User:Drtabazan/Fractal Social Work

The term Fractal Social Work comes from research carried out by Simon Langley, UK based schools social worker . His work in harnessing local parents into running their own courses and the building of social capital was lauded by Conservative MP Ian Duncan Smith (in the Smith Institute's publication "Getting in Early: Primary schools and early intervention") and social care magazine Community Care ran a favourable article on Thursday 02 October 2008. Langley was influenced by Anarchism and the book "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community" by Robert D. Putnam, and the Christian Socialist and activist Bob Holman who gave up academia and went to work on a sink estate in Bath in the 1970's, and later Glasgow's Easterhouse estate, working at grass roots level and empowering people. Langley argued that parents and schools should be free to run their interventions based on local need, and free of local and central government intervention. He stated that "social workers (should be) mobilising local communities and developing a kind of “fractal” social work, i.e. the replicating of what they do with communities down to smaller and smaller levels, with each project and grassroots endeavour being unique to that community’s needs."

External links

• Getting in Early: Primary schools and early intervention