Moving Social Work

This is a Research In Practice podcast, supporting evidence-informed practice with children and families, young people and adults.

Phil: Hello, I'm Phil John, Technical Support Coordinator at Research In Practice, and welcome to the Research In Practice podcast today, which champions evidence-informed practice in children's, families', and adults' services. This podcast will be looking at the promotion of physical activity in social work, both for social workers and with the people who access care, services, or support. Today, I'm joined by Katy Cleece, who is the Social Work Research Lead for the Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust, and Professor Brett Smith, who is President of the International Society of Qualitative Research, Sport, and Exercise, and Director of Research, Department of Sport and Exercise Science at Durham University. I'm delighted to welcome you both to the podcast. Now, today, we'll be looking at health and well-being, and going beyond the sound bites of such words to explore how the implementation of exercise can make a real difference to social workers and those they work with. We'll be looking at some of the research that has been conducted in this area, alongside hearing about some work that's taken place to help people to get active, so improving access to physical activity, and the challenges and rewards of integrating this into a social justice, co-productive way of working. Welcome to you both.

Professor Brett Smith: Thank you.

Phil: That was my preamble. Brett, you've written a great blog, actually, for our website, on the promotion of physical activity and its overall benefits for health and well-being. Could you give us an overview of your findings around the work?

Professor Brett Smith: Let me start off, I think, highlighting moving social work, because that pre-empts where we're going in this conversation, and I want to highlight that for at least two reasons. One, it demonstrates the value of social workers in this space, and secondly, it underpins the value of co-production. What I mean by this is people with lived experience directing research in and of themselves. This really goes back to around 2017, 2018, with my colleagues at Disability Rights UK, and what they had found, like we were finding at the same time, was that, when we were speaking with disabled people, there was an overwhelming call from them to have better conversations with social workers about physical activity and about moving more. When we were scratching our heads, 'Why were they wanting these types of conversations from social workers and with social workers,' three key things came to the foreground. One, disabled people, like many people in society, really value social workers. They're trustworthy groups of professionals that they really want conversations with. Secondly, of course, social work is underpinned in this space by a social model of disability, not by a medical model, and far too many healthcare professionals, sadly, are still underpinned by a medical model in that space. There's something different, then, about social work, and that difference really matters, as I'll highlight.

A third reason disabled people talked about the value of social workers is that they know the local communities, they know place, they know what goes on in those local communities, and they know the really deep inequities and inequalities embedded in those communities, and how to navigate them, and how to have respectful and trustworthy conversations with the service users. With that, we then asked social workers, 'What do you think about having conversations about physical activity? Is it something you're interested in? Is it something you're trained in?' We did some research, for over a year, and the long and short of the results, through quantitative and qualitative research, was that social workers came back to us and said, 'We really don't have the knowledge, the confidence, and the skills to be able to have these conversations, but what we would like is training. That training should be embedded in universities, to train the social workers of tomorrow, but also through CPD training as well, so we can get a better understanding of how we can have these conversations.'

Over the next, really, two years, we spent a long time co-producing the training, working with hundreds of social workers and disabled people to be able to produce what we think, and what we now know after the evaluation, is a very robust and useful training programme, that does improve people's confidence and knowledge and skills in that space. What we're also finding is that there are so many different spill-over effects in terms of what social workers are getting from this. One is, they're coming back to us and saying that, through conversations and through understanding physical activity, it's not only a good way of supporting the Care Act and well-being in particular, of course, in that space, but it's also another opportunity to uphold social justice and to work with many different other populations other than disabled people. What social workers are telling us, once they've had the training and we track them for a few months afterwards, for example, physical activity is just one example in this space. It's really good for people with alcohol and drug issues, it's an incredible opportunity to support people through this. We know it's an incredibly under-utilised resource in terms of mental health, physical activity, but of course, it's absolutely useful in this space to support people's mental health, and both people with mental health right now, but also a preventative approach moving forward as well. We know it's as equally good as anti-depressants and talking therapies such as CPD, as just one example there.

What we also know, from what social workers are telling us in this space, is that's a really good opportunity, working with older adults, in terms of supporting loneliness, improving independence, it's really good in terms of supporting families going through trauma. Whilst physical activity and sport in general shouldn't be held up as a panacea for all the world's problems and societal problems, what they're coming back to us and saying is, 'This isn't just about health.' That's where healthcare professionals really do focus upon, physical activity is really good for improving people's health. What social workers are coming back to us, and something really unique in this space, and that uniqueness really matters, is that they're identifying physical activity is really good for, for example, reducing stress, improving social bonds, a sense of belonging, social cohesion, supporting people with alcohol and drug issues, depression, and most importantly, putting a smile on people's faces. That social aspect of physical activity is what is often missed in the conversations that we have in public health spaces. That's where social workers are really unique, because they get what type of conversations people need to get people moving and to help them to stay moving, for not just well-being, but also for social justice issues.

I'll leave you at this point with a small story from our research, from a social worker. I think it exemplifies the benefit and the huge value of physical activity, but also what a social worker brings to this space. This comes from a social worker we interviewed a few months after the training, that had utilised the conversations about physical activity. They were working with a young individual, learning disability, and through the conversation, they found out that this person used to enjoy strength training, and strength training is absolutely fundamental for people's well-being, quality of life, and so on. They asked the reasons, 'Why aren't you going any longer,' and the long and short of it, this person said, 'I really enjoyed going to the local leisure centre, but I just don't feel as though I belong.' It was a real struggle always being in there, there was inaccessibility, etc. These were barriers that an individual should overcome, as we often teach healthcare professionals, these are forms of discrimination and oppression. What this social worker did, working with this individual, was not only support them to have a conversation with the manager of the leisure centre, to better understand how they could make it more accessible in that space. That not only, of course, had consequences for the individual's well-being when they changed the signage, when they improved the toilets, that were inaccessible still at the time, and so on. The social worker, in and of themselves, was enacting a form of social justice. They were upholding people's human right to be physically active, it's a human right.

That is something really beneficial that a social worker brings to this space. It's not just about well-being, they were challenging discrimination and oppression in that space, and they were also making it better, not just for this individual, but for future individuals who then were more welcomed and felt as though they belonged in that space. That small conversation had a massive impact, not only on that individual, but the local community in general.

Phil: It's such a positive story that you're telling, to sum up a lot of what you've just distilled there, really. Just looking at-, what challenges do you think professionals face who want to develop health and well-being into their work with people day to day? What are some of those barriers that they're coming up against?

Professor Brett Smith: There are several perceived barriers, and I say perceived because, during the training, we challenged some of those perceived barriers. The first perceived barrier is time, of course. Social workers are incredibly busy, and the caseloads are just increasing monthly, if not daily, in their world, in that space, so we take a Making Every Contact Count approach, a MECC approach, where we talk about opportunistic conversations, and even small conversations can really matter in that space. We talk about how we can incorporate conversations into everyday practice, so it's not something additional to do, it's just part of the social worker's role. Another barrier that social workers talked about was the fear of talking about physical activity for certain groups of people. Is it dangerous, for example? Can we harm people in that space? Quite rightly it's an important question, and so during the training we talk about the challenges of that and we provide the evidence, and the evidence really comes down to one key thing. It's better to be active than not active, and particularly people with long-term health conditions where people might be reluctant, for example, to have conversations about physical activity.

Then another potential barrier that social workers talked about initially was, 'Is this our role? Is it our job to have these conversations? Should it be left to healthcare professionals? Should it be left to other people and other types of professionals to have this type of conversation?' So, again, during the training, based upon what social workers have told us, we highlight why social workers are absolutely fundamental in this space. Not only it's an opportunity to uphold the Care Act, of course, through physical activity and wellbeing, but also there's another opportunity to support and enhance people's humans right and act upon social justice, which again, is quite unique in the social work profession, I should say. I also teach healthcare professionals, and the idea of social justice and human rights is implicit in their DNA, so to speak, but it's not necessarily always at the foreground. What we're finding with social workers is that is absolutely vital for getting people moving and supporting people to move a little bit more in their everyday lives, whether that's to reduce loneliness, to improve mental health, etc.

Phil: Yes, really interested in how that health and wellbeing fit within the social justice model, because, well, to me at first, as a layperson anyway, I hadn't joined the dots, but that was clearly something you were looking at through the research that you undertook, is that right?

Professor Brett Smith: Yes, very much so. I mean, there are several layers to this that really all come to intersect, and what's absolutely crucial is that we know that in the case of, for example, disabled people, who are the most inactive people in society, and yet want to be more active in that space, they face huge health and general economic inequities in daily life. It's not a lack of motivation, it's not necessarily a lack of time that are the barriers for them wanting to be active in that space. It's the deep inequities that they face daily that become not simply barriers that they should overcome. On the contrary, these are societal forms of discrimination and oppression that are weighing heavily on disabled peoples' lives, and other people in society, of course, particularly at this moment in time. That's where we can also get the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, in that when we talk about increases in physical activity at the population level, what we often see is moving people from 100 minutes to 120 minutes. Now, that's great, but that's where we're not going to get the really big benefits from society and for individuals.

Where we're going to get the biggest benefits are people who are hardly moving, who are, for example, sat on the settee all the time through what's called sedentary behaviour in that space. That's not often down to them themselves. These are to the inequitable circumstances that they have been born into and that they have to face daily to try and overcome. Of course, that's a societal issue. It's society imposing a whole set of restrictions on individuals, and so you see the link. Physical inactivity is associated with high levels of deprivation, inequality, inequity, discrimination and oppression. So, that's another reason, of course, why talking about physical activity in this space can illuminate the inequities, and it gives us another opportunity to start challenging the inequities that far too many people face, and as a result suffer in their daily life.

Phil: Yes, and I think you wrote in the blog on our website that if you are talking to people about exercise and the benefits of physical activity, you're more likely to actually then engage with that as well, so it's a reciprocal, sort of, process in some sense. Is that right? So, I mean, I wonder, this sounds rather obvious really, but could you explain some of the benefits of physical activity for social workers, something like the show, not tell, kind of-,

Professor Brett Smith: Yes, and it's a very timely question for several reasons. If we start off with we know that there's a retention issue, should I say, in social work, we know that I think the latest figures from Social Work England, it was something like 43% of social workers are thinking of leaving the profession within the next five years. We know that social workers' wellbeing and health in general isn't great, not because they're not great, but because of the stress of the job and all the pressures that go with that. Then when we look at what is trying to be done for social workers in that space, when we look at the research at least, we see there's an over-emphasis on mindfulness. A recent systematic review came out and it was all about mindfulness, we should support social workers through mindfulness, but what the article also highlighted was that social workers might not want mindfulness, or they might want other options as well. They did highlight in that article that physical activity could be one option, and there are, of course, good reasons for that. We know that people who are physically active have better quality of life, better wellbeing.

The senior social workers that might be listening to this, they're more likely to stay in work in terms of retention, but also have much less sick days as well in work as a result of being physically active in that space. So, there are all those really big benefits for social workers and the social work profession in and of itself. Of course, I don't want to suggest that the social work profession could be cured, so to speak, from all of its troubles and traumas that go with it through physical activity, but we know, or we think we know, that physical activity could be one mechanism, one way of supporting social workers' wellbeing, health, retention, less sick days in terms of the senior social workers that might be interested in this. What we also believe, and what the research is hinting to us right now, is that those social workers who buy into physical activity and health and wellbeing in that space, they're more likely to have conversations about it with, for example, disabled people and other service users.

So, as a result, they're more likely to be taken seriously also in terms of being a role model in that space. So, there are these two benefits. It benefits social workers and the social work profession in and of itself, but as well it could also have benefits in terms of the communication and having really rich conversations about moving a little bit more to support wellbeing, reduce mental health issues, support people through health and substance issues, forensic social work, etc.

Phil: Yes, so that's great, Brett. I think now I'd like to turn our attention to Katy. could you tell us a little about your background and experiences and attitude to exercise and wellbeing?

Katy Cleece: Yes, hiya, so I've always had a lifelong hatred of running or any kind of physical activity, always avoided it at school, didn't want to take part in any, you know, PE sessions, anything like that. Then I think I was about 31 and I thought, 'Right, I've got two kids now, I need to get a bit fitter,' and I did a Race for Life with one of my friends, one of the obstacle ones, and we ran in between stuff, and I thought, 'Oh, I didn't die in between running stuff.' Also, I'd been a heavy smoker for a number of years, but I'd given up just before I had my first child, and I thought, 'Actually, I can breathe and do stuff, so maybe I'll give this running thing a go.' We started off just running until we felt like we were going to die and then walking again, and carried on, built it up a bit, and then my dad, who's actually a runner, he's a bit of an athlete, he said, 'Oh, why don't you try parkrun?' Someone at work did it, I didn't know there were multiple parkruns, I just thought it was a thing, so we rocked up one week and took part, and it was alright, and I got my time afterwards, and everyone clapped me as I was going round. I thought, 'Oh, I feel part of this,' but it was always Saturday mornings and my husband worked, and we had, as I say, the two kids at the time, so I started volunteering every week. So, I, kind of, got into running through volunteering really. Though I'd done bits of running, my parkrun journey was very much about going with (TC 00:20:00) the kids, being out in any weather, because it got us out the house, it got us away from the screens, it got us spending time together.

My family's grown since then, so I've got a stepson at 21, down to I've got three children of my own as well, the youngest being four, and it does get us out in all weathers. I've also become an event director for a junior parkrun, so that's for four to fourteen-year-olds, and again, my children will either take part or they'll volunteer, and I see the confidence it gives my twelve-year-old. She can hold her own with other people because she's used to being around adults and being able to volunteer or lead on something and teach people what they need to do, so that's really helped with her confidence and self esteem. My youngest at four won't let me run with her any more because it's fully marshalled, it's safe for her to run at junior parkrun, so she's sacked me off. She's absolutely, you know, this Covid child that everyone said would be dead shy because she never went out, and actually, she's the most confident little thing. They can choose to run or walk, or whatever, so they're doing it on their terms, but they're growing up enjoying that activity, and I'm quite involved now. So, I support event support and (inaudible 21.10) support, six parkruns. One of which is the very first NHS parkrun forensic mental health.

Phil: Yes, I'd like to come to that, but before you do, I just wondered if I could talk to you about your own personal experience. It's a strange thing to go from 'I don't do any exercise' to 'Right, I'm going to take the step to do it'. As a, kind of, limited runner but I've been going regularly now for four years, I couldn't tell you, I couldn't tell you why I decided to do it, but I'm very glad that I have. I just wondered, I said at the beginning we were going to, kind of, go beyond the sound-bites and people talk about wellbeing and that kind of mental health benefit, but is that something that you found immediately, or did you have to work at it? Just you, as a runner yourself.

Katy Cleece: Yes, I don't think it necessarily came immediately, but it did surprise me how much I enjoyed going and doing it with other people, because essentially, running's boring isn't it? Just being in your own head and going around, there's nothing exciting, but actually, being able to talk to other people, like I say, whether that was volunteering or then after parkrun I joined a running group. I've found being in social work, it's a stressful job, but I'm also sitting at a desk for long periods of time, the paperwork's really increased over the years, so you don't get out. This time of year, when it's dark when you go to work, it's dark when you come home, so you don't think about necessarily going out in the fresh air. But, if I make plans to meet someone and go for a run, I will go out and I'll meet that person because I said I will, and then whatever's done my head in that day, I can have a bit of a rant and go, 'Oh, you know, my boss has annoyed me,' or whatever, whatever the situation is. Or you talk about nothing, but you can feel that tension headache disappearing, that stress dropping away from you, and I've never felt worse after a run. Even if I felt rubbish before I went, it always feels better afterwards, so I think you get that immediate little benefit from the physical act of moving and things, but then I think there's a huge psychological benefit of being with other people. I think isolation can be a big issue and I know for me, if I'm not feeling great with my mental health, I'll just, sort of, take to my bed and hide away from the world, but actually being out and being around people changes your perception. I think it's a real positive for the mental health as well.

Phil: Thanks for that. So, yes, coming back round again then, you mentioned that you're the first person to organise and implement an NHS parkrun, is that right?

Katy Cleece: Yes, so there was one tried down in London, and unfortunately, what they found was, because it was open to the public, they didn't get patients taking part. When they did some research, patients didn't feel welcome or included, because they felt too othered in there. Then, prison parkruns have been going, so the first one happened in our patch with is Havering, and I'm quite interested because I used to work in prisons as well. So, I was really interested in how that help for people that, I suppose, are the most disempowered, that we work with, people that are physically locked away from society, they don't get to choose how or when they take part in stuff, everything's dictated to them. So, I've been fortunate to do a few prison parkruns and speak to prisoners there and hear about what it's meant for them. Of course, parkrun happens the same way wherever they are, so when they come out of prison, they're able to take part in the local parkrun, and they're no longer an ex-prisoner or whatever, they're just another parkrunner, and nobody, you don't know anybody's story there. You just rock up as much or as little as you want to. So, then it was just a year ago actually, I was chatting to a guy at a research conference we were doing, and I'd been saying for a while, 'I think we should do something in the forensic mental health unit that we have, because again, we know that there are lots of physical health issues with people on long term medications, or not doing enough physical activity.' Obviously, I'd been following Brett's work, and I said, 'This is really-, like, let's look at this.'

This guy I got chatting to happened to be a social worker who was a manager over at our forensic unit, and he loved the idea. He took it up straight away and he went and got the funding to do that. So, Mike and some team there, they physically set up the parkrun, from a conversation we'd had, from a bit of an idea that I'd stolen from prison parkruns. But, yes, we now have the first forensic mental health inpatient secure parkrun, and we're doing some evaluation on that, of what that's meant for the guys that have been coming along, taking part, and their stories. Some of them where times have come down, or again, it's just seeing staff and patients together. You can't really differentiate who's who, they were just a group of people, either volunteering or running together, and those relationships and the impact on how people feel, but also the staff wellbeing, and they're getting involved in it and feeling good about it.

Phil: That's nice, and it's, kind of, just become a sort of liberating thing, or human thing. Human to human, because everybody's in the same boat, or on the same bit of tarmac.

Katy Cleece: Yes, there's no hierarchy in parkrunners. Even between volunteering and taking part, parkrun describes them all as participants, so it doesn't matter whether you're doing the full distance, it doesn't matter if you're standing cheering, it doesn't matter how you take part, you are participating equally.

Phil: And so, what were the challenges then that you faced when first organising and operating the scheme? How did you work to make it feel exercise inclusive? That's a hard thing to do, I would imagine. Starting anything from nothing can be difficult.

Katy Cleece: Yes, absolutely, and of course, we were all totally onboard with the idea, but then it's trying to get people who maybe don't know about parkrun or don't think about those benefits and stuff. We did drop in a few bits of stuff that Brett had written and had published, so we could evidence, because that's the first thing, isn't it? There is an evidence base for this, this is not just me saying, 'Oh, I think this is a great idea, let's roll with it.' Actually, there is that research and evidence base saying it's good. We were really lucky in terms of-, so Mike went and approached a few senior leaders, he's the event director, the Guild, and he spoke with somebody who's from NHS Charities Together, and that's about funding things that are for staff wellbeing as well. They could see the staff wellbeing element to this, about staff being able to take part, because we're a closed parkrun, so you can't just turn up as a member of the public, but if you're a staff member or you are a resident there, you can take part. It's just for you, so it's smaller numbers. It's safer for the people that are patients there, and of course it's all risk assessed for them to take part.

So, physically, are they able to take part and do the distance? Have they got the equipment they need? If they need to be supervised, staff members will then escort them, which means the staff members are joining in with them. But, actually, staff members can come along, so we've had people that have never done parkrun before, but it felt safer because there weren't masses of people there, and it was colleagues that they knew. We've had people that have maybe been injured or been out of it for a while and returning. We've got people who want to build their confidence and they're coming and volunteering, getting to know people in a different way, and build up skills in that area. So, we were lucky in that we got the buy-in from senior leadership really quickly, and we got the funding, because you do need funding to set up a parkrun.

We then had to persuade HQ, so I think that was a lot of me just going back to parkrun HQ and just bothering them until they gave in in the end, but no, they are very onboard. They launched all the prison parkruns, they're very onboard with this sort of idea. Some of them have got experience of working in similar fields. Then, it's very much about, how do you bring staff onboard? I think that's the slowly, slowly, you know, they're seeing the benefits. So, as one wards getting into doing it, the next ward's like, 'How come they're doing that? How can we get involved? What can we do?' Then we've had different aspects, so there's a new learning disability hospital being built and that'll be something where they'll be able to come along, if that's what they want to do. We've got rehab centres that are interested in coming and utilising it, or people when they move on, coming back to that safer, smaller parkrun. The mother and baby inpatient unit as well, so it's about it being open for other people to come onboard with it, but I think seeing is believing? You know, rather than us just talking about it, when they see it for themselves, they call it the ' Guild Effect,' you can't help but be swept up in it.

Phil: Yes, and it is that thing isn't it? I've mentioned earlier on about showing not telling, something about it actually being demonstrated and happening, it has a snowball effect once you build up a bit of momentum. I make it sound really easy and I'm sure it was actually really challenging, but it's fantastic. I'm glad you mentioned evidence, because of course, research in practice, (TC 00:30:00) always about the evidence, but what are some of the tangible benefits that you've seen over the course of its development and implementation would you say?

Katy Cleece: So, for Guild specifically, I think it's about people's confidence and enjoyment. We've got one person who, their trajectory was about being moved into a long term medium secure unit, and actually that's been turned round now, and they're looking at going into low secure, so it's reducing where they would have otherwise, how they would have been detained, and those restrictions that would have been placed upon them. Being able to show that they can do things independently, for their confidence, and going and knowing that they can, you know, what parkrun's about, and it's something they can do quite independently. So, they have, like, an anonymised barcode to protect their identity, but then, they need to look after it. And actually, they are doing, and they bring it each time. So, it's something else that they've got control over. Some of the time, we let people just come and just try it for a bit if they want because it's six laps, maybe sometimes they'll do two laps, maybe the next time three laps, so they can build up. But some of them as well that have been doing the full course, their times have been getting quicker and quicker because they're getting fitter as they're going round, which is really lovely to see.

Phil: That is good, yes.

Katy Cleece: And it's those individuals, so I know we've got a fantastic nurse, she's a ward manager, and she's been really behind it as well. So, that's been a big driving force because she's getting people there, but she's also then taking people out running in between time, so they can practice it, or those who have got leave can come and practice the course. You see them sometimes just running the course on their own. So, it shows that that's meaningful for them because they're practising it, you know, mid-week. But yes, they have, like, a bit of a running club, and they run a couple of times a week, and they're all keen to do that. And she was saying, the number of incidents have really reduced on the ward, and you know, they've had no drug-related incidents at all for the last few months. So, it's all those other things that we didn't really expect when we set out, actually, it's impacting in all different areas of life.

Phil: Fantastic. And it's so fantastic to come out of what we all experienced, you know, to greater or lesser degrees with the pandemic, and literally, the kind of, opening up and getting into this activity and this mindset, which is just physical and, obviously, for mental health and community, and all of these things are interconnected, aren't they? So, there's a great story, a really positive story. And the other question for you both now, how would you like to see the integration of this, kind of, like, healthy model of working implemented? So, both for professionals in the sector and those that they work with? And Brett, I guess, I'll ask you that question first.

Professor Brett Smith: Yes. It's a challenging question, of course, but I think, there are several things that we're learning from Moving Social Work. Education, of course, is one. It needs to be embedded in university education, in CPD training, just to start getting social workers onboard, in terms of, physical activity should be part of a social worker's role in terms of having those conversations. But what we've also found from our research is that while social workers really want to have these conversations and, particularly, as a result of the training, one thing that they keep coming back to us in terms of how we can implement it even better is that we need senior social workers onboard. We need them to be able to give permission for social workers to have those types of conversations. We need it embedded in people's policies and people's strategies, and we need, for example, the new chief social worker for England to be able to start shouting about the benefits of physical activity and social work in this space. So, whilst this work has been co-produced from the bottom up, and we're seeing the value of that, we also need simultaneously a top-down approach for senior social workers, principal social workers to be able to advocate and to be able to support this, and that includes, of course, BASW and Social Work England in that space. At the same time, we also need social work leaders and managers in this space, to be able to advocate for more movement at work for social workers, if they so wish, of course. And that could come through different mechanisms, of course. It is enshrined in law in terms of wellbeing, but I'm not certain people enact it as often as we should.

And it should be beholden upon senior social workers, and I've seen many good examples in my observations in this space of senior social workers, again, giving people permission to move. And I've got a really good example, I won't name the county council that I got this from, but nonetheless, it's a really good one where people are on, for example, Teams meetings, and we all know we're sat down and there's so many of them throughout the day. And this senior social worker was halfway through a Teams meeting, 'Right, everybody, go and hang out your washing, go upstairs and go and go and get your-, shake up your bed, go and make a cup of tea, whatever it is. Spend five minutes and come back. Do not check your emails. Do not check your emails.' And I really liked those, really straightforward, ways of trying to implement, you know, getting people to move more a little bit at work, and particularly, given people are working at home so frequently, where we are sat down, and the sedentary behaviour in that space is really detrimental to our health and wellbeing. And it's all about relationships, and it's all about pleasure in this space. So, I think, there are those very modest ways that we can implement social workers to move more, and also, for them to have deeper and richer conversations that could benefit the people that they work with.

Phil: Yes. And it's those small wins there which cost, really, nothing at all. I mean, you know, at that level anyway that you're talking about.

Professor Brett Smith: Yes, and that's crucial because we have no money in the system, we have no extra time. And so, we've got to look at ways that are practically feasible.

Phil: Yes. And Katie, do you have anything to add to that? I mean, you've-, to be fair, you've just talked about exactly the kind of question that I've just asked, really, you know, but going forward, how would you further like to see the integration of the model, really?

Katy Cleece: I think, it's about getting to know what's going to work for individuals. So, if you're a social work manager working with your staff who are social workers, it's about how to have those conversations with them. And actually, it's not going to be the same conversation with everyone. So, I know, bits of initiatives that have happened where people set up, like, a Wednesday walk, and then, staff are all going to go at lunchtime on a Wednesday. That's a great initiative for people to be out walking together. It's some people's idea of hell to go out as a group and have to walk, or you won't go out if it's raining, or whatever. So, it's about, how can we be flexible enough? Do we talk about this in supervision? Ask people what's important to them. What's going to maintain their wellbeing? Because half the time, I think, in supervision, wellbeing is not mentioned. And then, if it is, I think, Brett touched on it earlier. It's about, you know, like, are you being resilient so that you don't become mentally unwell. Are you doing mindfulness? It's all the very response (mw 37.13) stuff, but are those questions being asked of, what helps you to feel well in work? What would help you to feel valued in this organisation to want to stay? You know, and some of that is about, what could help you to be healthier, to remain here? And, I think, those individual conversations are really important. And in a similar way, social workers working with people who access support services, it's knowing what's important to that person.

So, for me, I will always talk about parkrun because it's been transformative for me, it's been really important for my family, it's been important for my own mental health and wellbeing, and fitness journey, and things. You know, and again, it's something that's-, it's worldwide, so there is a local parkrun wherever you live. You know, so it is something that's accessible, and it's free, and it'll be free forever, and I like the model. But equally, I do accept that it might not be for everyone. So, it's about getting to know that person and what is it that, by really listening to someone, that's going to be important for you. And, I think, that's what Brett's talking about. You know, that's the bottom-up approach of how do we work with people at the ground level, and then, how do our most senior social workers support that? And for our social workers, that's very much about a little bit of time spent with that can have great payoff in terms of staff retention and quality, you know, people not being off sick, and people just-, that quality of enjoyment in work, when you're happy, you're going to give a much better service to people around you and to your colleagues around you.

Professor Brett Smith: I mean, bouncing off that from Katie's very eloquent points as always, the research that we're conducting right now, 87% of social workers said to us that they want a menu of options to be more active at work. And when we asked them what that menu might look like, their response was, 'We don't have time to think about it, Brett. We don't have time. So, could you, working alongside us, provide us with this menu of options, so that it becomes more person-centred, more tailored to us, the individuals, than towards the groups.' So, that's the type of work that we're moving towards to support the social work profession and to make sure that they're enabled to be able to do this great work that they do.

Phil: That's brilliant. Talking of time, we've come to the end of this podcast. Thank you, both. Thank you both, Brett and Katie, for the conversation and the discussion. Genuinely positive and great to see, kind of, moving in the right direction, if you excuse the pun there, actually. That's awful. And so, really, I should close it out before I do any more damage. So, I'd like to, obviously, thank you for your time and for those listening, dear listeners, thank you very much. If you got to the end of this, that's wonderful. Let us know, as always, what you think. You can email us at ask@researchinpractice.org.uk, or tweet us, if people are still doing such a thing, @researchIP. We will, of course, as always, any information that's been discussed or mentioned in here that we've got links to will be included in the show notes. But yes, thank you very much for listening today.

Professor Brett Smith: Thank you.

Katy Cleece: Thanks.

[Outro] 

Thanks for listening to this Research in Practice podcast. We hope you've enjoyed it. Why not share with your colleagues and let us know your thoughts on LinkedIn @researchIP and X (formerly Twitter).