Vivienne left school in 1944 and went on to take a BA degree in History, graduating in 1947. She had thought about doing medicine, but this would have required a change of school so that she could take more science subjects and she was reluctant to do this, because she was happy at her small school. Her mother suggested the she consider medical social work instead; her mother's nephew had worked in the City of London police during the Second World War guarding bomb holes and had developed tuberculosis; he had been "greatly helped by an almoner" [hospital social worker] at one of the London hospitals. "Of course", as she added, "almoners were at this time very much associated with assessment of patients' ability to pay for treatment."
After graduating, Vivienne went to the LSE to take a Certificate in Social Study. She was allowed to do the two-year certificate in one year because her degree was considered to be relevant; she still had to do the full complement of examinations, though, including a History paper. This wasn't a professional qualification as such, "but a lot of people did use it as such, and there were two practical work placements during the course. I did one month with the Invalid Children's Aid Association and two months with the Family Welfare Association, which had recently changed its name from the Charity Organisation Society. So the LSE year was 1947-48, and my tutor was John Spencer, and he was an Assistant Lecturer."
Vivienne then went to the Institute of Almoners in London, and completed that course the following year; it was almost a full year. The Institute was not attached to any university; it was a free-standing body. The course included placements in London: eight weeks at a London hospital then four weeks in child psychiatry with John Bowlby; three months in Glasgow at the Royal Infirmary, with visits to steel mills, hospitals etc.; and finally five weeks at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh. She finished the course in 1949 and was registered as an Associate Member of the Insititute of Almoners.
Vivienne’s first job (1949-1950) was as an almoner at Hackney Hospital, where the almoners were not fully qualified; she had a mixed caseload of older people and children, which is what she had wanted at the time. She only stayed for a year, because she was telephoned by the-then Director of the Institute of Almoners and invited to apply for a research position - she had always said she wanted the chance to do research. She subsequently worked for three years as a fieldworker on two research projects. The first was on rheumatism in the Fens and was sponsored by Nuffield and located in the Department of Human Ecology, University of Cambridge; the Professor who led the project had wanted a medical social worker to conduct the fieldwork, with a medical doctor already on the team. The second was a World Health Organisation and Rockefeller funded study comparing social work in England and France; she subsequently conducted interviews with health and welfare workers working with families in Salford and Manchester.
When the research came to an end in 1953, Vivienne went to see John Spencer and Richard Titmuss at LSE, but there were no academic positions available at this time. So she subsequently secured a position at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital as a senior medical social worker; there were 12 social work staff in the department at this time. She was working in the chest and heart wards, with 'blue babies' and their families. As she said, "I asked if I could take students - I thought things could be done better than what I had experienced." It was the same time that they were starting the Applied Social Studies course at LSE, Eileen Younghusband and Charlotte Towle were both involved in this. Eileen ran evening classes for the supervisors that LSE was going to use, and Vivienne enrolled on these, and by 1954, she was supervising students in her own right.
In 1956, Birmingham University advertised for a group supervisor, and soon afterwards, the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh did the same, advertising for someone to support university students who were undertaking practice placements there. There had been a student group at the Western General Hospital before this, led by Alice McGill, but it never taken more than two sudents at a time. She got the position, working with Helen Watt, the head almoner, and Jean Snelling, head of the medical social work (MSW) course at the university - she had come up from the Institute of Almoners herself in 1954 to set up the MSW course at Edinburgh, and had previously been Vivienne's tutor. (The MSW was accredited by the Institute of Almoners. Megan Browne was head of the Psychiatric Social Work course (PSW) at this time.)
Vivienne went on to become a Lecturer in Medical Social Work at Edinburgh University when Jean Snelling left in 1958 ; she was invited to apply, although she was only 32 at this time. She described this time:
"We were at 58 Buccleuch Place at this time, with Tom Burns and Hewan Craig working in the basement. I hoped there would be staff meetings, but there weren't. The sociologists at this time weren't sure that Social Work merited a place in the university, and Megan kept her door open and us apart.... Susan Sinclair was in Social Administration and she did bridge into Social Work, because she also taught on the PSW, because she was a qualified psychiatric social worker herself."
Vivienne taught medical aspects of social work, built around the use of case studies; placements were at the Infirmary, the Western General Hospital, Leith (with Bunty Cameron), Bruntsfield Hospital and Sick Children's Hospital. Speaking about the opening of the staff club opened in 1958 or 59, she said:
"Tt was a great place to mix subjects and people - it took me back to my first degree, which had been at a residential college, with dinner every night, and you might be sitting next to a botanist. The staff club gave the feeling of university, I think....[...]... We didn't mix very much with other disciplines."
When the Child Care course began in 1960, Vivienne was able to contribute to the teaching on this because of her experience working in a children’s hospital; Megan had done child guidance. Norma Campbell also joined the department in 1961 or 62, coming from a Children's Department in England. By 1962, Vivienne began to feel that her case studies were "getting a bit tired", so she took on work on a part-time basis with families at the RHSC’s child psychiatric service at Rillbank Terrace, in order to keep her casework teaching alive for students. Sylvia Massey, senior social worker at Rillbank set this up with Megan Browne; Penny Lesley was a colleague there. Vivienne's caseload at the time was mainly middle-class families, and she likened this work to the "medical pattern - keeping cases - as doctors keep theirs".
Vivienne said that the key theorists at this time were nearly all American - they came over each year, "almost like missionaries" - and that "it was all very individual - group work was separate". And interestingly, she said that the students' essays did not contain many references, though this had been common practice in her History degree.
Vivienne met her future partner, John Triseliotis, at Edinburgh; she was his tutor on the PSW. She continued working at the university until 1970, when she left to raise their adopted children. By this time, the three courses were being taught together - this had been a gradual shift from 1960 onwards. Meanwhile, former students were becoming directors of voluntary organisations, including Julie-Ann McQueen, and through her, she was introduced to Family Care's committee.
When asked about developments in social work education, Vivienne said she'd answer this as John would have:
"Echoes from John - What is the evidence for that? Have you any research evidence for that?... Everything had to have evidence. When he retired, he continued to give expert evidence in court. He used his research in court."
Your hopes for social work education looking ahead?
"There should be some basic principles that are the same - the book that I found really useful was Gordon Hamilton* - her idea of psycho-social diagnosis - that in working in any situation, one should consider to what extent the individual's social situation affected them as an individual, and to what extent they as an individual (their perception and their activity) affected the situation they were in. So the psycho-social interaction is key; I imagine it would persist always. I don't know what a student's timetable is today, but I hope that it would equip them to see that interaction."
* See Hamilton, Gordon (1940) Theory and Practice of Social Case Work, Columbia University Press, New York.
Source: Interview conducted with Viv Cree, 28th January 2016.