The Latest Bulletin

Gender stereotypes strike early. From the age of six, children associate traits like ‘intelligence’ with being a boy and ‘niceness’ with being a girl. Gender stereotypes continue to damage children everywhere – and affect their whole life. Young men and boys who hold rigid beliefs about gender stereotypes are more likely to be perpetrators of violence against women and girls. We hear from girls who have low self-esteem and feel insecure, with one in five 14-year-old girls self-harming. This is heart-breaking and it cannot continue. Click here to read more

There is a moment in Martin Luther King’s historic ‘I have a dream’ speech when he turns his attention to the White people who, realising their destiny and that of their Black fellow citizens was intertwined, joined the movement for equal rights. “They have come to realise that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom,” he said. “We cannot walk alone.” Life is tough for many of us right now, and the future feels very uncertain. Looking after ourselves, our families and communities takes time and energy. There is so much to do. The challenges of the past year have exposed the deep inequalities between us, including in housing, income and access to healthcare. But the crisis has also shown how interconnected…

Before the pandemic, psychoanalyst Josh Cohen’s patients might come into his consulting room, lie down on the couch and talk about the traffic or the weather, or the rude person on the tube. Now they appear on his computer screen and tell him about brain fog. They talk with urgency of feeling unable to concentrate in meetings, to read, to follow intricately plotted television programmes. “There’s this sense of debilitation, of losing ordinary facility with everyday life; a forgetfulness and a kind of deskilling,” says Cohen, author of the self-help book How to Live. What to Do. Although restrictions are now easing across the UK, with greater freedom to circulate and socialise, he says lockdown for many of us has…

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If you are skilful at engaging with people and winning their trust, convincing them that you are a helpful and reliable person there is a danger that they will come to rely on you more and more and bring more and more of their problems and concerns to you. This can easily lead to you being overloaded, stretching yourself too thinly and potentially getting yourself into difficulties. So, it is important to be clear about what we can help with and what we can’t – to ‘set out our stall’, as it were. If we lose sight of the boundaries of our role and become a general helper, it can be confusing all round. It can also prove stressful, as…

IMPACT (IMProving Adult Care Together) is the first of its kind in the UK and will bring together 37 agencies across the four countries of the UK including universities, the public and voluntary sectors and has secured £15 million in funding over the next five years. The aspiration of the partnership is: Good support isn’t just about services – it’s about having a life. Social work is an essential part of the wider social care field. BASW has been active in the partnership bid from the beginning and Luke Geoghegan, Head of Policy and Research at BASW and a registered social worker, will be a member of the IMPACT leadership team. IMPACT will bring together people with lived experience of…

Tolerance is often touted as a progressive value, a way of ensuring that society offers equal opportunities to all. But it can also imply “putting up with” something or someone you fundamentally disagree with or dislike — being tolerated isn’t the same as being genuinely valued or respected, for example. As one writer puts it, tolerance has echoes “of at best grudging acceptance, and at worst ill-disguised hostility”. Now a new study in the British Journal of Psychology has found that the experience of being tolerated takes its toll on the wellbeing of ethnic minorities in the United States. Sara Cvetkovska from Utrecht University and colleagues find that the experience of being tolerated is closer to discrimination than it is…

A Dementia Friends Champion is a volunteer who encourages others to make a positive difference to people living with dementia in their community. They do this by giving them information about the personal impact of dementia, and what they can do to help. It's easy to get involved. Dementia Friends Champions will attend an induction, receive support when they need it, and be part of thousands of other volunteer Dementia Friends Champions creating dementia friendly communities together. Click here to read more

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