Leading Lights in Social Work

Lady Juliet Bingley

It is a great pleasure to be invited to contribute to today’s seminar and although sons are not necessarily best placed to get at the essence of their mothers- they may be able to offer some insights. She would have been delighted to be identified asa possible leading light in social work; I honestly do not know if she would have agreed and of course it is for others to conclude if she actually was. I will attempt to describe what I think that she did; her approach to doing it; what motivated her and maybe attempt to define if she did anything really new. In doing so I have to acknowledge that I do not have a social work background and therefore am probably not best placed to assess her within that particular professional context.

What she did

In brief Juliet Bingley was born in 1925 (half way through the first decade of those 20 interwar years - described by somebody as a dismal long weekend). She qualified as an almoner in 1945, worked at St Bartholomew’s Hospital for 3years; left to get married in 1948 to my father, 20 years older and probably the Royal Navy’s leading expert on naval air warfare and at that stage destined for imminent high command. She returned to professional social work in 1973 after the death of her husband as a medical social worker at St Marks Hospital in the City Road, London, the small but internationally renowned gut hospital, where she remained until her retirement in 1990; recognised by the award of an MBE for services to social work.
In between and alongside she undertook many other activities. I have selected four:-
In the very late 1950’s and very early 1960s initiated the discussion that led to the restructuring of the Naval Family Welfare Services and in particular Naval Children’s homes. Just to provide some context, in 1948 when my parents were married, the Royal Navy was still a very large “blue water” organisation with ships and bases all over the world. In the late 1950s it was a little smaller but still worldwide in its reach. The fleet trailed behind it all the social problems experienced elsewhere in the UK but exacerbated by long separations and in places social isolation. The Navy accepted that it was responsible for the welfare of its personnel and the education of their children. It did not however really accept that it had any responsibility for the welfare of naval families;
She exerted considerable influence on the health and welfare systems of both colonial and post colonial Malta such that in 1985 she received its highest ward and on her death in 2005, the President of Malta said “Her memorial in Malta is not made of stone, but it is the change of attitude to the importance of proper social welfare systems, especially for the old”. One of the things that underpinned her influence was her friendship and respect for Dom Mintoff – the fiery leader of the Malta Labour Party who was periodically and theatrically anti-British and who was deeply distrusted in this country. That she was, at the time when she established this friendship, the wife of the Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, which even in those ember days of the British Empire was still a force and projection of power to be reckoned with, says something about her.
She played a low profile but pivotal role in influencing the development of mental health policy as Chair of Mind from 1979 to 1983. – the culmination of a long association with that organisation that started in the early 60’s when it was called the National Association for Mental Health . In many ways those four years were Mind’s heyday (particularly in terms of public profile) as it transited from being an influential organisation comprised largely of mental health professionals to one, at least at national level, comprised of a wider range of workers including for example lawyers; and where the focus changed to patient’s rights and a more aggressive style of criticizing many aspects of mental health provision and especially aspects of psychiatry. For those who remember, these were the days of Tony Smythe, Larry Gostin, Ron Lacey and Tessa Jowell in a previous incarnation. Those debates influenced not only mental health but wider issues and attitudes – for example I think they were central to what might be termed the renegotiation of the relationship between the caring professional and their client. Juliet Bingley understood the issues and provided what might be termed “air-cover” especially when those disturbed by the approach of the organisation attempted to wield their considerable power to persuade the DHSS to reduce or withdraw its grant to Mind. It was under her leadership that the organisation first began its subsequent transit to seeking to base its authority on being an organisation whose primary constituency were patients and carers and at a national level to continue as an advocacy organisation in the broadest sense, with that constituency as its moral authority.
Having been a founder member of the Carr Gomm Society back in 1965, Juliet Bingley was in 1979 a key founding member of NACC (National Association for Crones and Colitis) which brings together people of all ages who have been diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, their families and the health professionals involved in their care. It now has 35,000 members and it is probably accurately portrayed as a model service user and carer organisation carrying within it an ongoing dialogue with professionals, with the ultimate intention of empowering those who experience Crones and Colitis to take control of their lives and their condition with the support of their families and supporters. In commercial parlance the sufferer becomes the “intelligent” client,

What motivated her?

Identifying motivation is a tricky business. I do not pretend to offer a comprehensive view but there are clues in her background that give some indications. Her first 15 years were spent in what was said to be the last house in Harley Street to be occupied by one family. Her father, my grandfather, was a renowned surgeon and famously witty and competent teacher of surgery who was Warden at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London founded in 1123. Her mother remembered Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee, was 6ft 1”, possessed a formidable intellect but was without the benefit of any formal higher education; and died at the age of 102. Juliet’s was a very privileged upbringing but with some acquaintance with the realities of other peoples lives especially by way of visiting Barts – then of course a voluntary hospital. In those days her mother was quite radically minded and sent her to KingAlfredsSchool in Hampstead, a co-educational school whose approach to education was very different to much of what was then prevailing. Her road to Damascus came in 1944 when studying social administration at the LSE (then located for the duration in Cambridge) when she did a placement at the Personal Social Services Society in Liverpool. The poverty, religious persecution and racism that she witnessed profoundly shocked her and amounted to a life changing event. I think that it provided the motivation for her life’s work. In later years she talked about “the burden of privilege” and how to deal with it. Her experience did not turn her into a revolutionary but I believe it did focus her intention to be a reformer if she ever got the chance. She did get the chance and from a position, at times of what might be termed positional power and at other times attributional power and sometimes a mixture of both,she did attempt to do just that.

Her approach

My judgement would be that Juliet Bingley had a talent for detail as well as thinking strategically but that underpinning all that was a talent for and a profound commitment to helping people with serious and usually long term conditions to live fulfilled lives – but to do so, in as far as possible, on their own terms. When she arrived at St Mark’s Hospital it was and no doubt still is, a highly specialised centre of international excellence dominated by a cohort of extraordinarily talented surgeons and physicians who dealt with a group of people with highly distressing, long term conditions that cause great disability and frequently serious social isolation. It is probably fair to say that the role of social work was confined to sorting out practical matters for patients. Equipped by way of her background, social class, her title, her extraordinarily broad experience of successfully dealing at almost every level and her professional skill as a social worker including her competency in what I guess would be termed counselling, she carved a social work contribution to the processes of the hospital that in that particular context added something really new; and which was recognised by the award of the Elliston Nash prize by Barts Hospital (of which St Marks was then part) for he contribution to the NHS. John Lennard- Jones the doyen of the St Marks physicians wrote her obituary in the Guardian. For 12 years after her official retirement, she counselled adults with severe physical difficulties. She believed that many patients did need people who would really talk to them and amongst other things this led her to take the lead in establishing the NACC- in - Contact, a telephone support service that exists to this day.
Looking back over her career I believe that she brought to bear all these skills, attributes and values; and sought to maximise their leverage within the context of where she found herself. Her contribution to the reform of aspects of the naval welfare system flowed it seems to me from a power base that was both positional and attributional. Not many wives of Commander in Chiefs were qualified social workers or aged just 35, and her position meant that at the very least “their Lordships” had to take some notice. In 1963 my father was told that he was to be appointed First Sea Lord – the professional head of the Navy. For political (with a small “p”) reasons which I do not need to bore you with, he was then told that he was not to be and he retired. It is interesting to speculate what she might have achieved if he had been. She was not Florence Nightingale but in some ways and for whatever reason she found herself as a women with a particular skill in a particular position and she deployed that skill with expertise and courage. After her death I found copies of her communications with the Board of the Admiralty, and they were a riveting mixture of charm and fearlessness that I, if I was them, would not have liked to receive or quite know what to do with.
Her work at Mind I think was underpinned by fierce dissatisfaction with the provision of care and support for people with mental health problems and amongst other things she was one of the earliest people to be involved in the establishment of Group Homes. Obsolescent now but revolutionary then. Indeed my father in his post retirement position as secretary of a large grant giving trust, funded the first group homes pioneered by, I think, Cicely McCall (incidentally I believe the first ever psychiatric social worker). As Chairman of Mind she contributed to and tested the strategic intentions of a group of outstanding and radical people who redirected that organisation in a way that attracted the criticism of powerful vested interests (sometimes I suspect not entirely unjustifiably) – but she understood what her team were on about – and although she was not always entirely comfortable with their direction, she deployed all those skills and attributes that she had exhibited with the Royal Navy to provide cover, counsel and good sense that made a real difference and occasionally may have saved their bacon. If you asked her what she was most proud of, I suspect it was the establishment of NACC as a sustainable organisation and her achievements at St Marks.

What did she add?

I am not in a position to defendably argue whether she added any new dimensions to social work. What I can say is that she understood her own power and where it reposed elsewhere; she worked collegiately and was an expert at forming alliances; she had persuasive charm and focus and was fearless in pursuing what she regarded as right; she had sound judgement and knew about tactics – all of which was underpinned by a set of values that she stuck to regardless but which she could be flexible about pursuing. Whether they were the right ones is for others to judge. Finally she was of course many other things in addition to those I have already described including being a rather good poet notwithstanding illegible writing and a rather dicey grasp of spelling. Above all she had enormous and infectious energy.

William Bingley

16 October 2010.