Restorative Practice Training (prologue)

At some point I will go into more detail about Restorative Practice but here I want to bang on about terminology. Day one of the training a group question was “What do Young People who are challenging have in common?” My own thoughts differed from the contributions of others and although I did say something, there wasn’t enough time to really explore my thoughts.

My answer to that question is is simple; what young people who are challenging all have in common is that we call them challenging.

My thinking behind this is based in years of working with adults with learning disabilities. This is a world in which the label ‘challenging’ has destroyed many lives. It took us a while to realise the truth behind what that meant, but we have.

It means we haven’t provided the right place and space for this person yet.

It means I am challenged by what this person is doing - how they are behaving.

What I learned then is that people behave in very human ways to the situations and circumstances they find themselves in. They react. I react to their reaction. If that exchange of human-ness doesn’t go the way I wanted or planned, as a paid professional, it is very easy for me to blame the other person. I am in a position of immense power, control, I bring skills and expertise to what I’m doing and the vast majority of people thrive and flourish in response to my work. Therefore there must be something wrong with those who don’t. It fast became they who were challenged by, and challenging towards, me and what I was trying to achieve.

In reality the challenge is to me, a deeply personal one sometimes, letting me know I have not got this right for this person…yet.

Now that’s more than a challenge, it’s a veritable gauntlet, and started the learning disability world on a journey through person centred-ness right through to bringing the challenge right to where it truly belonged - The social welfare system itself.

These, therefore, are the thoughts I’m left with;

What do young people who are challenging have in common? They are the ones we haven’t got it right for, the ones the education/care system does not work for.

That’s our challenge, and we should always listen to them when they behave in human ways, telling us their lives are far from ok.

Restorative Practice Training

Ok, so I'm half way through a four day course learning about restorative practice and it's absolutely brilliant and I love it and I get it completely but, Oh. My. God. I'm glad I'm not a child in a school in Leeds right now.

The general attitude from a good proportion of the participants on the course is palpably anti children and young people. It seems the more you work directly face to face with young people the less you like, trust and respect them. As someone who spent many, many years trying to bring about a cultural revolution in provided services for people with learning disabilities, it all feels horribly familiar.

Actually the practices and principles of working in a restorative way are the same as person centred planning, hosting and harvesting, consensus building and conflict resolution. As the tutor says, it really is more of a collection of best practices than anything new or revolutionary. The revolution is trying to change what there is now into this new way of working. To coin one of my more favourite phrases, if that's where you want to get to, you wouldn't start from here.

When people have been functioning for a long time within a paradigm of having immense amounts of power over the people they are 'wards' of, it's really hard for them to see exactly how far down the rabbit hole they have gone. No-one disagrees with the principles of working alongside people, being 'with' rather than 'doing to', but as conversations unfold and phrases like "But it's me that has to end up dealing with it" when, by 'it', they mean an actual person, then underlying belief structures become unmasked.

One of my motivating forces for being on the training, other than it's right up my street and suits me and my way of working down to the ground, is because we have had a lot of reports anecdotally from teenage girls about being badly mis-treated by both police and school staff. I would like a culture of acceptance and respect for a space where young women can tell the people who have power over them what it feels like to them, and ask them why they are treated in the ways that they are. Although it's possible that we might get there in Leeds, at the moment unfortunately, the only thoughts of the 40 early innovators on the training at the moment seems to be that restorative practice is another way, a really good way, for young people to learn better about their own wrong doings.

It doesn't seem to have fully occurred to anyone yet, not out loud anyway, that they may be perceived as the perpetrator and a young person may be the victim of their behaviour. Until we do start to view the process as a 360 process, I think we're a long way from ever being a 'Child Friendly City'.

The necessity of re-inventing the wheel

I seem to be explaining this theory whenever I hear someone say

"well, there's no point in re-inventing the wheel" which is almost every week, and what they really mean is 'someone somewhere else has already worked on and found a solution to what we are trying to do, let's just use (nick) theirs'.

Now I know that can work for some things, some times, and I'm not one to exert excess energy but...but not if it is service user or community led work.

For 3 reasons; process, process process.

The wheel people build must work for those people in that place at that time,

The people who build the wheel must feel they own, understand and feel proud of and empowered by inventing and creating something that is theirs.

The people must know how to make another one when this one stops working.

It doesn't matter if they end up with something remarkably similar to every other community group.

It doesn't matter that some paid worker feels it was a waste of their time because it's exactly what has been done 100 times before and they could have told them how to do it on day 1

...and it doesn't matter if no-one thinks the first solution is perfect.

Only by people themselves working together and finding their own solutions can they ever feel that they have a part to play and are significant in their own solution.

Please, the next time you hear yourself thinking that there's no point, stop and wonder, will the process involved in re-inventing their own wheel be of benefit? Create a sense of ownership? Build trust? Put the power back into the hands of those who need it the most? If the answer is yes to any of these questions then please, put the 'off the shelf solution' back on the shelf where it belongs and let people do it for themselves.

It will take longer, and it may very well end up looking and functioning very much like everyone else's, but it will have been worth it, because you can't create that experience 'off the shelf', you have to actually do it.

Caring, Counselling or Citizenship

Three standard different models of working with someone around an issue. I personally think we pay far too much attention and pour too much money into the first two and nothing like enough into the third.

For a silly but seasonal example, let's say the person we're supporting has a real problem with potholes and has ended up unable to leave their house as there are 3 potholes on their street.

The 'care' model would pay for support for this person to either, get supported over the potholes, or if it was a person centred approach, find a different route in order to avoid them and all other potholes.

The 'Counselling' model would pay for someone to listen carefully and attentively to the history of their relationship with potholes, how their parents interacted with potholes, and allow them to fully understand the root cause of their problem.

The 'Citizenship' model would pay for someone to tell them to pick the phone up, ring the council and get the potholes filled in.

Simplistic I know, but really, outside of good advocacy, when does this actually happen?

Even in my world of community development, we tend to think that they have to find 5 other people with the same experience, form a group, and invite the local councillor round to listen to their issues.

Most people we work with still don't even know how, or who to phone, to get simple things done in their communities, nor do they seem aware of how they would find out. Surely less of the 'caring, sharing listening and really understanding' without actually achieving anything and more good solid '70's power to the people is called for!

learning to walk slowly

I know this has been really quiet lately. Still, something called and here I am again.

In the last month I have;

• Had redundancy notice
• applied for, interviewed for and been offered a new job
• had an operation to chisel some bone off my foot
• learned to walk again

It's possibly the most amount of change in one month that I remember since school, and being forced to walk very slowly through it all has proved a great lesson. Paying conscious attention to such a basic, fundamental task has focussed my mind and allowed space and time for dwelling and contemplation which I'm not used to and would not have expected to find amid a career crisis. Understanding the movement of my muscles balancing my weight through each step, being overtaken when everyone pushes past, but then still walking when all else are standing still, there is much to contemplate in the world of crutches.

Added to which the new job is a better one than the one I had - I'm going to be a Director of a charity! Smaller in scope than what I'm used to managing, but having always worked under a CEO before, it feels like a manageable size to be the one where the buck stops. (I know there's a management committee, but you know what I mean!)

18 staff and £400,000 turnover. It's a great challenge and not so huge that I can't get to know everyone well enough. Also they are making a very slight loss and need some tough decisions pretty quickly, so it'll be an interesting first six months. Still, having earned the monica "Hatchet Helen" in my last two posts it's not something that phases me, although having just gone through being forced to leave a job that I loved I hope I will do it perhaps more sensitively than I did when I first started out.

I'm hoping this collision of events through January will give me a strong foundation - I'm hoping to keep the learning from walking slowly, taking in the most basic skills afresh and enjoying gradual progress as a celebration. Learning not to be a victim to my own pain, to move without limping and wait for the movement to be restored, I aim to embrace what this new world has to offer me in all it's detail, regardless of the speed of those around me.

Hopefully I'll restart the Blog too as a way of keeping my feet on the ground (literally) and...let the mayhem commence!

Liked or Loyal?

Yesterday one of the people I manage used that well warn phrase, "I'm not here to be liked, I'm here to be a manager" amid a heart felt criticism of the CEO for being too soft and wanting to be liked, and in their opinion, miss-managing as a consequence. Although I agreed to an extent with this diagnosis, I realised it's never quite that simple. Although wanting to be liked may be a management flaw, it is still far easier to manage people who respect you as a person, are engaged with what you are trying to achieve and are loyal to you. This combination isn't a million miles away from liking someone.
I think therefore that how I behave as a manager may well end up looking like I want people to like me, when actually I want to captivate and inspire them - it's surely a fine line between liking the person and liking what they are trying to do. I'm not sure I can think if I've been inspired by and admire anyone I don't really like as a person, although there's a whole set of assumptions about people who behave in ways that I admire who I have never actually met. For example, I'm convinced that Gandhi was a really good bloke and that I would have really liked him if I'd ever met him.
As it's a key part of my job to get the very best out of people, it's much easier to do if people respect me and feel loyalty to what and why I do what I do, if not to me as a person. The criticism must then be heard in terms of consequences perhaps rather than behaviour. I'm talking about managing well, they were talking about not managing well. The grey area I think is not in what is guiding my behaviour necessarily, but in what is guiding my decisions. Is that right? This is a first bash at airing these musings so bear with me. What I mean is, I will make decisions based on what is best for the organisation and what I believe will result in the best delivery - the best service. This means I do not always make decisions that suit the workforce, and rarely take individual people into account when designing new staffing structures. I have inherited a tradition of slotting people in, accommodating individual's needs and circumstances when designing a service. This then I think is where the difference lies. I've just served 5 people with redundancy notices, and created only 2 new jobs they can all apply for. It's a horrible, emotional process, but I firmly believe that what those two people deliver will be the best way of spending the money we have, and meets with current employment legislation. I am absolutely certain that were you to ask them today if they like me they would say no. But I hope that at some point they will be able to look back and see that I'm doing what I believe to be the best thing with a difficult situation.
So, no, I'm not here to be liked, but I hope that as time goes on those who stay will feel loyal to the mission and respect me - it'll certainly make the job easier as and when they do.

Fair to middle in

Ah, the joys of middle management! I am in a newly created position and everyone I line manage used to go straight to the CEO for their management, supervision and decisions. Theoretically they should now come to me, but behaviour change is not that simple. Each person tells me they are glad of the post, supported the appointment and are happy they are finally getting better management. However, they still go to the CEO - I still discover they have arranged meetings, had phone calls and made decisions without me being informed.
Although the temptation is to continue to tell them to stop, that they need to liaise with me now, that I am here to help and support them, the real change in behaviour must come from the CEO herself. She needs to lead that by stopping doing all the things she has always done. Although she had the wisdom to know there was too much here for her to do, she has not yet learned to stop trying to do at all anyway. This will take time, and learning how to 'manage your manager' is as unique a journey as learning how to manage your team. Currently I'm just working through different approaches that do not seem to work, but I'm not sure how else to figure out which one will work.
This got me thinking about the broader issue here, learning to stop doing things is surely as great a challenge to any of us as learning how to do things in the first place. The twitch in the hand repressing the urge to reach out and help as a disabled woman puts on her own sock, stacking chairs away so the room looks nice for the next group, unlocking, sweeping up, covering shifts...always seeing what isn't being done and being the one to do it, - it's a natural way to work when you work to support people. The challenge then is this: how do I encourage people to learn how to stop, if I don't learn it for myself? But only by not stepping in will I ever know if there really isn't anyone else, only by all of us stopping will we really learn the extent of the unmet need, and only by stepping back do we create enough space for others to step forward.
We are in the business of empowerment, and sometimes the most empowering thing of all is to create a space, to stand still...and wait.