I realised that eventually. Thanks for taking the time again.

sorry Abdul…. reply was not to your response, it was for the one you replied to …. .where he says…. “The events in Israel and Gaza are the least of our concerns, and the least of the concerns of the people we are trying to help”

Presumably the large caseloads of social workers also prevent them making a cup of tea, saying good morning and hello, not thinking about the weekly shop, ignoring when the car needs an MOT with the working days passing in monastic silence. Undoubtedly caseload pressures are so much more immense compared to being constantly bombed, shot at by snipers, seeing homes turn into rubble, hospitals demolished, carrying dead babies in plastic bags, suffering amputations without anastesia, identifying dead ones by scraps of hair and fragments of teeth, children dying of malnutrition. A world truly turned upside down.

This is a cop out response.

This is the on the one hand on the other hand argument that conveniently ignores not only the humanitarian dimension of what’s “awful’ but also that there are people we are colleagues with and service users we work with who are personally effected by what’s happening. Asking someone like me to ignore what’s happening in the world when my partner is Palestinian and also expecting Jewish colleagues ignore their own distress is the kind of social work that offers nothing outside of a bubble of meaningless ‘professionalism’. For social work to have any relevance for “people we are trying to help” it has to engage in society and communities. Otherwise social work just becomes sterile task completion and box ticking which generally does little address people’s concerns. Differing with colleagues over any event isn’t about creating “unnecessary arguments” but rather shows that some of us see debate and disagreement as integral to social work. Otherwise we become the very thing social work isn’t, namely bureaucrats mechanistically carrying out the orders made on us by other better paid bureaucrats. Shutting us away from what’s perceived as “divisive” surely also means we never talk about racism, homophobia, religious differences, sexism, cultural differences and the like. I and scores of social workers will never shy from expressing our views on those either.