, over many years now, I have turned to for advice and guidance were in touch very quickly The first insisted that residential care was the best option for more children than currently live in homes, the second told me that it was vital to reduce the use of care homes. Click here…

Gendered Intelligence offers transgender awareness training across the UK, which can help address issues and questions professionals encounter when working with trans people ... These sessions cover issues surrounding inclusion of transgender & transsexual people, gender reassignment and gender diversity. Click here to read more

Aboard an overloaded ship carrying more than 500 refugees, a young woman becomes an unlikely hero. This single, powerful story, told by Melissa Fleming of the UN's refugee agency, gives a human face to the sheer numbers of human beings trying to escape to better lives ... as the refugee ships keep coming ... Click here to read more

Dementia disproportionately affects women, but their experiences and voices are missing from research and literature. This project aimed to inspire people to think differently about women and dementia by using stories and reflections from individual women to inform the debate in a unique, inspiring and insightful way. Click here to read more      

Neil’s Effective Writing e-book is now on Kindle (and other e-book platforms) as are his two brand new e-books, A Career in Social Work and How to Do Social Work. For a limited period they are available for only 99p each. We hope you will like them and feel able to give them a positive review https://astore.amazon.co.uk/neilthomp-21?_encoding=UTF8&node=14

We all have certain things that get under our skin, things that are likely to get us annoyed, irritated or distressed. These are known as ‘triggers’. Some triggers are shared by a wide range of people (if not by everybody) – for example, losing face or being humiliated. But there are also triggers that are specific to each individual. For example, what gets me really riled may have little or no effect on you, and vice versa. It depends on a number of factors, not least past experiences, future aspirations and, of course, our values. Let’s look at each of these in turn. Our past experiences can be significant in so far as they can leave us sensitive about certain…

Runnymede’s Director, Dr Omar Khan, spoke at the 5th OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy, ‘Transforming policy, changing lives’ held in Guadalajara, Mexico 13-15 October. Among the questions the conference addressed were how we can or should measure human progress, whether and how ‘wellbeing’ could replace GDP and other income measures, and how data can better influence policy. He gives his account of the conference. The conference brought together over 1,000 delegates and high level speakers including Nobel-winner Joseph Stiglitz, former Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, and academics, activists and policymakers from around the world. Runnymede’s presentation was part of a panel on ‘empowering minorities’ and included presentations from speakers from Mexico, New Zealand and Australia. https://www.racecard.org.uk/runnymede-trust/blog/it-will-take-a-braver-political-leadership-to-tackle-racial-inequalities/