Noel Timms - The Receiving End

The Receiving End

Originally published in 1973, The Receiving End looks at the British welfare services for deprived children. The book is comprised of essays from individuals that have been on the receiving end of the social help agencies, such as adoption societies, fostering agencies and childrens homes. Each contributor provides a unique viewpoint of their own experiences, the experiences include chapters from those with experience of adopting a child, those that have been in the care of the local authority, and a first-hand account of a teenager in a psychiatric clinic. The book provides a valuable insight social work from the viewpoint of those receiving it. The book is still very much relevant today, and will be of interest to those working in the field of social work, or those studying social work.

Edited by Noel Timms

First published in 1970
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

1973 Noel Timms

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LCCN: 73075947

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-36536-0 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-429-43076-3 (ebk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-36539-1 (pbk)

Consumer accounts of social help for children

Noel Timms

ISBN 0 7100 7549 9 (c)

ISBN 0 7100 7550 2 (p)

This book is taken up with accounts that users of social service have given of their experiences in one or other of our social services. The services are concerned with children: an adoptive mother describes her application for a baby from a voluntary society and contrasts this with a second application to a local authority, also briefly describing her experiences with a Child Guidance Clinic; another mother describes two adoptions from a statutory authority; a nineteen-year-old girl recalls her years treatment at a child psychiatric unit when she was twelve; two older adolescents discern some important features of their time in the care of a local authority; finally, a foster mother describes at length her experiences as both giving and receiving service. A range of agencies and a variety of problems are surveyed, but each contribution represents the users view given entirely in their own words.

Social workers have for long thought of themselves as concerned with a users view of the world. Start where the client is has been a practical maxim that seemed to give effective shorthand expression to this concern. Recently, however, a number of studies suggest that whilst social workers may well have started where the client was, they failed to stay there long enough fully to appreciate what he was saying. The systematic study of what is termed consumer opinion has only begun in the last few years, but already interesting work has been undertaken. Nicholson (1966), for example, questioned users of Mother and Baby Homes in an attempt to discover opinion on the food, the comfort, the purpose of such organisations. In the field of the evaluation of the results of social casework, we can see a marked change between Girls at Vocational High (Meyer, Borgatta and Jones, 1965) which hardly referred to client perception of social work and the recent research by Goldberg (1970) on services for the old which devotes a chapter to a consideration of the views and appraisals of the old people who received help. Professionals and delinquents have been asked to evaluate professional methods of help (Gottesfeld, 1965); caseworkers and clients have been interviewed concerning purpose in casework (Schmidt, 1969); young people in a residential programme have been asked to assess the extent to which staff members could meet certain needs (Beker, 1965); adopters have been studied in connection with the services they received (Goodacre, 1966); patients have been interviewed in relation to medical social work help (Butrym, 1968); former users of a casework agency have described their experiences as clients (Mayer and Timms, 1970).

This suggests perhaps that we now have fairly extensive knowledge of the perspective of the user, but for a number of reasons this is not the case. In the first place it is not easy, especially for social workers who undertake research, to maintain a clear and systematic distinction between the views of the social worker and those of the client. Thus, in one of the studies mentioned above, the questionnaire administered to the clientele consisted of items drawn entirely from the opinions of the professionals concerned. The following passage from Schmidt (1969) shows how easily the clients purposes become fused with those of the worker.

In using the term workers purpose there was no intention to disregard the client; the clients needs and desires were still the primary consideration. Rather, the theoretical assumption was that the worker articulates and helps to clarify objectives but the goals of casework are client centered; they evolve from a realistic appraisal of the clients problem and are continually related to his motivation, capacity, and objectives for himself as these are conveyed to and perceived by the worker.

Second, the extended exploration of the clients view of the service he has received raises a number of difficulties, of which limitations of language and the effects of relationship seem to be the most serious. Cohen (1972) has recently drawn attention to the difficulty users of a social service often experience in finding a language with which to talk about and to evaluate the social services. This is partly because the process of help is difficult to grasp and partly because a number of distinct activities are often grouped together under the single term the welfare. Difficulties of relationship arise through feelings of indebtedness deriving from the reception of at least some friendly attention. Thus, it is not uncommon to hear of social service use such expressions as, Theyre very good, really; They are doing their best; they cannot do any more. During a recent study of Catholic Mother and Baby Homes when I was attempting to elicit consumer response, one of the girls turned on the others in the group with the remark: What right have we to complain? Are we queens? We should be grateful for anything people do for us.