\n<\/p>\n
Your editorial about new ideas in social work (3 September) was right to highlight the power of building relationships rather than pushing people through disconnected services. The examples you gave, and the brilliant work of the Changing Futures programme, show that when practitioners spend time getting to know people, treat them with respect and see and understand the whole person, lives can change for the better.<\/p>\n
But calling these projects \u201cpioneers\u201d risks making them sound like rare exceptions. If this way of working is proving effective,\u00a0why should it be left to a handful of special schemes?\u00a0Relational support shouldn\u2019t be a side experiment \u2013\u00a0it\u00a0should be the foundation of all\u00a0our public services.<\/p>\n
That means thinking differently about how support is designed and funded. Too often, staff are pressured to hit short-term targets or process people quickly, rather than to build trust and stick with them through setbacks. Whether it\u2019s housing, health, jobcentres or children\u2019s services, people need consistent relationships with practitioners who have the time, skills and tools to listen, encourage and challenge when needed.<\/p>\n
We know this works. The challenge now is to stop treating it as something radical or unusual and start making it the norm across\u00a0the board \u2013 rewiring outcomes, models, funding and practice so that relational support is\u00a0the foundation, not the frontier,\u00a0of support services. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your editorial about new ideas in social work (3 September) was right to highlight the power of building relationships rather than pushing people through disconnected services. The examples you gave, and the brilliant work of the Changing Futures programme, show that when practitioners spend time getting to know people, treat them with respect and see<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1069,1547,4849,2365,204,514],"class_list":{"0":"post-20420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-building","9":"tag-good","10":"tag-paramount","11":"tag-relationships","12":"tag-social","13":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Sarah Owen and Marie Buss<\/strong>
Co-managing directors, Outcomes\u00a0Star<\/em><\/p>\n