I became very involved in World Refugee Year while studying Greats (Greek, Latin, Ancient History, Ancient and Modern Philosophy) at Balliol College, Oxford. On graduating, I went to work with refugee and mainly local families for a year in the then ‘developing colony’ of Hong Kong. I returned to take the LSE Diploma in Social Administration with Peter Townsend as my tutor followed by a research assistantship with Peter and Brian Abel-Smith, studying poverty among unemployed men on Tyneside - and where I met Dorothy. We spent a year in Syracuse, upstate New York, replicating the study. On our return I became an assistant lecturer at the new University of Essex with Peter Townsend, its first Professor of Sociology.

My career since then has involved working on problems relating to poverty and inequality, particularly the impact of unemployment ( What Unemployment Means and The Workless State ). Teaching and researching the social division of welfare has included analysis of how tax reliefs and employee benefits privilege many outside the more visible welfare state but are rarely subjected to ‘austerity’. Visiting posts in other countries and involvement in European teaching schemes enabled me to gain wider understanding of these issues. Working with the Child Poverty Action Group and the Unemployment Unit over many years has kept me in touch with the practical problems of policy and practice. Here I concentrate on particular social work issues.

At Essex we taught across a wide range of new courses that defined social policy very broadly (the abolition of slavery or the extension of the vote as well as particular social services). In 1967 it was the first University to introduce one-year taught Master’s degrees in Sociology. The MA in Social Service Planning mainly recruited social workers. Teaching these experienced students was very much a two-way exchange that I found marvellously stimulating. Which Way for Social Work? , a 1969 Fabian tract on the Seebohm report, drew greatly from that and particularly from working with Kay Carmichael whom I met while externally examining social work certificate courses.

Exchange teaching at the Bryn Mawr School of Social Work and Social Research and the Columbia School of Social Work in 1969-70 gave me wider experience of the range of social work teaching at a particularly lively time politically and professionally.

Moving to Edinburgh in 1979, I began contributing to the first year social policy course for the postgraduate diploma in social work. I continued a small contribution to the basic course on the implications for social work of poverty, inequality and unemployment until a few years ago when Social Policy’s part in the course was ended.

When the new post-qualifying M.Sc. in Advanced Social Work Studies was introduced, Ralph Davidson and I provided an option on Service Planning and Resource Development: the engagement with experienced professionals was as stimulating and engaging as at Essex. I was very sorry to lose the involvement when advanced training lost funding - a great mistake by the government, in my view.

My wife Dorothy and I also worked with Susan Hunter and Bill Whyte on the impact of homelessness on young people (Excluding Youth). My own work has always benefited greatly from cross-disciplinary exchanges.

Looking ahead, I wish that more could be done to strengthen these collaborations and to break down the institutional, professional and other barriers between subjects which limit both their own development and the contributions that they can make to the wider society. Students too have always appeared to me to enjoy and benefit from these exchanges.

Source: own contribution, 25 September 2017.