This video is of me describing my values in my work as a Young Carers Manager http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz9uov37p4E 

On the 13/6/97 when I was 17 I wrote “This same feeling (of strength) rises up at the display of injustice, cruelty and unrighteousness”

For as long as I can remember I have believed in justice, I think I believed in it before I had the words to describe it. Justice has many meaning here are the ones given on the online dictionary freedictionary.com:

jus•tice n.
1. The quality of being just; fairness.
2.
a. The principle of moral rightness; equity.
b. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.
3.
a. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
b. Law The administration and procedure of law.
4. Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason: The overcharged customer was angry, and with justice.
5. Abbr. J. Law
a. A judge.
b. A justice of the peace.

My views are more around fairness, equity and righteousness but as I have grown older I have moved to further define this as social justice.

Adams, Bell and Griffin (1997) define social justice as both a process and a goal. "The goal of social justice education is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society that is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure."

I don’t seek a communist view of equity but a view of equity where everyone has the opportunity to be involved at a level they would like to be because they are, as the quote above says, ‘physically and psychologically safe and secure’. This is what I am trying to achieve with the people I come into contact with both personally and professionally.

During my childhood I always had a strong sense of oppression. I would be drawn to television programmes and books about racism, poverty and oppression. I remember one of the first things I wanted to be when I grew up was a missionary because at church I had met people who were working in Puru, Africa and India to alleviate the poverty and suffering faced by the people they met.

My heart was really taken by Africa and when the first red nose day was shown on TV it was the clips about Africa I was most interested in and I was incredibly frustrated I couldn’t go and do something about it. Perhaps it is the knowledge that my Great Grandfather was a black African from West Africa that has shaped this passion. I grew up in a white middle class area and had no black or minority ethnic who were close friends in fact during my whole school life I think there were only ever 3 or 4 children in the whole school who had a different coloured skin. However I felt passionately about equal rights for black and minority ethnic people and would argue strongly if I heard anyone being racist.

As I became a teenager I felt the same against homosexuality and would argue with people who said they thought it was wrong, often saying what if I were gay would you dislike me? This can be a risky thing to say as a teenager as people have aggressive views and it could have led to me receiving homophobic bullying but I felt strongly that views that were oppressive should be challenged.

I remember taking a wheel chair that my parents had for my granny to Poole our local big town for a day with my friend Tamsin. We took turns wheeling each other around in it. We wanted to experience first hand the barriers that disabled people met. I remember being shocked at how differently people treated me when I was in the wheel chair. The look of panic and pity was palpable. I was also amazed at how difficult everything was, the aisles were to narrow, things were too high up. The shopping street had con=bbles which were incredibly difficult to wheel a wheel chair across. Lots of shops had steps so we couldn’t get in them at all. The shopping centre was the most wheel chair friendly area and although I had always thought it to be very ugly, I realised that the pretty cobbles were very discriminatory against disabled people and the ugly building made shopping much easier. After my experience I wrote my experiences and the things I thought they could do to improve services for disabled people. This wasn’t a school project or something I was told to do, it was something I was motivated to do because of my values about fighting discrimination.

My objections against sexism came later as I found other females often to be bitchy and struggled to identify myself with other women. It was at university where I studied social policy and discovered the inequalities suffered by women that raised my indignation. I felt shocked that gender made any difference to the life opportunities I or any other woman should expect. I may have found the company of some women irritating at times but I still believed in their and my right to equality. My experience as I had grown up had been fairly equal, with exceptions of not being allowed to play male sports, I had always felt I could do anything I put my mind to and my parents had always reinforced that this was true. I lived for my whole childhood under a female prime minister which reinforced that no job would be unachievable as a woman. In fact as a child I thought the female word for a countries leader was prime minister and the male word was president. It shows how powerful and long standing Thatcher and Regan were in my childhood. It also showed that I assumed women were just as likely to be in a position of power as men. I felt sure that I would not accept any discrimination in my career due to my gender.

It was during my third year at university I felt a crisis about what I wanted to do. I had always been sure I wanted to work in a job that would improve the life chances of vulnerable people. However, in my third year I was fed up of being broke and I went to a training session to become a mentor with a struggling school in South London. The trainer seemed to really enjoy his job and I began to think perhaps that is something I would also like to do. He explained that to get into training you needed to get involved in companies human resources teams and that he had worked for an oil company and earnt a staggering amount of money. I suddenly began to think that I could just work in the private sector and earn a lot of money. Luckily the mentoring was a really valuable experience for me and it worked with two young people who had so much talent, that because of the schools struggles was being missed. I worked with them every week and began to realise my passion was helping people who didn’t have the fairest start in life. I decided that working in a private company training people wouldn’t fulfil this desire and didn’t sit comfortably with my value base.

I think this is probably the only time I considered doing a job that was motivated by money not what I would be doing. When I got my first career job I found it by searching the guardian with the words social inclusion. My values of social justice led me to look for a job that would support people to be supported to be able to engage in their local community and not to be left feeling they weren’t valued or that they couldn’t achieve their potential.

I learnt a lot more about my values as a Connexions Personal Adviser. I worked with many professionals who didn’t seem to share my values and saw the young people I worked with as being written off and that they would never amount to anything. I found this really difficult and with the support of my manager and colleagues found a way to challenge these views and to continue fighting for services and for a next chance for them. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t.

I found the court system frustrating, a young person could have to wait all day for their case to be heard, I would often be there waiting with them. I would advocate on their behalf in the court which would often be taken into consideration and they would be given another chance rather than receiving a custodial sentence. It frustrated me that my presence could make such a difference when so many young people would have no one to support them and that often professionals would not see it as a valuable use of their time as the court system didn’t give times to make it easier for professionals to attend. My values felt that every young person should have support in these situations. The courts seemed to penalise the most vulnerable whose parents wouldn’t attend.

I found that the hours I spent in court with the young people I worked with built up a trust and respect many of them had never had with a professional. It showed them that I supported them and that I would be there for them. It was often on these days that we would have the best conversations and be able to really look closely at what they wanted to achieve, what they needed to do this and what changes they needed to make in their behaviour to do this. It was also a time you could discuss more emotive subjects such as the influence of their families. Often it would be there families that got them into the trouble in one way or another. Some situations were so sad that the only way they could gain approval from their family was through their violent, drunken or drugged behaviour, however as soon as they were caught by the police or caused them problems they would dump them. I was able to direct them to think if these influences were helping their lives.

I remember one young man that I had worked with for a long time and had sat waiting for caught hearing numerous times reflected to me that I had always been there at every court hearing. I had never given up on him and not once had his mum come to support him. It was the first time he had ever admitted that his family were less than perfect. He had the attitude of the street that your family is everything, that no one disses their family and that you stick together no matter what even if that means taking the rap for something you hadn’t done. It was very much a mafia style of thinking. It was sad to hear him make the realisation that despite everything he had tried to do to please his family, they were never there when he needed them. Unfortunately he ended up serving a long sentence for a very violent crime which was motivated by loyalty to his family.

The hardest thing I had to come to terms with was that however much I stuck to my values to respect and believe in the young people I worked with for some of them I could never replace the negative impact of their families on them. They had to go back to them each day and they would only see me a few times a week at the most. Although there were many young people that never successfully re engaged positively in society, when I left the job I made sure I said good bye to each young person on my case laod personally if it was possible. One young person was in prison in Liverpool but I was determined to say good bye in person. I was an emotional good bye. She said she would miss me and thanked me for having been there for her. I said I would miss her and tried to leave her with the message that if she believed in herself she could achieve all the things we had talked about. I think at the time she believed it, unfortunately her family was also very distructive and I heard that she had ended up taking heroin when she came out of prison.

I believe she had felt my values and that it had made a difference to her as it had with the other young people I worked with but I did learn that sometimes this is not enough to counter the negative influences in their lives.

I left this job because the new manager valued keeping the budget in check more that meeting the needs of the young people. I felt I couldn’t work under someone whose values I didn’t share. Although I recognise the need to balance resources against need, I would always fight for the needs of a young person to meet rather than to protect a budget. I worked with care leavers and the team had a duty to house them until they were 18. I couldn’t support a manager who would say it was too expensive and we wouldn’t give them their leaving care grants because we wanted to save money. It was not only illegal but unethical. These young people had received a bad deal already and the least they deserved was our team to support them not to be holding resources from them because the budget needed to be reigned in.

I left to do a maternity cover of the Mentoring co-ordinator. I felt strongly supportive of mentoring as a method to provide young people with support and a good role model where often they lacked those. My experience of being a mentor had showed me what a difference this could make and my experience of working with young offenders made me feel strongly that they needed this support to be able to see an alternative to the lifestyle they had started to go down.

My manager Griff taught me about restorative justice principles where perpetrators and victims would be brought together. The victim would be supported to find a suitable punishment but also to receive an apology. Often these meetings would end up with the victim feeling more sorry for the perpetrator as they would come to understand how little the perpetrator had in their lives compared to them.

I felt these principles really sat well with my values and that by creating more understanding between two people it would lead to increased harmony and a more loving society. This added a new dimension to my understanding of justice which I have taken with me.

I moved to manage the Young Carers Service and really had an opportunity to develop my participative values. In my interview I had to do a presentation and I presented a jigsaw. I gave a piece to each member of the interview panel and asked them to habd them to me throughout the interview. The centre piece was the young carers as I felt the was the most important part of the service. I still feel like this today, although I value partnership working, getting funding, working with the families and supporting staff, volunteer and students, I still see the young carers as the most important reason for my job. I see myself as a facilitator to enable them to create a service they feel happy with.

I have experienced many frustrations which have challenged my values. I have been restricted in how much I have been supported to increase the size of the service despite the clear and consistent message I have received from the young carers to want more support. I have had to rectify why other professionals would want to prevent the young carers from receiving more support. It has been answered by a difference in values, that other people’s values are to increase their status and power and not to empower young peoples. One manager said to me in an exit interview that if I wandered why the service had not developed as much as I had hoped it was because she had blocked it. Another manager said that they think this had been passed onto the director as things had continued to be blocked. I struggle to understand this value base that is self seeking at the expense of the vulnerable young people they are there to serve.

I have found it difficult to challenge employers with these values as it has always been in jobs I enjoy and the pathways to complain have been unclear as has the inference of being penalise or sacked if a complaint were to be made. The challenges have always been veiled and therefore the evidence has never been solid enough for me to feel I have a case for whistle blowing. So despite my values of justice I have struggled to achieve these within the organisations I have been employed in. I recognise that these struggles I have are shared with many other professionals I share my values with and many good workers leave jobs as I did with the Connexions Personal Adviser role because they cannot live their values in their job due to management conflicts.

I find it much easier to challenge external organisations and have successfully supported young carers to ensure schools provide them with the appropriate support for example tackling bullying or providing a flexible time table. I have gained support and funding to create school packs, hospital packs, mental health packs and training social work students and to input into policies and procedures and staff training that will improve the experiences of young carers within these areas and with these workers. I think this has been more successful as in each organisation there is usually someone who shares the same values who will find a way to make such a project happen. This ability to find the right person is something you don’t always have the ability to influence within your own management structures.

My values have been challenged by my mum. She has been in receipt of various service ever since I was born and has never received them with gratitude but always expected them as a right for herself because she suffers from schizophrenia and as an attack when it has come to her children being taken into care.

When I was a child she never liked social workers but she worked with them so she would be able to see me regularly. It was when I was an adult that my values of justice were challenged by my mums attitude to the services she received. Mum’s drug addiction to speed made her much more aggressive than she had been when I was child.

My mum ended up going to prison several times, usually for attacking a worker. I worked with violent offenders so I knew how dangerous it could be. I often received verbally aggressive phone calls from the young people I worked with and would allow them to let off some steam but make it clear that it was unacceptable behaviour and that they could not treat other people like that or would not listen to them. I felt that everyone needed someone safe they could let their anger out at and that as long as it was not directed at me it did me no harm. I would not accept verbal aggression face to face and would arrange another time to meet them when they were calmer. So I could understand the difficulties the workers that were trying to support my mum faced. I have advocated for my mum for many years, sometimes I have inadvertently supported her to harm herself more.

I remember one time when mum had been sectioned for her own protection she phoned me and asked that as her next of kin I would write to the hospital and ask for her to be released. I was unsure as to whether this was a good idea. Mum was living with her ex boyfriend at the time who was her speed dealer. At hospital she had her own bed and was fed three meals a day. From my perspective she was safe and all her needs were met. However it challenged my belief in personal choice, freedom and social justice. If I refused to write the letter fr mum I was denying her the ability to have the same choices as I have.

Unfortunately mum went to prison shortly afterwards. Mum’s time in prison also challenged my values. She was often kept for up to a year on remand without being tried. I felt this was unjust, however I also felt that due to her drug taking and homeless issue, she was often better off in prison and that if I began fighting the system it would leave mum more vulnerable. I have felt at times that I have inadvertently both colluded with mum and at other times colluded with her workers and that this has been against my values in both cases.

My collusion with mum has been to allow her to use me as a safe address even though I know she has never stayed with me for more than 5 days in a row. My hope that mum would actually stay and find herself a safe place to live has meant that I have been part of a viscious cycle of her returning to prison and receiving no real chance of permanent housing. It took me speaking with a carer support worker to realise that I needed to stop allowing mum to take control when she is not in the right mind to be making safe and healthy decisions. I felt that although I was working as a Young Carers Manager I needed separate support for the caring role I had taken for my mum. I have found it more challenging to make decisions that are in keeping with my values with my mum than I ever do professionally. I think people often find it easier to support other people to make good decisions that they find it to make those good decisions themselves.

I have had to make a stand with my mum at times that I won’t accept her shouting at me, swearing at me, or emotionally black mailing me. I remember mum phoning me up one night and doing all those things, I remained calm and would not raise my voice, mum wanted money and she was calling me a selfish bitch and that I had loads of money in my cosy happy life and that she had nothing. I kept saying to her that if she would calm down I would talk about how I would help her but that I thought giving her money would not be helpful as I felt she may just spend it on more drugs. This made her more enraged. Eventually after insulting me she hung up. I was so angry and upset I threw the phone across the kitchen. Ben was so supportive he gave me a hug and told me I’d done brilliantly, that I’d remained calm and in control. It never felt like that but many visits and phone calls would follow that pattern for many years.

It was a big decision for me to allow mum to stay at my house. It is a decision I made carefully with Ben and any other housemates that may have been there at the time. I believe that everyone should have somewhere they can go that they feel safe. I believed mum needed this. Most of the times mum came to stay she respected that it was my home but there have been times when mum has been almost impossible. The final time mum came to stay she was in a bad way and I had gone straight from a residential to pick her up so I was tired and vulnerable. I had thought it would be a positive time as I had taken 3 days off work to recover from the residential and I thought mum and I could spend these together to again look for options for her around a place to live.

It emerged on the way home that this would not be possible but I was already too tired to turn round and take mum home. In the car she had begun to say how selfish I was that I had been late picking her up, I had lost my bag which had quite a bit of money in it, she began to say I was obsessed with money and that’s all I cared about, that I didn’t care about her. She then began insulting my dad who had died several years before. By the time I returned home I was in fits of tears. Ben realised this was going to be a bad visit and poured me a bath and told me he would deal with my mum. I could hear him saying, this is my house and I won’t have you talk about Sonia like that.

That night it got worse and mum started playing songs about death, killing and burning people. I began to feel quite scared because I knew mum had been charged before for lighting fires. Mum didn’t sleep that night and neither did I despite how tired I was. The next day Ben went to work and I tried to lie in, I mostly was trying to avoid mum, but she came and sat at my door and in a way that reminds me of golem from Lord of the Rings sat and insulted me for what felt like hours. I kept calm and said that I disagreed but if that’s what mum thought then there was nothing I could do. I lost my temper when she started talking about Champagne and I think it made her smirk. I think she had been hoping for a reaction and once I gave it to her she seemed to have achieved what she wanted.

I decided to leave the house and phone the assertive outreach team for help. There answer was to call the police if I felt in danger and that they would inform the crisis service so if I needed anything I could call them. This felt like it put me in another difficult position, that in order to protect myself I had to imprison my mum. I phoned my foster parents for moral support, they felt for me and hoped I would be ok. I didn’t want to go home so I actually went to work for a cup of tea and had a chat to my manager. He was very supportive, but again it was up to me how I would deal with it. In the end I managed to avoid phoning the police and Ben & I supported each other through a very difficult and harrowing week until mum decided she would go back on the train.

The reality of have social justice values when it is your mum who is not treating you fairly or with respect is very difficult. I am not clear that I have come to terms with how this works personally. I feel it has helped me empathise with the young carers and their families. Some decisions may seem uncaring when viewed from the outside but in order to respect other people you have to respect yourself and this means expecting respect from those around you.

I have since colluded with mum’s workers to have her sectioned as soon as she left prison. I agreed that as soon as she accessed a service that they would section her. This has led to her being sectioned for nearly a year. However, she is more healthy and balanced than I or my brother have seen her for a decade. She is not happy but she can make rational decisions and she has apologised for how she treated me in the times I have discussed above. The idea of making someones decisions for them and taking their liberty to prevent them taking drugs and harming themselves does not sit easily with my values of social justice. However, mum has been able to help herself to be physically and psychologically safe and secure so I hope by her being sectioned it has provided an opportunity for this not taken it away.

My experiences with my mum have run alongside my excitement for seeing my values being born out in my work. I remain excited that these have made a big difference to the young carers I work with and feel proud that despite my challenges to my values because of my mum I have remained true to them in my work. I am proud and privileged to have been part of what they have achieved whilst recognising how difficult it is to balance various competing needs as I have learnt with my mum. As I challenge professionals who work within these complex worlds of competing demands I feel it is still important for the young carers voice to be heard. Even if all that they would like to see is not possible it is empowering for them to have a means to express what they would like to happen and important for them to learn why things are not always possible.

I feel my experiences with my mum have showed me that you cannot help someone who is not in a place to be helped. Mum has spent many years sabotaging help she has been given as she has needed the drugs more than she has wanted the help to stay clean and hold down permanent housing. I still feel the system has holes in it and that it was difficult for mum to access the support she needed because she was too ill and too depressed but I also feel the workers that tried to support her never gave up on her even when she was rude and attacked them and they remained and remain incredibly supportive of me as I try to be mum’s daughter and carer.

I try to keep these values and try to never give up on any child or young person I work with, whilst recognising you can’t help someone who won’t be helped.