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Professor Jan Fook
Director, Interprofessional Institute and Professor of Professional Practice Research
Room F5, Arts Building,
Royal Holloway University of London
Egham.

E: Jan.Fook@rhul.ac.uk

 

'Professional Power, identity, structures and cultures: Bringing the outside in': A series of IPI seminars

IPI Director, Prof Jan Fook, will be opening the series on 18th November 2009.

Please note that all seminars are from 2 – 5pm and light refreshments will be available. All seminars may be booked using the booking form.

Seminars

'Identity in multi-disciplinary teams', 18th November 2009, 2-5pm

Room: Gower Street Board Room*

Seminar leaders: Andrew Briggs (Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust); Catherine Hartley (Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust )

The aim of Andrew Briggs’s presentation is to engage delegates with their experiences of working in or with public sector organisations. Introducing an idea about the capacity to think in CAMH services the presentation hopes to bring delegates' attention to some dynamic, systemic and structural aspects that either facilitate or erode this capacity.

Catherine Hartley will be talking about how professional identity has been undermined by the changes in NHS and local government leading to a crisis within our teams which rises above identity and inter professional power.

* Please note this is the building joined on to 11, Bedford Square round the corner in Gower Street. You need to call in to the Bedford Square reception to get the code to open the door.

‘Authority and Leadership: Multi-agencies, structure and cultures’ 17th February 2010, 2-5pm

Room: F1 11, Bedford Square

Seminar Leaders: Toni Bifulco (RHUL) and Ray Jones (Kingston University)

Toni Bifulco will focus on: Leadership and management in multiagency child safeguarding services has been much in the limelight following the case of Baby Peter. A recent 'Roadmapping Event' held by the Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies (RHUL and KU) invited a range of academics and professionals in the field to discuss service issues and the 'scapegoating' of social workers. The presentation will relay the collected wisdom of this group on issues of management, professional identity and mult-iagency working.

Ray Jones will focus on: One of the management and leadership requirements in social care, health and other services is how to have an impact when not present! This becomes even more of an issue for senior managers as they may be at some physical and geographical distance from their colleagues delivering front-line services. This seminar, drawing on personal practical experience and on research, will provide an opportunity to explore and reflect together on how to manage and lead at a distance, and what makes sense for both managers and for those they manage.

‘ Diversity Issues: Power and Cultures’  16th June 2010, 2-5pm

Room: F1 11, Bedford Square

Seminar Leaders: Anna Gupta (RHUL), John Hammond (Kingston/St. George’s) and Paula Nicolson (RHUL)

Anna Gupta will focus on: the impact of race and ethnicity on inter-professional work in children’s safeguarding services.

John Hammond will explore the how students negotiate professional and gender identities using the example of physiotherapy education.  Implications for education providers and organisations will be discussed.

Paula Nicolson will look at the different ways in which gender plays out in organisations both on a conscious/deliberate and unconscious level and asks ‘what are the consequences for individuals and organisations?’ She is particularly interested in the power relationships that may subvert women’s interests in health care organisations.

 

About these seminars

The origin of this series of three working seminars was a discussion held during the summer of 2008 about the everyday difficulties of cross disciplinary and applied/academic cross-boundary co-operation on knowledge exchange and potential for research about professional power, identity, organisational structures and cultures.

While the terms ‘inter-disciplinary’ and/or ‘multi-disciplinary’ are frequently used, particularly in health and social work settings (among practitioners and researchers), the processes involved (underlying the definitions or explanations of the concepts) remain opaque. This has not prevented the continued use of the terms.

We want to investigate whether understanding across professional boundaries and within and at the edge of organisational and professional culture and systems can be developed through getting people together to share ideas.

Thus this series of seminars attempts to ‘bring the outside in’ – crossing the boundaries within the SWan system as well as those inviting some people from outside the network ‘in’. This includes both those attending for CPD reasons as well as guest seminar leaders.

So we want these seminars to focus on

  • interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary working

  • multi-agency work

  • bridging research and practice and the interface with management.

It would be good if we can to consider the possibility of a research proposal at the end of the 3 sessions and hope some participants will be motivated to take these ideas further.

We are going to produce a Swan IPI publication - for wider distribution relevant to practitioners, managers and researchers on these topics following an evaluation of the experience.

Each event would be three hours long with a ‘lead’ talk or panel discussion (about 45 minutes) on each occasion.

We have chosen workshop leaders with care. Some have academic posts, some have professional management roles and some cross the boundaries of both. But all are key opinion leaders in their profession and have made contributions to the theme of the seminar.

We recognise too that delegates include both early career participants and those already senior in their chosen areas and therefore we hope and expect lively participation across these events.

Seminar leaders' profiles

Toni Bifulco, Professor of Health and Social Care is in the Department of Health and Social Care at RHUL based at Bedford Square. A psychologist by background, she directs the Lifespan Research Group and the Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies. In the last 9 years she has been involved with her team in undertaking applied research in Health and Social Care services undertaking evaluations and training social care practitioners. This has allowed her some insight in to issues around management and leadership in children’s services. She is currently involved in a research application with Paula Nicolson and Anna Gupta on leadership in Child and Adolescent Mental Health services.

Andrew Briggs, (B.A (Hons), M.A., M.Psych.Psych, Ph.D) is currently Head of Child Psychotherapy and Strategic Lead Clinician, Mental Health Services for Looked After Children and Adolescents and an Honorary Senior lecturer, Department for Social and Professional Studies University of Kent. Prior to training as a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic in the early 1990s he taught social studies at university level and before that worked in several CAMHS in and outside London, taking more senior roles with each job move. Currently he is clinically and managerially responsible for his own discipline (in one part of the job) and for a multi-disciplinary team (the LACA MH team). The first it is to lead the discipline within a CAMHS environment increasingly embracing the internal market. The strategic part of the LACA mental health requires Andrew to act as professional advisor with leading ideas within the multi-partnership environment brought by commissioning services through the Children’s Trusts.

Jan Fook (Professor of Professional Practice Research and Director, Interprofessional Institute, South West London Academic Network) is supporting the seminar series with a view to furthering research into the nature of the professions, in order to underpin work on inter-professional practice. Her books include: “Professional Expertise: Practice, Theory and Education for Working in Uncertainty” (2000) (with M. Ryan & L. Hawkins, Whiting & Birch, London). A major area of her work is critical reflection in professional development and research.

Anna Gupta is Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the Department of Health and Social Care at Royal Holloway, University of London. She practiced in London social worker for many years, including as a manager of a child protection team and Children’s Guardian in the family courts. She is one of the seminar leaders for the ‘diversity’ seminar and will look at the impact of race and ethnicity on inter-professional work in children’s safeguarding services. Her interests are in work with Black and minority ethnic children and families, as well as work in the public law family justice system.

John Hammond is currently Principal Lecturer in the School of Physiotherapy. John qualified as a Physiotherapist in Australia nearly 18 years ago.  He has since travelled and worked in Australia, India, South Africa and the UK.  John has worked as a physiotherapist with particular interest in musculoskeletal disorders and pain management. In 2001, he started working for the joint Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences at Kingston University and St George’s University of London. He has continued to maintain his clinical work and expertise but has developed an interest in educational research and in particular around areas of social justice in higher education. Currently he is co-lead of an interprofessional foundation programme for undergraduate students where he is involved in developing a more inclusive curriculum and ongoing evaluation. He also has interests in narrative inquiry, diversity and widening participation in higher education. He is currently completing a doctorate in education through Kingston University and Roehampton University and his research aims to explore the development of professional identity in Physiotherapy Undergraduate Education from a gender perspective.

Catherine Hartley has been a qualified social worker for over twenty years. She started her career in Wigan where she worked with a variety of client groups; including people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities and mental health problems.   She then moved to London where she developed her knowledge of mental ill health, working for the London Borough of Westminster and then as a senior practitioner in Brent. Catherine completed her practice teacher’s award at the LSE and then became the lead practice development link for Brent; sitting on the social work interview panels for both Goldsmiths and the University of Hertfordshire for many years. While working for Brent, Catherine developed an interest in forensic social work, becoming a forensic senior practitioner. It was in 2001 that she moved to her current post managing a large community mental health team in Camden. This team includes 20 staff from the disciplines of social work, nursing, occupational health and psychiatry.

               

Catherine continues her work as an Approved Mental Health Professional and as a practice teacher. In addition she mentors social workers, including those from black and ethnic minorities, whom she coaches through both AMPH training and Post Qualifying Awards. In 2002 Catherine was appointed as a lay member for the Mental Health Review Tribunal where she sits at tribunals across the South East making decisions on patients subject to detention in hospital.

    

Catherine has a degree in Psychology, a Diploma in Management Studies, and is currently a trainee consultant doing a Masters in Consultancy and the Organisation, at the Tavistock Centre, where she has been encouraged to continue her studies towards a Doctorate.

Ray Jones is Professor of Social Work at Kingston University and St. George’s, University of  London, and is a qualified and registered social worker. From 1992 to 2006 he was director of social services, and then director of adult and community services, with Wiltshire County Council. In 2001-2002 he was the first chief executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, and he has been deputy chair and chair of the British Association of Social Workers.

He is a visiting professor at the University of Bath (and previously at the University of Exeter) and a Honorary Fellow of the University of Gloucestershire. He is the author of five books, and numerous published papers, on social work and social policy, and is an academician of the Academy of the Social Sciences. He is also a trustee of Quarriers, a major Scottish-based social care charity, chair of Bristol’s Safeguarding Children Board, a consultant to the Russian-European Trust for welfare reform, and a frequent media commentator and columnist on social work and social care.

Paula Nicolson, Professor of Social Critical Health Psychology is in the Department of Health and Social Care at RHUL based at Bedford Square. She is registered as a practitioner psychologist with the Health Professions Council, a Chartered Health Psychologist and Fellow of the British Psychological Society and an Academician of the Academy of the Social  Sciences.

She is one of the seminar leaders for the ‘diversity’ seminar and will focus on the impact on identity and culture in organisations with and without women as leaders and managers. She has published many books and articles on gender and health and notable here is that her books include ‘Gender, Power and Organisation: A Psychological Perspective’ (published by Routledge in 1996). She is currently completing a three year study on Leadership in the NHS and a trainee organisational consultant at the Tavistock Centre.