Communities of Practice
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn – Leonard Cohen
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn – Leonard Cohen
In recent weeks, I have been thinking a lot about the impact of austerity, change and uncertainty on people facing complex problems and on the frontline staff who support them. We are currently working with the Social Care Workforce Unit at Kings College London and six partner agencies across the country to develop Communities of Practice (CP) with the aim of improving local responses to people facing multiple needs and exclusions.
A community of practice is a group of people who share a concern, a set of problems or a passion about a topic and want to deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Each of the six communities includes staff from a range of disciplines and from statutory and voluntary agencies working in the health, drugs, housing and criminal justice agencies.
The concept of shelter was a pervasive theme during my visit to a CP last week. For the clients discussed, the physical shelter which housing provides was identified as an important pre-requisite for recovery, including desistance from crime. Physical shelter must provide safety too and the group identified a dearth of safe and supportive accommodation. This was especially true for women in need of women-only accommodation and also clients with challenging behaviour who are, in their experience, often excluded from local provision due to previous violence or other difficult behaviour.
Shelter can also connote refuge and the clients discussed also lacked psychological refuge. CP members reported difficulties in accessing psychological support services for their clients, especially those with a diagnosis of personality disorder. As mental health services and other agencies withdraw services due to cuts, the provision of this support falls to staff members who may lack the skills, capacity or resources to provide it.
Frontline workers need shelter too. All attendees were anticipating or undergoing service re-structures or cutbacks to staff numbers. They reported feeling beleaguered by targets which often did not reflect the intricacy of their holistic work with clients. Some were weary at the realities of doing more for less and of what it meant for those whom they are seeking to support. In such an environment, the shelter provided by reflective practice and structured supervision is critical. Without it, professionals can be exposed to intolerable stresses and become incapacitated, unable to support those who desperately need their help.
In such an environment, I was heartened to note that the peer support within the CP was able to provide some temporary respite and thinking space. The group shared their expertise but also felt safe to share their considerable burdens. As we move towards the evaluation of the project, we will endeavour to capture the value of this for CP members and the clients whom they support.
