Leading Lights in Social Work
Lady Juliet Bingley
1. 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 as a 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
2. 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.
3. In between and alongside she undertook many other activities. I have
selected four:o 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;
o 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
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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.
o 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.
o 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?
o Identifying motivation is a tricky business. I do not pretend to
offer a comprehensive view but there are clues in her
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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 King Alfreds School
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
o 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-
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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.
o 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.
o 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?
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o 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.
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