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Health and social work: Workingwith gypsies and travellersSarah CemlynPublished online: 01 Feb 2008.
To cite this article: Sarah Cemlyn (1992) Health and social work: Working with gypsies andtravellers, Practice: Social Work in Action, 6:4, 246-261, DOI: 10.1080/09503159208411596
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HEALTH AM) SOCIAL worn:
SARAHCEMLYN
This practice account explores three interwoven themes: work with Gyp- sies and Travellers; the relationship of health promotion and social work; and a model of social work which extends beyond casework into groupwork, interagency work and community work. The latter strands, of content and of method, were responses both at a pragmatic level to the shocking living conditions of Gypsies and Travellers, and f iom a value perspective were an attempt to work from a commitment to human rights and anti-discriminatory practice.
The article focuses on the work of the author while employed as a Specialist Education Welfare Oficer fSEW0) with Gypsies and Travel- lers between 1988 and 1991. It explores how the work widened from a n educational social work focus, and the role of health promotion within this wider span.
ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT The post was attached to a team of support teachers for Travellers covering a county, established in 1987. The aim of the whole team was to facilitate full access of Traveller children to school, and to support schools and children in achieving a positive educational experience. This involved work with families and children on site to encourage the take-up of educational rights; with schools to promote the development of anti-racist practice; and in schools facilitating full access to the curriculum of children who may have missed substantial periods of schooling, and may need social support in a culturally unfamiliar environment. Considerable practical support such as transport was also necessary to enable attendance.
The SEW0 post was established in April 1988. It carried a standard job description, but for a number of reasons was developed differently beyond the usual boundaries both of education social work and of more traditional methods.
The first and most pervasive reason, pertaining both to content and method, was the necessity of working flexibly, given the situation of Gypsies and Travellers. A second reason was the post’s attachment to a team of teachers, who played an active support role in schools and in enrolment, thus undertaking some tasks often fulfilled by education welfare.
Thirdly and pragmatically, at the time of the post’s establishment, fieldwork with Travellers was very thinly spread locally. Some New Age Travellers had been active in using the law to seek a degree of protection for themselves and their people (Mars, 1989). There were
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fieldwork with Travellers was very thinly spread locally. Some New Age Travellers had been active in using the law to seek a degree of protection for themselves and their people (Mars, 1989). There were two or three volunteer activists, and a voluntary housing agency worker, who supported Travellers legally and politically to pursue access to rights, especially the long-term struggle for site provision. There were no other full time fieldworkers with Travellers, and given the enormity of the discrimination Travellers experience, a focus only on educational issues was impossible. Many other workers with Travellers also find themselves extending well beyond their professional or job specification boundaries.
A final element was the author‘s background in community work as well as social work, which meant that options for community development were taken up in the search for empowering and anti- discriminatory practice in a context of considerable disempowerment of Gypsies and Travellers. This element in the worker‘s approach led to the model of work described below, for which some advantages are claimed. Other workers with a different bias might have achieved different benefits, for instance by focusing more exclusively on promoting attendance and working with schools.
THE SITLJA’I’ION OF GYPSIES AND TRAVELLERS Both locally and nationally there have been overwhelming obstacles to Travellers gaining access to education. The Swann Report described these obstacles at national level and stated that Traveller children’s situation ‘illustrates to an extreme degree the experience of prejudice and alienation which faces many other ethnic minority children’ (Swann, 1985, p.740). This situation was replicated locally, resulting in a backlog of neglect and mutual mistrust between schools and Travellers. The continuing lack of sites, harassment and evictions also caused huge logistical problems for children’s attendance.
In the county there were three main groups of Travellers: English or Welsh Romany Gypsies, Irish (and a few Scottish) Travellers, and New Age Travellers. Travellers’ is used as a generic term, although some Romanies prefer to be called Gypsies, so there is some interchangeability. Each group has a very different history, and to a considerable extent different customs and aspirations, but the cultural identity of all groups is based in self-employment, nomadism and self- help (Okely, 1983), while persecution and discrimination have been a persistent theme for all (Liegeois, 1987).
Romany history, which can be traced to a diaspora of nomadic tribes from North India ten centuries ago, is typified in Europe from the fourteenth century onwards by all manner of persecutions, including expulsion, forced assimilation, mutilation, slavery, execution, reaching a nadir in Nazi death camps (Liegeois, 1986). Their lifestyle and values have generally posed a threat to state control.
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Irish Travellers, originally travelling tinsmiths of Celtic descent, were joined by dispossessed people forced onto the road by enclosures and famine (Okely, 1983). In this country Irish Travellers carry the double load of anti-Irish and anti-Traveller discrimination (Lennon, 1988).
New Age Travellers are a mixed group, with length of time on the road varying from decades to weeks. The lifestyle of many, especially the longer established, actively expresses anti-materialist, collective, ecological values. Newer recruits, motivated by these ideals or driven by homelessness or unemployment, may still be constructing a self- reliant lifestyle. At ideological and practical levels these Travellers are publicly seen as refusing to conform (Rosenberger, 1991).
All Travellers challenge dominant norms and values, and in a political climate which since 1979 encouraged the notion of a two nation Britain (Husband, 19911, they can be misrepresented as an extreme embodiment of ‘the enemy within’. And their presence highlights the fundamental contradictions in the more recent rhetoric of a ‘classless’ society.
The situation facing nearly all Travellers in the county in question was extremely difficult. The Caravan Sites Act 1968 had not been implemented, apart from one ‘emergency’ site, in practice still the permanent base for several families. A few mainly Gypsy families had settled on their own land, and as in any area there were some Travellers temporarily (or permanently) in housing (Adams, 19751, a few of whom the team worked with. However the overwhelming majority of the 300 or so Traveller families in the county were unsited (i.e. no authorised site), forced onto roadsides, wasteland and demolition areas, and often evicted again within days or weeks. This compared with a national picture of 38% unsited families in 1988 (Forrester, 1988). Much of the work was with Irish Travellers, and their situation, although not unique, is at the heart of this account.
Although the right to travel is crucial, many Travellers want a secure permanent base from which to travel for short periods and return. The need for provision of official sites for survival, itself reflects the assault on Traveller lifestyle and the erosion of traditional stopping places, through such factors as the increasing scale and mechanisation of agriculture, stricter planning laws, and spreading urbanisation (Liegeois, 1987).
The lack of sites is a key factor in the systematic denial of basic rights to Travellers (Puxon, 1986). The conditions on unauthorised sites are often appalling, and they are vulnerable to physical attack, harassment, and repeated evictions. Also employment opportunities have been massively eroded, and extensive underemployment of Travellers means that there is intense and widespread poverty amongst certain groups. This is exacerbated by site conditions and the fact that social security levels, even if obtained, do not reflect the extra damage, wear and tear and expense of unsited Traveller lifestyles, The effects of poverty on health (Townsend and Davidson, 1982) are
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compounded for Travellers. Instead of tackling these difficulties by at least promoting implementation of the 1968 Act, the government has proposed its abolition and replacement with measures which would further penalise and criminalise Travellers purely for their way of life (DOE, 1992).
The intense daily pressures reinforce the discrimination already present in other systems such as social security, health, education, criminal justice, employment (Kenrick and Bakewell, 1990). Access to general community facilities is denied through the combination of direct discrimination, lack of informa tion, stress and instability.
In this context educational aspirations and related social concerns do not exist in isolation from the pressures on survival. Alongside site provision and basic security, health emerged rapidly as a central issue. Travellers’ disadvantaged health status in other regions has been documented by health studies (Linthwaite, 1983; Pahl and Vaile, 1986).
At the environmental level, the central problems are hazardous, insanitary conditions on unofficial sites: lacking basic services of water, sanitation, refuse collection, electricity; often grossly polluted next to major roads, sewage disposal points or rubbish tips; and dangerous because of half-demolished buildings, open shafts, cables or traffic. The risks for young children are particularly severe, and there are high levels of disease and accidents, including fatalities. (Pahl and Vaile, 1986). Although such findings should be recognised as scandalous, in the case of Travellers we witness a classic example of blaming the victim.
At the level of personal physical health care, there are great difficulties for Travellers in gaining access to adequate or even minimal health services (Hussey, 1987). Insecurity and evictions compound lack of knowledge, so that even if general practitioners (GPsj and clinics are located, appointments oRen have to be missed. And if contact is made, then Travellers frequently face discrimination in terms of access to any service, or effectiveness and sensitivity of the service.
At the level of emotional and psychological health, Traveller survival skills and the strong community support networks ensure resilience in the face of enormous pressures. Nevertheless there are costs for all members of unsited Traveller communities, some generalised, some falling differentially. All are subject to the brutality and intimidation which can be experienced at the hands of agents of the wider society (e.g. bailiffs j, and pervasive discrimination and marginalisation. Women experience the acute pressures of sustaining the home and children in hazardous conditions, without any supportive facilities or routines on or off site. Men are responsible for finding places to stay despite political opposition and physical barricades. And for children their parents’ pressures combine with the impact of growing up in dangerous, restricting environments. Despite this many children retain vivacity, curiosity and resilience in a very child-centred and supportive culture.
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HEALTH PROMUI’ION WORK IN THE CONTEXT OF EDUCATION SOCIAL WORK Responding to health issues was an integral part of the work. Even a focus on the core aspects of education social work required attention to health, since health problems so often interfered with attendance, and with children’s progress in school. And in any contextual work in relation to the child’s family and support networks, or the broader structural issues of discrimination, health had a high profile.
The health promotion work undertaken reflected the model of work that was developed in response to the range of problems of discrimination and disadvantage facing the families worked with most closely. The community orientation of the work reflected the interconnectedness of groups of families’ lives, and the many common issues they faced. Butler (1983, p.35) concludes that ‘the very nature of elusive, independent Travellers’ groups almost forces the social worker into a community orientation’.
The question arises whether ‘community social work‘ is the most accurate description of the model. The model was the pragmatic and principled response of an individual worker to a particular situation. According to Smale et al. this means it cannot be defined as ‘community social work’ since their position is that ‘the smallest unit of staff which can engage in community social work is a team of workers’ ( Smale et al., 1988, p.27). However it is close to Holman’s version which includes ‘availability, local knowledge, joint action’ (Holman, 1993). It also has links to the move beyond casework described by Barber (Barber, 1991) and to the model Mullender and Ward explicate of self-directed groupwork (Mullender and Ward, 19911, as well as to community work (FCWTG, SCCD) whose tradition informs both the above, without being a complete expression of any of these approaches.
Its development in practice was aimed at maximising the effectiveness of one worker by mobilising the collective efforts of Travellers and the resources of other agencies to address some aspects of the context in which individual difficulties arose. However the level of disempowerment of Travellers, the regular crises brought about by other people’s hostile actions, especially evictions, and the juggling of education welfare work with community development work in one post over a large geographical area, militated against consistent implementation.
The model presents seven broad areas of work in four segments divided according to the level of intervention and associated methods. The first three areas cover the more traditional education social work functions, albeit on a afferent canvas, and represent often short-term, direct responses to problems presented. The latter four areas represent longer-term, developmental functions, arising from the shorter-term work. The outline is as follows.
Core education welfare! social work: i. access to school ii. benefit from schooling iii. welfare of child, family and community 250 Practice Vol. 6 No. 4
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Inter-agency development work: iv. within the county council v. with other statutory services and voluntary agencies Training: vi. training for other professional and activists Groupwork and community development: vii. groupwork with Travellers; promotion of Traveller self-
Although there is some artificiality in these divisions, it was necessary to explain and obtain agreement within the agency to the model with its differentiated strategies, in order to avoid the job remaining purely reactive and at the level of chronic crisis response. The attempt to promote Travellers’ rights was a theme permeating each aspect. There were many issues in the work as well as education, including poverty, welfare rights, evictions, harassment and danger. Health was a key area, particularly in the earlier stages of the work, and is focused on here because of its integration in the model as a whole, and because of its relative neglect in the social work literature.
Each area of intervention will be explained and illustrated, highlighting the health promotion aspects, the interrelationship of methods, and the approaches adopted in reaching for anti- discriminatory practice and the promotion of rights. Much of the work with adults was with women, who carry most of the responsibility for children and home, but men were engaged whenever possible.
Access to school A core of the work involved locating and building relationships with Travellers as a basis for them to access educational rights. Traveller parents have many reasons for mistrusting authority in general, and education in particular, because of their own neglect or mistreatment by the education system. However health problems featured prominently in further preventing the exercise of these rights, inviting primary health promotion responses. For example after achieving children’s enrolment in school, with supporting practical arrangements, attendance was frequently prevented by illness arising from factors such as polluted water, or living conditions in poorly heated damp caravans. Poverty and lack of contact with GPs increased the problems. Direct work included assistance with GP registration, and with welfare rights and trust applications.
Benefit from schooling A range of health and welfare issues could arise for the child in school, involving close liaison with health and education professionals, and support of parents and children in gaining access to health services. Lack of knowledge and trust combined with other deficits, such as transport and child-care support, to undermine attendance at clinics. The response included encouraging take up through provision of
organisation.
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information and support, and practical help such as fixing appointments, providing reminders and offering to escort. Also, because there was no consistency in the practice of health workers in relation to anti-discrimination and cultural sensitivity, it could be necessary to support the parent and child in person in a mediatory role, to enable at least a workable relationship to be established between Travellers and the health professionals.
Welfare of the child within the family and the community Many problems affected wider groupings of families and whole encampments, for example, site conditions such as rats eating into caravans, or a local health centre refusing to offer appointments to Travellers. The purpose of intervention broadened to seeking to mitigate site conditions or to improve access to services for this wider group. The methods included those just described to promote Travellers’ take up of rights and services, and inter-agency liaison, mediation and advocacy, for instance enlisting other departments such as Environmental Health, and negotiating with health practices.
The wider issues arising from work in these first three areas necessitated and provided the basis for the longer-term strategies aimed at a broader level of change.
Inter-agency development work within the county council During the first eighteen months of the work, the county had a fairly active practice of evicting Travellers from its own land, despite the non-implementation of the Caravan Sites Act, and a supposed non- harassment policy. This aspect of the work involved participation with a teacher colleague in a county working group. As the only workers in regular contact with Travellers at that time, the collaborative focus was on reporting the effects on Travellers’ lives, education and health of the lack of secure sites; and on highlighting the contradiction of allocating resources on the one hand to accessing education for Travellers, and on the other to destabilising them through eviction from council land. A more structural and corporate approach to the issues was advocated.
There were signs of this happening when the situation of Travellers was taken up as a corporate equal opportunities issue within the council. The implementation of a slightly more meaningful non- harassment policy meant shifts in other aspects of the work and in basic health provision. For instance once a few unofficial sites were tolerated, it was possible to advocate for facilities such as toilets and water. Even these however, if inadequately maintained, could be a health hazard.
More workers also began to work with Travellers in the field. Therefore a second stage of inter-agency work in the council was a focus on the development of good practice and associated policy through collaborative relationships with staff in other service departments.
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Inter-agency development work with other statutory services and voluntary agencies The aim of this approach was to encourage other agencies to take Travellers’ issues onto their agendas, open up direct communication with Travellers and develop appropriate services. Health promotion was the first focus of this work. The county was covered by four area health authorities. The day to day pressures on the post, its lack of corporate authority and relative isolation meant that contact and negotiation with relevant personnel proceeded somewhat by trial and error. Nevertheless some sectors began to consider their services for Travellers, particularly health visiting and community dental services. One area responded particularly positively, a working group was established involving the SEWO, and plans discussed, including the possibility of a specialist health visitor (SHV) on the model of other areas as a promotional step (Crout, 1987; Lawrie, 1983; Peck, 1983; Streetly, 1987; Wilson, 1988). Such a post was funded from May 1990, although ironically the funded proposal had not emerged directly from the working party.
Once the SHV had been appointed, the profile of health issues and health care rose very significantly. Basic health care for Travellers began to be systematically addressed. There was also great potential for collaborative work at field level and in development and some training work.
Training for other professionals and activists One way of improving the effectiveness and sensitivity of service delivery for oppressed groups is through training. The first period of the SEWO post involved some informal training of health personnel, through staff seminars and during negotiations, and health issues were highlighted in sessions for other workers. Training was provided in collaboration with teachers and others for a variety of agencies and networks, including social services, and social and community work courses.
Travellers were supported to become involved in this work, and they made a great impact when they did. It was women Travellers who responded to this opportunity. The facilitation of Traveller leadership through this involvement was also a strand of the community development process, as described below.
Groupwork and community development The stark problems facing most of the families were glaringly structural rather than individual, inviting the development of collective approaches aimed at external change. They could not be extensively implemented within a post whose core responsibility was the facilitation of school access and attendance, because of the stream of day-to-day problems relating to this basic objective. However efforts were made from the start to promote opportunities for Travellers’ self- organisation, and open up access to political decision-making. Three
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ways will be outlined, which led to a further development, featuring health issues.
Firstly Travellers were encouraged to become involved in the local Travellers support group, (a pressure group), whose Traveller membership was at a very low ebb. This involved promoting the group’s potential, giving reminders, personally providing transport to and from meetings, and encouraging the group to function in ways which enabled Travellers to take an active part. It was mainly women who attended.
Secondly links were made with the city council women’s unit, which responded supportively. A worker visited a site, and two Traveller women attended a meeting with the chairperson to raise awareness of their situation. This demonstrated how powerfully the women could express their views and their motivation for change. The women’s committee also offered grants for new groups, which was an encouragement.
The third step was to involve some of the women in training and public education work, which proved a powerful development. On the first occasion two women attended a large community network meeting, and graphically described the realities of their lives, the pressures, mistreatment, physical conditions and dangers, and their demands and aspirations for their people. The effect was dramatic. Most people present, all committed community workers and activists, had no accurate knowledge of Travellers before this. Another woman came on a visit to a local women’s health group and made a similar impact. The group later visited her on site. Some of the teachers’ team were also engaged in promoting this process. Travellers became involved in several other training and public education events, for professionals, activists, students and councillors, culminating in leading roles in television documentaries and international conferences. The women who took up such opportunities were able to develop impressive presentational and media skills. Mullender and Ward describe this process, which they refer to as ‘the ‘secondary advantage’ of personal change within the group members’ (Mullender and Ward, 1991, p.13).
The women’s enthusiasm and commitment for these opportunities, despite the pressures of their daily lives, indicated that they might be keen to meet and organise themselves as a group to promote their interests, both as women and as Travellers, since they experienced specific oppression on both dimensions. Therefore a meeting for all Traveller women in the county was arranged, with transport and creche available, to discuss the possibilities. A dozen women attended and decided to form a women Travellers’ group.
However they needed considerable logistical support to meet away from site and enable the group to function, as they lived in scattered, often isolated sites, and mostly did not drive and/ or had no transport. This was controlled by the men. Therefore two or three other community workers or volunteers were enlisted to assist with transport
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and group activities. Funds for the group were raised from a local radio appeal fund, and eventually from the city and county council.
The women decided themselves what they wanted to do with the group. Ideas of political consciousness raising or pressure group activity were superceded by the women’s much more urgent need for evening social and recreational activities such as swimming, as a unique break from site and family stresses. This can be seen as an important stage in self expression and group development for women whose daily lives were immensely stressful and a challenge to their survival skills.
When the SHV was appointed five months after the group started, she actively collaborated in the work with the group, as well as in fieldwork. Further volunteer support and funding was obtained. Activities included swimming and socials as before; visiting a photographic exhibition on Travellers; and a day trip with fifty women and children, a high point of enjoyment, which also alerted the two health workers present to health problems in a few children. Following the women’s interest and also developing the health theme, a series of keep fit and health education sessions were set up, involving a health education student and sponsored by the council’s women’s sports development section. The series included information and discussion on topics such as nutrition, diet, safety in the home, relaxation, and an hour‘s keep fit exercises.
Although there was a core of women who were relatively permanent in the county or who would return to it periodically, nevertheless the membership of the group was a changing one because of the frequent movement of Travellers, both enforced and chosen, and because of other events in the women’s lives. This factor reinforced the women’s reliance on non-Travellers to sustain the group and made it harder for them to be fully in control of its development.
Once more workers were in the field, a further initiative, linking community development and inter-agency approaches, was the establishment of a working group of workers and Travellers to promote ongoing project development. This has proved an effective forum for liaison, consultation and development, and later led to an independent project.
WHAT WAS THE IMPACT OF THE WORK? The most important point to stress is that compared to the oppression and hardship Travellers experience, and their achievements in survival and struggle, the contribution of any workers with Travellers to their struggle has to be seen as very small.
As the work covered a wide span both of content and methods, it can be evaluated in various ways. Formal and quantitative measurements of effectiveness were required for educational aspects such as enrolments, attendance and educational progress, while other aspects of work and the model as a whole can only be evaluated more informally.
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In the first three areas of the model, positive results were achieved in terms of access to and benefit from schooling, and improved relationships between Travellers and the education service. Health was a consistently important issue, affecting individuals and broader groupings of Travellers. ‘Improvement’ in Travellers’ situation, in relation to health and other issues, was not necessarily possible. Sometimes it was a question of attempting to mitigate the worst effects of exclusion and systematic disadvantage. Also the geographical spread and volume of work, and the pressures on the families, made a consistent response hard to achieve.
The effects of the broader strategies of work could sometimes be measured, but mostly only guessed at. For instance within the county council the input of the education team from direct contact with Travellers, exposing the illogicalities in the council’s lack of a corporate strategy for Travellers, certainly had an impact. It eluded measurement, but reinforced political work by a few councillors.
Other inter-agency development work brought some positive responses from agencies, some increased services to Travellers, and some fruitful collaboration with Travellers and other workers. Contact with a play agency led to collaborative work with teachers working with women and under-fives on sites. Joint work with community and youth workers was an important area, and their employing department adopted an increasing profile in work with Travellers. It proved harder at that time to gain a developmental response from the much larger social services department, especially in relation to preventive work, at either field or management level. The development work with the women’s group carried forward the inter-agency work. The mobilising of funds and other support served to raise the profile of Traveller issues with sponsoring agencies and departments, while the group itself acted as a focus for collaborative work.
Overall it can be said that liaison work between various agencies took on a life of its own, oRen well beyond the scope of the initial overtures. Eastman’s account of the Canklow Community Project describes a somewhat similar process (Eastman, 1990).
Collaborative work in health promotion falls into two phases. The most significant change in the situation for Travellers and for workers with Travellers was the establishment ofthe SHV post, through which systematic health care began to be made directly available to insited Traveller families, the profile of Traveller health care issues raised within her employing authority and its neighbours, and research and monitoring systems established. Prior to the SHV’s appointment education welfare work involved efforts towards health promotion at both primary and interagency levels, whereas subsequently it could shift to a more appropriate focus on collaborative work.
In the area oftraining, positive feedback was received from sessions, but the wider and longer-term impact is impossible to measure. One aspect which was clearly visible was the greatly increasing skill and confidence of Traveller women who contributed to such events.
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In community development, particularly with the women’s group which itself built on the success of other ventures, funding bodies required monitoring, using both quantitative indicators such as numbers participating and range of activities, and qualitative ones such as development of new skills and interests, and the extent of active involvement by Traveller women in decision-making.
Broader impressions of the impact of the development work were gained from the women’s positive responses and comments, and even feedback from workers elsewhere when women moved away and took news of the group. For many women the group represented their only opportunity to have some time for themselves and with each other, away from the pressures of sites, children and partners. The meetings provided the opportunity to share experiences, relax and have fun, and gave the women a window on other possibilities. It was a new opportunity for many of them to challenge the sexism inherent in the expectation that they would always be available at home, by claiming this time, and organising their children, and their partners to babysit, so they could come out for an evening.
Over eighteen months the group stayed as a social group, and did not develop into a political pressure group. Time, personnel and funding were strictly limited for developing the work. Different results might have been achieved if the post had allowed the time for adequate implementation of a community work approach, to spend time developing the women’s own agendas and interests, instead of battling to find any way just to enable them to meet. Nevertheless the group’s activities were based on the women’s decisions. Linking together from different sites in the county, an activity more usually pursued by the men, had benefits in terms of confidence and collective strength in the longer run.
The lack of adequate worker time led to an application for a grant- aided worker for the group. Although unsuccessful in the first year, the proposal was adopted by the project development group in 1991, and funding obtained for part-time workers focusing on work with children and young people.
Overall there were some successes as well as tensions in the combination of methods within the model as a whole, which are discussed further below.
DISCUSSION OF THE METHODS OF WORK The spectrum of methods employed included a form of task-centred casework, advocacy, counselling, community-oriented social work, training and awareness-raising, inter-agency development work, group and community work, and political advocacy. These methods were integrated through the regular face to face work with Travellers on sites. In some respects they were complementary, in others tensions had to be managed.
The methods reinforced each other through regular outreach work
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with Travellers and building up trust. It was necessary to establish credibility, to take the problems faced by Travellers seriously. The agency agenda and priorities of the post had to be adapted to the Travellers’ situation. A worker gets to know most members of the community on unofficial sites, because the site is also living and working space, and because friends and kin o h n move freely in and out of each others’ caravans. The casework level of the job therefore involved considerable access to the issues affecting Travellers’ lives, and the establishment of a wide range of relationships. All these factors greatly assist the effectiveness of inter-agency development work, training and community development (Barber, 1991).
These methods of work in turn, and particularly the group and community development work, reinforced the individual and family work. They added to the confidence between the worker or agency and Travellers, and opened up discussion and exchange of information and ideas. Perhaps most importantly they enabled some shifts, admittedly small-scale, in power relationships. The clear aim that the women’s group should be in the control of women Travellers with non-Travellers playing a supporting not directing role, and the shared experiences in the group counteracted some of the damaging effects of the power relationships usually experienced between Travellers and local authority workers. The increasingly active role taken by a few of the women in public education work was another positive factor.
However there were also tensions and contradictions in the work, and in the interrelationship between the methods. The background to the work is the history of relationships between Travellers and authority generally, characterised by persecution and mistrust, and the continuation of many of the material conditions of these relationships at present in the form of evictions, discrimination and harassment. There is also the particular history of relationships between Travellers and personal social services, including the loss of children into care (Gmelch, 1986). The establishment and maintenance of trust therefore had to be worked at by all involved, and probably most of all by Travellers. As in social work generally, power issues had to be managed. The
perceived threat of losing children had to be addressed and clarified, especially on the occasions when Social Services support seemed appropriate. The Children Act with its clearly defined principles should assist this process of clarification. Section 17 provision for children in need could provide more leverage for Travellers to claim support in coping with adverse child-rearing conditions (Cemlyn, 1993).
“here are tensions in combining social and community work in one post, especially patronage and empowerment. Power can be used as patronage by social and health workers acting as advocates, which may mobilise resources and rights for Travellers, although it confirms unequal power relationships and may undermine Travellers (Liegeois, 1987). Successful patronage and advocacy could increase individuals’
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motivation for group involvement, although unsuccessful results were usually accepted philosophically: harsh treatment is familiar. Such work was sometimes highly visible, as Travellers in connected groups round the county soon heard about resources raised elsewhere, so fairness of effort was at a premium.
Confidentiality also needed careful management, with clear but constantly negotiated boundaries. Discussions with Travellers often took place with other people dropping into the caravan. Although many common issues were in the public domain, and some private ones as well by Travellers choice, constant but unobtrusive checking was needed about what confidentiality was appropriate (Hadley et al., 1987).
Problematic power issues also affected community development work. The manifestations of disadvantage in the Travellers’ lives, and especially the women’s, meant that they were deprived of access to some of the basic tools for self-organisation, such as networking, on which other women rely (Dominelli, 1990). Frequently moved on, without telephones, proper addresses, their own or public transport, they were unable to arrange or get to meetings without the involvement of non-Travellers at every stage. This dependence is in opposition to the principle of members controlling a group, although this goal was written into the decision-making structure of the women’s group, and worked towards.
Travellers are immensely resourceful people: it is discrimination which forces dependence on Gorgios (non-Travellers) for basic rights and resources. Both Liegeois (1987) and Butler (1983) describe the potential damage of social work in weakening cultural values and practices, contributing to assimilation. The model aimed to avoid this through the practice principles underpinning the work: recognising the extreme discrimination facing Travellers, actively seeking to pursue Travellers’ agenda, negotiating the use of power in support of this agenda, and promoting collective work by Travellers. The model was a small attempt to promote rights and counter discrimination, it helped the worker make sense of a sometimes overwhelming situation, and seemed to be appreciated by Travellers, who can be very supportive of people who work with them.
Whether overall such work is progressive or assimilationist is less easy to answer, and rightly can only be answered by Travellers themselves. The persistent dangers of education and welfare services being used by the state to work against Travellers’ interests have been highlighted again recently by Lloyd ( 1993) in her discussion of the government’s proposals for reform of legislation on sites (DOE, 1992), which represents a vicious attack on Travellers and their way of life.
HEALTH PROMOTION AS PART OF SOCIAL WORK Health focused work is high on the agenda for unsited Travellers, whose absence of health at environmental and personal levels is
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directly related to the key issues of lack of sites and pervasive discrimination. Health promotion is part of a multi-faceted social work response. At an individual level the health promotion work described had some positive results for personal health, and facilitated improved uptake of other rights. At broader, more proactive levels health promotion as part of education social work was a significant strand in attempts alongside Travellers to raise awareness of Traveller issues, and support Traveller self-organisation. It is the subsequent work of the SHV which has begun to transform primary health care provision for Travellers in the area.
Children’s health and development are key issues in the Children Act 1989. In the context of this Act, there are opportunities for social work as a whole to develop a more effective relationship with Travellers. Acknowledging the presence of Traveller children whose development is systematically undermined by conditions imposed on them and are therefore ‘in need’, can open the way for more imaginative and culturally appropriate services for these children (Cemlyn, 1993); and also for social work to join the lobby (needed now more than ever in the current political climate) for Travellers to be granted the conditions to pursue their way of life in health and peace.
Acknowledgements I owe a great debt to the Travellers I worked with, whose lives, struggles, determination and warmth were a constant source of inspiration. I am profoundly grateful to them for the way they shared aspects of their lives with me, and to all the colleagues whose work appears in this account.
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