I have a two-nation perspective, with Welsh birth, ancestry and primary education, and Scottish secondary and university education and now long-time residence and work. After graduating in Politics from the University of Edinburgh, I worked for four years as a civil servant in the-then Department of the Environment in London and Edinburgh. I was involved in 1976-78 in the accommodation planning work for the abortive first tilt at Scottish devolution. My first academic job was at the University of Strathclyde in 1978 as, in effect, a personal research assistant to the legendary political scientist Richard Rose. My long-time research activity in Scottish government and public sector employment started then, as did an enjoyable sideline in election results broadcasting. I owe a lot to Richard Rose for suggesting me to Peter Flora as the UK collaborator on a research team at the European University Institute in Florence studying the History of Western European Welfare States since World War Ii (published in the mid-1980s as the multi-volume GROWTH TO LIMITS). In 1981, I moved on to the staff of the University of Edinburgh, first on a Leverhulme Research Fellowship on central-local relations in Scotland and then in 1983 as a Lecturer in Social Policy, at that time still in a single department of Social Administration alongside social work staff. And so, somewhat by accident, I ended up relating to the world of Social Work and its distinctive place in the Scottish system.

My first teaching included classes for the Social Work Diploma and I soon got to know staff and students. The social work section was headed by the complex figure of John Triseliotis ; his academic work led to the award of a Personal Chair in the days when these were rare, while his ambiguous position as ‘Director of Social Work Education’ alongside a department head from Social Policy was not straightforward. For my part, I do recall a pleasant lunch with John at the old Staff Club soon after I arrived. Meetings of the whole department were infrequent and eventually matters were resolved in the only way they could be through a separate Department of Social Work. My other social work colleagues were highly impressive people, and I marvelled at the way they combined an authoritative and rigorous approach usually rooted in practice experience with great kindness and sensitivity. Some colleagues, especially Nancy Drucker and Lorraine Waterhouse, were involved in both teaching groups at some stage.

The coming of the School of Social and Political Science held out the promise of closer integration between subject areas, and this was promoted between Social Policy and Social Work by common panels in research assessment exercises. The physical location of our offices close together in Chrystal Macmillan Building also helped; my conversations with the brave and much-missed Joe Francis stand out. Generally, though, the demands of disciplinarity and of financial attribution have led to a rather disappointing record on integration in the School. To compensate for that, I have observed with great admiration the outstanding intellects and collaborative personalities of younger recruits to the academic staff. My research projects were naturally at the public policy end of things, including strands on the private sector and social policy, the role of central budget agencies like the Treasury, and the institutional framework of the civil service and the wider public sector workforce. The genesis and working out of devolution in the UK has been a constant theme, with involvement in several ESRC projects tracking the formation of the new devolved systems. Until I moved at the end of 2013 to an Honorary Fellow position in the University’s Centre on Constitutional Change, I continued to teach occasional MSW classes and also many undergraduate Social Work students in the first-year course on Politics of the Welfare State. Alongside many successful academics and civil servants, my most notable former students seem to have been politicians, coincidentally in Labour ranks – Scottish heavyweights Alex Rowley, Ian Murray and Kezia Dugdale, and rising-star MP and former MEP Anneliese Dodds.

My whole career in Scotland has been in the shadow of the 1960s moves towards generic and better-trained social work, and the sense that Scotland was a progressive pioneer (much enhanced by the location of social work services in the top-tier regions from 1975 to 1996). I am very glad that the merger with Moray House added teacher education and undergraduate social work to the University’s portfolio alongside the training of lawyers and doctors. Although immersion in policy-making theory and public expenditure issues is not always comfortable for client-orientated social work students, I feel it should be a fundamental part of social work education. In recent years, the use of contracted-out services, concern with performance management, and pressures to integrate health and social work have injected new themes into research and training. Devolution has made a difference and will make more, and yet paradoxically, the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, passed at Westminster, remains the most dramatic innovation I have encountered. A social work profession relating to policy-making and managerial issues is the kind of model I continue to hope for and the University of Edinburgh is well-placed to be in the forefront of its promotion as it moves into its second century of practice-orientated activity.

Source: Own contribution, 28 September 2017