Robert Adams, internationally renowned writer and social work teacher dies

Link to my post about Robert Adams, who died on New Year's Eve.

Link to the Writers' Guild obituary

Link to Robert's Wikipedia entry

Instead of worrying about the security implications of poverty and inequality, we need better social provision worldwide

You probably don’t see yourself as a big reader of Ministry of Defence global strategy documents. Which would be a pity, because a recent publication gives you a security slant on a lot of global trends. Such as: countries with more men than women tend to be more violent and authoritarian. As numbers of women and men become more equal in any society, there is less violence. China will have an excess of 48 million men in 2045, they guess. Worry about the implications of that.

What does it say about older people? In one stunning statement, it raises concern that growing numbers of older people will put pressure on public expenditure and lead to a reduction in defence expenditure. That is, in rich countries. They’re clearly concerned about this, whereas I think it would be rather a good thing.

Of course, they note, developing countries don’t provide welfare, so they’re likely to be all right. No suggestion that improving welfare services is also likely to be a trend over the next thirty years or so, particularly where there aren’t any. However, they do have a box for a possible alternative outcome:

Ageing populations and increased dependency ratios may create funding pressures, particularly in developed countries. However, advances in healthcare and changes in education methods may see the cost of providing these services fall, as people become healthier, work longer and education becomes de-centralised.

So there’s some hope for the defence budget then. 

There are also chapters on gender equality and urbanisation, where the concerns raised are about security implications of social change, but nowhere the suggestion that working hard to eradicate the problems that it reasonably identifies would be the best course of action. I know it’s the Ministry of Defence, and their job is to make sure that defence is provided for, but actually we’d have a lot less to worry about if we had better social provision worldwide.

Link to the full report on global strategic trends

Social work is specially needed in countries with histories of social destruction

The challenges of being the only social worker in eastern Congo http://gu.com/p/43p33

This Guardian feature offers a useful picture of social work in a country suffering the consequences of past social disruption and the resulting pressures on individuals and families. Just ideal circumstances to employ social workers in, but obviously a place in which the social priorities mean that providing social care is at the end of the list of things to do. We need to promote the value of services that respond to social need as an important part of any society, even or perhaps especially in countries experiencing great poverty.