Editorial: A Conversation with Paul Senior
| Author | Paul Senior |
In the heart of the old county of Westmoreland 10 probation colleagues from all parts of Britain were arriving at a remote hotel location in what had all the elements of an Agatha Christie Murder Mystery Weekend. The death knell has been sounding for probation for some years now and this group was gathering to imagine what probation might look like in 2020, if indeed it had a future! Appropriately we gathered in the library though Col. Mustard was notable by his absence.
The setting could not have been more fitting, once the home of the Gandy Family, this fine, Georgian mansion became a Country House Hotel in 1947. There is a wealth of history here and the Heaves Mansion near Kendal still retains the elegant character, which befits a true Country House. It is still owned and run by the same family after nearly 60 years. Heaves has always been noted for a friendly welcome and a sense of peace and quiet. Set in ten acres of formal gardens, woodland and parkland, the hotel has magnificent views of the Pennines, the Kent Estuary and the Lakeland Hills. The thin covering of snow on arrival somehow contributed to the atmosphere.
This group reflected many years of probation dialogue, whether as practitioners, managers, trainers, consultants, researchers or academics. But this was not a conventional conference. Though it was to take place over two days and had an overarching theme, Imagining Probation in 2020: hopes, fears and insights, there were no speakers, no set workshops, no formal agenda. The outcome was at the start unclear, open ended and possibly unreachable. Though individuals brought their own expertise and slant on this unique and sometimes precious world of probation there was no consensus of thought. In fact those invited represented very different aspects and theoretical and research preoccupations which were designed to create a real and critical debate. This was not intended to be just a talking shop amongst fellow travellers and different perspectives had been positively encouraged in the invitation to create what Bill McWilliams would have once called a 'constructively critical culture' (McWilliams, 1980).
This was only the second time I had attempted this kind of unscripted event the last time circa 1975 when I was training as a social worker. Attending a fairly conventional even old fashioned course in Hull with a predilection for psycho dynamic casework and the readings of Florence Hollis we had heard on the periphery (a minstrel (early social media!) in the form of Roy Bailey playing his guitar) about the anti-psychiatry movement led by R. D. Laing and David Cooper. Not on the curriculum I suggested to my fellow students we should go away to a remote location and debate these new ideas. I knew of an outward bound place in the North York Moors, remote and isolated, which seemed perfect. Everyone readily agreed. I prepared various papers, read all the works available of the key thinkers and we set off. On arrival I sought a communal place to work and suggested we start at 3pm. A football game had started outside and then as 3pm neared everyone disappeared, I discovered later, to the pub at the bottom of the lane. I sat and sulked, though about a dirty protest in keeping with my caricatured understanding of Laing's philosophy until they all returned around midnight. The...
To continue reading
Request your trial