My first degree was in Chemistry at Oxford. At school, I was good at science and, in particular, at chemistry. In those days, there was no careers guidance at school and it seemed obvious that I should go on to study the subject at university. When I got to university, I soon discovered that, although I was quite good at chemistry, my heart wasn’t in it. Chemists were expected to spend quite a lot of time in the lab and this was a problem for me because there were other things I wanted to do. When, after two years, I asked about changing subjects, I was told that I would have to finish the four-year degree course first. After graduation, I started a Diploma in Social Administration, got very interested in sociology and was given the chance of doing a PhD in sociology at Harvard University in the USA. I did the required coursework, for which I was awarded an MA, but decided to return to the UK to write my thesis. I then had two (rather unsatisfactory) years back in Oxford, ostensibly doing research on the relationship between private medicine and the NHS. When my studentship ran out, I was nowhere near finishing my thesis but I had to find a job. A lectureship in social administration at Edinburgh, with responsibility for developing teaching in research methods, was advertised in 1970. I applied and was offered the job ‒ I can remember thinking, at the time, that Edinburgh would be a great place to start my career and that, after two or three years here, I would probably move on. 38 years later, I retired from the university and 47 years later I am still here.

When I first joined the Department of Social Administration in 1971, Departmental Meetings were a new experience for me. Almost everyone smoked and, after a while, you could hardly breathe or see across the room. John Spencer, who was the first Professor of Social Administration and an extremely congenial and civilised man, presided. Business was divided into matters relating to social work training and matters relating to social administration teaching. Social administration teachers didn’t concern themselves much with the former and social work teachers didn’t concern themselves much with the latter. After a few years, it was decided that business could be conducted more efficiently if the two groups met separately as committees. The Departmental Meeting continued for a while to deal with matters relating to the Department as a whole but, over time, departmental meetings became more formal and less frequent. To acknowledge the fact that departmental activities embraced social work as well as social administration, the name of the Department was then changed to the Department of Social Administration and Social Work and, when John Spencer died, and Adrian Sinfield was appointed to the Chair in 1979, he asked for the name of the Chair to be changed from Social Administration to Social Policy. In in due course, the name of the Department was changed to the Department of Social Policy and Social Work.

With the introduction, first, of a generic Diploma in Social Work and then of the absorption of the old Diploma of Social Administration into an integrated two-year Diploma programme; and the simultaneous development of, first, a range of honours degrees in social administration and then of a taught Master’s degrees in social and public policy, each of the two parts of the (formally) conjoined Department developed its own agenda and its own priorities, and, in due course, the Department of Social Policy and Social Work was split into separate Departments of Social Policy and Social Work. When I became Head of Department, following Susan Sinclair and Alex Robertson, for the first time in 1989, I was Head of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work but when I became Head for the second time in 2001, it was as Head of a separate Department of Social Policy within the recently established School of Social and Political Sciences. In 2002, I was awarded a PhD by Research Publication in Socio-Legal Studies.

I was extremely happy during my time in the Department (in its various guises). My social policy colleagues were an extremely congenial peer group and I taught and supervised some outstanding students, from whom I learned a great deal. They are too many to enumerate but, among the most outstanding were Roy Sainsbury (formerly Director of the Social Policy Research Unit and now Professor of Social Policy at the University of York), Jim Carnie (Director of Research in the Scottish Prison Service), Colin Lancaster (Chief Executive of the Scottish Legal Aid Board), Sonia Exley (Assistant Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics) and Jackie Gulland (Lecturer in Social Work at Edinburgh University).

I was fortunate to be able to teach on an extremely wide range of courses, including a first-year undergraduate course on ‘Politics of the Welfare State’, a huge second-year, School-wide course on ‘Social and Political Theory’, an honours course on ‘Justice, Welfare and the State’, an MSc course on ‘Law and Public Policy’, and a doctoral course on ‘Research Design’. In addition to core teaching, I was able to offer courses in what became my special area of interest (socio-legal studies) and carried out numerous research projects on the socio-legal aspects of social policy. These included projects on parental choice in education, the role of the courts in public housing, decision-making in the prison service and the computerisation of social security. It was a rare privilege to have a job that enabled me to pursue my intellectual interests in quite the way that I was able to do in my career.

Looking ahead? Although I always supported the institutional separation of social work and social policy and the establishment of separate departments (now called ‘subject areas’) that enabled each to of them to develop their own agenda and pursue their own priorities in their own way and on the basis of enjoying equal status, I do regret the small and declining space that social policy has come to occupy in the social work curriculum and the detachment of social work from the other social sciences since they preclude Edinburgh students from taking joint degrees and from acquiring a distinctive disciplinary focus which they could bring to bear on their social work practice. My hope for the future is that social work education could be broadened out to make such developments possible.

Source: own contribution.