The Person in the Professional

1
The Person in the Professional

• Professor Bernard Moss
• Professor of Social Work Education and
  Spirituality
• Director, Centre for Spirituality and Health
• Staffordshire University

2
a bit about me

• Previous experience at Littlemore Hospital, and
  the therapeutic community movement
• Previous experience in people work faith
  community leader and University chaplain
  Samaritans Relate Family mediator.
• Now involved in teaching social work students,
  esp communication skills

3
What has this taught me?

• Im not the clever clogs that some people expect
  me to be
• people are the experts in their particular
  conditions
• helping needs to be a shared encounter
• people can be resilient
• ultimately all I have to offer is myself within a
  professional context

4
What we are not

• Human car mechanics
• A different species eg men, women and social
  workers/mental health workers etc
• Not immune from the mess and stress of living
  from getting it wrong in our personal lives and
  from feeling guilty .from experiencing emotional
  pain and existential angst

5
What we are

• An awesome mix of joy and pain and sheer
  ordinariness
• People who do extra-ordinary things and sometimes
  not a lot
• People with a vision, drive, ambition, and the
  experience of being overwhelmed, out of control,
  losing a sense of meaning and purpose
• People who have a range of world views including
  religious perspectives

6
Why is this important ?

• Oracle at Delphi know yourself
• Concept of professional poise
• (see Rogers accompanying paper very helpful
  here)
• In people work, so much of the self our
  opinions, our values, our prejudices, seep into
  our practice

7
Why is this important

• Mental health example
• Professional attitudes towards religion.
• ( see the work of Anthony Powell, now being
  taken forward by Sarah Eagger and the
  Spirituality Special Interest Group of the Royal
  College of Psychiatrists featured on the
  Croydon MIND DVD)
• Is religious faith part of the problem or part
  of the answer?

8
This involves our world views

• The current interest in spirituality takes us to
  the heart of what it means to be human whether or
  not we have a religious faith
• Meaning, purpose, how we view others and how we
  view ourselves how we see society how we
  understand wholeness and healing and what it
  means to be alive in community

9
It also involves

• How we understand our own frailty, failure and
  pain and how this affects our professional
  practice
• Wounded healer concept by Nouwen how can we
  ensure that our pain does not get in the way but
  rather opens us up to other peoples pain

10
Reflective Practice

• Helps us avoid the two extremes
• being spaces through which something else passes
  Tillich (thanks Roger for this!)
• Being so involved we become part of the problem

11
Reflective practice

• Importance of using service users and carers in
  the education and training of professionals
• Our skills lab programme in social work education
  at Staffordshire University

12
This is but the end of the beginning

• I hope there has been nothing new so far
• But I also hope it helps to look in the mirror to
  see ourselves as we really are to be reminded
  daily of our creases and wrinkles and our own
  need of healing

13
and the start of the journey ahead

• but also to see our own beauty and uniqueness
  which is a gift we have received and a gift we
  can share with others
• and to be a means of healing for others

14
THANK YOU

• It has been a privilege to share this day with
  you
• May we all travel better for having been here