1976 did not begin well for me. I was living alone in a town where I knew no-one, still legally married and waiting for divorce, working unhappily as a social worker in West Lothian. I could have regarded my new single status as an opportunity and travelled. But I was wounded and needed to return home. So, quite by chance, I learnt of a job with the new Employment Rehabilitation Research Centre (ERRC) in Birmingham. I was interviewed in London by the Head of the Centre, Dr Paul Cornes, and became a ‘Higher Social Work Researcher’ with the Manpower Services Commission. The ERRC was an unusual creation. Part of a civil service agency, it was intended to help solve the problem of employment rehabilitation centres. These provided courses a few weeks long for disabled people, with the aim of helping them return to ‘open’ employment (ie jobs in the ordinary labour market, rather than sheltered work). Being part of the civil service was a problem - publications were seen as breaches of the Official Secrets Act. The senior civil servants who had seen the Centre as a solution were soon replaced by newcomers who saw it as a problem. This was not helped by the almost total ignorance among the same senior senior civil servants of disability or employment rehabilitation. Paul Cornes navigated his role with great skill and increasing frustration, and proved one of the best bosses I ever had.
I joined the ERRC a few months after it began work, and replaced a kindly, committed but rather intense social worker called John Hannigan. The two of us overlapped in post for a week, to enable me to learn from him. We visited one or more (I forget how many) employment rehabilitation centres, and spent a lot of time talking. On the Friday, just after lunch, John gave me his considered verdict about myself, which went something like this:
“You’re a strange contradiction Stuart. On the face of it, you’re a brash loudmouth, but...”
At that point, someone came in the office and I never learnt the rest of the sentence. John’s great insight about me was lost forever. So I carried on being a brash loudmouth, albeit with a newly-acquired doubt that I might be a different sort of person underneath.
I stayed at the ERRC for some years, and, as usual, failed to take advantage of my employment. I did not publish, did not make the kind of contacts that would have developed a career in disability research, and failed to get a transfer to the permanent civil service. However, the research I carried out at the ERRC did form the basis for my PhD, and I spotted a rather special woman on the staff of the employment rehabilitation centre next door. The ERRC has long gone, but our marriage has remained the most important thing in my life.
I joined the ERRC a few months after it began work, and replaced a kindly, committed but rather intense social worker called John Hannigan. The two of us overlapped in post for a week, to enable me to learn from him. We visited one or more (I forget how many) employment rehabilitation centres, and spent a lot of time talking. On the Friday, just after lunch, John gave me his considered verdict about myself, which went something like this:
“You’re a strange contradiction Stuart. On the face of it, you’re a brash loudmouth, but...”
At that point, someone came in the office and I never learnt the rest of the sentence. John’s great insight about me was lost forever. So I carried on being a brash loudmouth, albeit with a newly-acquired doubt that I might be a different sort of person underneath.
I stayed at the ERRC for some years, and, as usual, failed to take advantage of my employment. I did not publish, did not make the kind of contacts that would have developed a career in disability research, and failed to get a transfer to the permanent civil service. However, the research I carried out at the ERRC did form the basis for my PhD, and I spotted a rather special woman on the staff of the employment rehabilitation centre next door. The ERRC has long gone, but our marriage has remained the most important thing in my life.
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