Ubuntu and the power of being kind

Today (16 March) is World Social Work Day. Its theme is Ubuntu, which Nelson Mandela explained as: “The profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievement of others.” Desmond Tutu defined it simply as: “My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.” (First published in Morning Star 16 March 2021)

One of my social work bosses, though never mentioning Ubuntu, encapsulated the humanity aspect in one word. Amidst the restorative practice he championed, genuinely involving children and families in decisions in real life, not just in policies, he conceded that social workers must sometimes take action that overrides that to protect a child.  

His view, however, was that, no matter what we had to do, there was no excuse for not being ‘kind’. 

That doesn’t mean that the systems we work in are always kind. That resonated at a conference when poet and writer Lemn Sissay told us that, while social workers genuinely tried to help, on leaving a lifetime of care as a young adult, placement and staff changes meant nobody around him had known him for more than a year.  

It resonates in the resource crisis that inhibits good social work. In a UNISON survey of Scotland’s social work teams in December 2019, 76% of respondents said their teams were understaffed. 89% were regularly working late and missing breaks to manage workloads. An astonishing 90% were considering leaving. In 2016 Audit Scotland reckoned up to 21% more funding was needed to cope with demand. That never happened.

It resonates when you see last month’s Independent Review of Adult Social Care in Scotland. Despite welcome recommendations including improvements for an undervalued and underpaid workforce, the profit framework at the root of the problem remains.  

While proposing a National Care Service that UNISON backed, it manages, with no hint of irony, to criticise reliance on the market yet propose private national care contracts. Beneath the headlines are measures that will remove local democratic accountability and independent regulation and inspection. 

Winning the case that profit has no place in care needs active political and popular engagement. That’s getting harder in Scotland. Politics is not a place where kindness could be accused of trespassing but it risks being totally fenced out in a binary constitution-dominated discourse.  

Give the pervasiveness of social media, we can’t ignore that it often reflects an angry and polarised nationalist/unionist context that stifles debate and undermines political scrutiny and accountability. Our challenge is to tackle that constructively.

Admittedly we are far from the worst extremes, but the Ubuntu of Mandela and Tutu, people well versed in progressive solidarity, gives a welcome contrast in a world where responses to injustice all too often rally around mistargeted blame, simplistic nationalism and populist demagoguery.   

The International Federation of Social Workers’ president Silvana Martinez recognises this in a Social Work Day message: “At a time when global politics has retreated into nationalism, Ubuntu is a powerful message on the need for solidarity at all levels: within communities, societies and globally. It is a message that all people are interconnected and that our future is dependent on recognizing all peoples’ involvement in co-building a sustainable, fair and socially just future.”   

I’m reminded of that solidarity within communities in the young Glasgow Girls’ campaign against the immigration service dawn raids which effectively ‘disappeared’ asylum-seeking children and families. Solidarity like empowerment from their teacher, the older residents mobilising to alert when raids approached, and later UNISON support. They may not have called it Ubuntu in Drumchapel but Ubuntu it was.

Harnessing those strengths in communities was part of the generic job when I entered social work. Inevitable specialism narrowed our role at the cost of potential support networks for people at times of crisis and, more importantly, to prevent crises.  

UNISON Scotland’s Social Work Issues Group is tackling some of these issues in a series of hugely well attended online seminars, covering topics like poverty and radical social work, co-hosted by group member Colin Turbett, author of ‘Doing Radical Social Work’. 

They stress the basics of relationships and empowerment underpinnning good practice, recognising the brutalising effects of poverty, and organising for change.

Social workers embrace progressive change, given the chance. For example, when challenged on a common statement in assessments that a child was ‘too young to express a view’, my team responded, grasping that they could give a voiceless child a voice by interpreting through observation, imaginatively interacting with them, and hearing those around them. The hurdles, as always, were workload and time. 

But wider political change is harder. That requires tenacity in navigating political polarisation, seeking solidarity at all levels to challenge the social injustice, growing poverty and lack of choices that disempower communities. As Colin Turbett says, “Maintain the rage – but use it wisely.”

At practice level, he urges that assessments should centre on recognising that people live in an unequal class-based society. In organising for broader change, practitioners should: “Exert influence at every system level, there are many ways to do so.”

Collectively, we have the power to drive change at workplace level. And when it comes to social justice, we surely cannot be social workers and shirk from building solidarity with others for political action. It may not be pure Ubuntu, but we could do it with kindness.

ENDS

896 words

John Stevenson
Former UNISON Scotland Communications chair
and social worker