How Often Do You Have Sex?

 

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about narratives: How We Tell Tales

 

Think about narratives—the different types of conversations we have every day. Many of us change tone and wording without thinking. The way we speak changes depending on where we are and who we’re speaking to. You wouldn’t talk to your boss the way you talk to your best friend. You wouldn’t approach a stranger and immediately ask them about their intimate life. And yet, when it comes to disabled people, this social toggling or its sensitivity seems to disappear.

 If asked how often I have sex, I would expect the very close friend to have at least filled my glass a few times!

Public Narratives

 

Pick up a newspaper, and you will notice how journalists shape narratives to guide the reader’s focus. Consider a headline: George, 56, fell in the street because of a pothole. Why mention his age? Unless he is 5¾, George will be unlikely to want you to know his birthdate! Age is personal. A journalist will mention it because it jars—the wrong toggle invites a particular reaction. We identify with George if we're around his age; perhaps we’ll feel sympathy, concern, or a reminder of our own vulnerabilities. Journalism is about framing, about making certain details stand out while others fade into the background.

 

Similarly, if a journalist writes about sex in a professional context—say, a dentist having a relationship with a client—it’s because they hope their readers find it surprising. The narrative assumes that the mix of workplace culture and intimacy is unusual. In this case, there’s nothing to report. What dentists do in private is personal, as long as everyone consents. (Jill and John got married and lived happily ever after 🙂)

 

 

Misplaced Focus on Medical Matters

 

Getting the focus wrong—the toggling—often happens, sometimes unwittingly, when disability is written about. While many disabled people see themselves as human, the narratives about them often articulate a faulty, medicalised view. Reading about disability in mainstream literature, you’d be forgiven for thinking that most disabled people constantly need medical help. This framing can make disabled people seem less human, focusing only on their differences, often medical conditions. The narrative subtly shifts; the George headline becomes Autistic Falls in the Road.*

 

This brings me to a recent exchange in the supermarket. As I picked up a lettuce, I never expected to be asked about my condition(s). Not because I’m ashamed, but because it’s personal—jarring. Yet, I was asked what was wrong with me by a stranger. Sadly, it happens too often for me to ignore. Typically, in public, we don’t ask strangers deeply personal questions.

After ten years of study and research, I’m not surprised that disabled people are frequently subjected to intrusive questions: Are you taking medication? What’s your condition? Does your disability allow you to do this? These questions wouldn’t be acceptable to most typical social interactions, so why do they become acceptable when directed at people who appear disabled?

 

Literature and Personal Truths

 

Different literary genres use distinct storytelling methods. Mysteries, for instance, focus on action and facts, leading the reader in a straight line to solve the puzzle. Memoirs, on the other hand, rely on personal truths and emotional details, asking the reader to see the world from the writer’s unique perspective. As Mary Karr puts it in The Art of Memoir: “Truth works a tripwire that permits the book to explode into being.” So why tell tales about disabled people? Needy, lazy, broken, sick...

 

Disabled writers and scholars have pointed out that narratives about disability often follow a script that doesn’t align with their actual lived experiences. The focus tends to be on medical conditions rather than the person as a whole. This mirrors real-life interactions, where people feel comfortable asking disabled individuals personal questions of a clinical nature they wouldn’t ask anyone else   (Medical Model )

 

It’s not the same, but the equivalent of walking up to a stranger and asking, How often do you have sex?

 

So, the next time you meet someone, think about how you frame your questions. Do they reflect genuine curiosity about the person? Cats, curry, chardonnay? Or are they shaped by a narrative you’ve not challenged? Let’s move beyond the jarring stereotypes and towards conversations that recognise all people as complex individuals.

*totally disrespectful I'll agree! 

Underpaid - if paid at all

Worth?! An Ongoing Bugbear

 

I've got something I need to get off my chest today. It's an issue that's been bugging me for quite some time now – the unfair judgment of someone's worth based on their disability. Let me paint you a little picture.

 

Imagine this scenario: you've just returned from a lovely holiday, bags unpacked, and you go to toss that first load of laundry in the wash...only to find your washing machine has decided to quit on you. Disaster! With a soggy mess on your hands, you call up a trusted plumber to come and save the day. A few hours later, Mr. P arrives, does his thing, and just like magic, your laundry crisis is averted. Did you stop to question his skills or the fee he charged? Of course not! You took it on faith that this professional had the proper training, years of experience under his tool belt, and the know-how to get the job done right.  

 

Now, let's add a twist – what if Mr. P was disabled? Would you have then started haggling over his fee, assuming he was somehow less qualified for the job? I'd certainly hope not! Yet, this is the kind of nonsense that the disabled population so often face.

 

I remember when I was just starting as a trainer, I was being paid 40% less than my non-disabled colleagues...all because some people didn't see me as "qualified enough." As if the way I moved or spoke somehow negated years of education and real-world experience! Even a decade into my career, clients would expect a discount. It was interesting that having delivered Equality & Diversity, and leadership training to one particular organisation, they asked for a lower price for the disability equality training session. Furthermore, I was asked to give it half the time, and it was abysmally attended.

 

The assumptions don't stop there, either. There's this bizarre notion that just because we have a difference, the only expertise we could possibly have as Disabled people is in disability. It's like assuming someone who wears glasses must be an ophthalmologist! Um, no...just like anyone else, we have a wide range of experience, knowledge and skills. My abilities and interests go far beyond identity or physique! 

Here comes the real stinger! You would be amazed how many people have asked me to work for free! That’s right. Having failed the interview, and faced the ableism of interviewers. “Surely, you don't need to work… I don't believe your CV… you have the wrong skills…” etc. I often get an invitation to do countless hours of volunteering instead. Literally asking me to pay in time, effort and money for own employment. My last volunteer job cost £140, a sum I had to find.

 

On top of being insulting, being treated as worthless is also incredibly painful. How many opportunities have I missed out on simply because someone decided I'd be "better off" sticking to a volunteering or disability-related role? Unfortunately, for many years, I didn't think to question such narrow-minded thinking. I accepted that I should specialise in disability because it was expected of me. Needless say I did eventually get my head around a socially pervasive and complex subject. These days, I know better even if I can fight it. With a master's degree, a PhD, and decades of valuable experience under my belt, at least I know who is undervaluing my worth. I may move, speak, or think a little differently owing to unusual experiences, but that certainly doesn't make me less talented or knowledgeable in the field. At the end of the day, disabled or not, we're all just human beings doing our best.

 

So let's start giving each other a fair shake (it's a gift) shall we? Our quirks don't define our abilities, the lines aren't straight on human development. I'd trust myself or any other disabled person to unclog your metaphorical pipes just as well as the next plumber!

The M word…

Methodology -Thinking about storytelling

 

Thank you Prof Megan Crawford [@DrMeganCrawford] for inviting to talk with the PhD students from the research Centre for Global Learning at Coventry University [@CovUni_GLEA] .  Here’s a few thoughts about that conversation…. As requested, I’ve focused on methodology.  

 

Telling the story

The word methodology used to scare me, and it took me a long while to understand its meaning and its relevance to research and writing. After a conversation with my supervisor, in which I explained the difficulties I was having finding a 'paper' trail, he suggested I put these constraints down in a methodology chapter placed before the ‘literature review’. After staring at him somewhat agog, I did just this. Indeed, viewed as distortions, or bad reporting, the misrepresentation of disabled people’s interests in storytelling explained a wider context and impediments to the research.  

 

Who tells the tale is an important consideration in research. Accounts, like reports, annual reviews, or a thesis, are forms of storytelling. As the artefacts of organisational life they represent culture, and a form of textual evidence, that help tell the tale of an organisation’s activity. Stories are our archives, tell our past, the history of our times. Written for neighbours in time yet to read them. As feminists have given voice to women's interests in the she-story, existing he-story probably says more about who has most privilege – if not power. This view of pen- inequality articulates how some knowledge holders have a stronger voice than others, and therefore dominate many narratives.  

 

 

The question 

Ever a moveable feast, the ‘question’ I started with wasn’t the one I ended up exploring. The enquiry started as a hunch:  Why are disabled people not referred to as a group like others?  Why are their allies not viewed as activist like feminists? Why isn't there a more nuanced language to talk about disability? And why aren't there words with meaning thar are equivalent to institutional racism, patriarchy and sexism? At board meetings, I heard accountants call themselves feminists, but how do you describe reports from the position of an anti-what-disabled-people-are-oppressed-by-ist?  Because let’s face it anti-ableist is an unknown to most, and doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue. 

Textual worlds

In research papers I found there was a few sheets where I had hoped to find a library. When I searched through papers with ‘disability’ in their title few appeared before 1960, even fewer in topics that dealt with global matters. Pre 1960’s first-hand accounts of disabled individuals' experiences are hard to find in text. Most research is about them. In the few texts I did find, there was a noticeable absence of theory, reference to studies or equality was missing. From the 80s Disability Studies has been a growing discipline, yet its Key authors are absent in the roll calls of storytellers in tales of disability. 

 

This rejection lead me to consider travelling theory, a management perspective that seeks to explore why some theories are picked up and are blended into other disciplines, and others are domesticated [reduced to acceptable ideas] or never get beyond their own subject writings (Oswick, Fleming, & Hanlon, 2011). It seems that many theories are somewhat blunted by travel, indeed the more divergent ideas they include the more they are simplified or domesticated. Some are rejected altogether when not compatible with the adopting discipline’s existing theory. The question I ended up with was: why aren’t disabled people trusted as storytellers?

 

A legitimacy gap – a missing voice 

The methodology chapter, gave me space to explain a cultural rejection [orthotoxic], a widespread yet invisible force pushing disabled people to margins of communities’ activities such as storytelling. It helped me explain why as authors, disabled writers as a particular group within the writing community, were less likely to appear on the page. This power imbalance, explained how storytellers can be privileged or silenced in research accounts. 

 

The following literature analysis, from a human rights perspective, then highlighted how misrepresentation affects discourse in recognisable ways. For instance, the absence of disabled people speaking on matters of sustainability, despite the impact of economic measures most likely to harm them most. This erasure reflected a silencing of marginalised groups in global inequality more widely, most apparent in the rejection of authors from the Global South.

 

In academic texts, my major concern was the personal cost demanded from disabled participants. Traditionally the ‘disabled voice’ has been interpreted by a more privileged researcher. Viewed as data, individual representation when it did occur, is often stripped of institutional, political and activist positions. Furthermore, texts suggested that research on ‘minority groups’ often imposes an invasion of privacy can be triggering for ‘respondents’. Given that there is growing number of non-academic texts penned by authors clearly aligning to disability rights, why not use these? I love the term rainbow-literatures to describe these firsthand accounts, that have mushroomed in numbers as technology enables  individuals marginalised by education and employment. Viewed as a rejection of these, as poor acceptance of firsthand knowledge seems disabled people's experience has been written-out of research. replaced by an overbearing emphasis on clinical responses to disability understood as illness. No doubt driven by a wider belief in society that what disabled individuals need is care or cure. The storytelling leading people to turn to medical journals, rather than the tellers within groups or organisations representing the interests of the disabled population. 

 

I saw the matter of representing group interest as a question of ethical choice, as it was one of epistemological justice. I decided to turn my own question on its head, by asking what do accounts look like when the key tellers are disabled.  By writing an observation of organisational life, I was then able to use a reflection on it as a story to prompt theory. As a reflection on culture in spare me the ethical implications of crossing personal boundaries. As Spradley (1979) states you do not have to be in someone’s bedroom to talk about sex, it can be discussed in relation to its representation. The organisational offered a deviance in its rare view of a culture where disabled people are not erased but lead storytelling.  

 

Group authority missing in shared narratives

I found that while disability may appear on lists of groups with protected characteristics, disability theory rarely appears in discussion in later chapters. For example, while some authors will refer to disabled as an identity or protected characteristic in their introduction, however if it is referred to later it’s usually positioned as an ind problem. Discussions generally do not refer to the social model, and/or institutional discrimination. Rather than build in intersectionality, discarding key ideas of adopted theory suggests a rejection of disabled authors as knowers. Blending theory in an equitable way could help give increasing definition to the multiple oppressions many individuals face within groups. And  identity is rarely single and a binary view excludes, more generally I noticed many theories domesticated by more privileged writers, who ignore the ideas they don’t agree with, and continue to perpetuate narratives with harmful stereotypes.  The use of ‘and’ maybe important, suggesting ‘in addition’,’ with’ and ‘together’, in blending theories viewed as cumulative not oppositional.

 

The way I read it, Feminism has crossed boundaries that are still resistant to Critical Race Theory. Quite possibly because there have been more academics willing to consider the implications of the former, while fewer have had a nuanced language to articulate their own privilege without the shame implied by the later. Who knows....  Epistemic injustice, with the characteristics of ableism, in research and society, is a distortion that explains a storytelling that speaks to 5 myths the silencing of the disabled population (Kafer, 2013). 

 

Texts, knowers and accountability 

Trying to define my knowledge as writer, not necessarily as an author, was a matter of accountability. Defining my 'gaze' was far more than an issue of individual experience, it was one of defined knowledge-base and professional wisdom. Defining my activism was a way of articulating my sensitivity as a researcher. Rather than assume neutrality, I used ethnographic values [not methods] to express deviance in the world. 

 

Suggested by Sinclair (1995), and accessible in many ways, the idea of a chameleon serves well as a metaphor for accountability. Because, as an animal that can change its colours to represent its surroundings, as the picture illustrates the beastie still manages to represent others without changing itself radically.  With Accountability as an allied position, organisations wishing to represent their communities, can choose to state the interests of groups within texts and conversations by stating their interests explicitly within its accounts – its storytelling.  Articulating shared, or distinct, interests need not change purpose, or existing integrity and vision. Equally a human rights approach, in writing on the authority of named groups highlight the possible erasure of voices within civil rights movements.

 

Mapping dialogue 

I used a graphic, the  web of accountabilities, as an idealised frame to qualify themes in conversation. Each radar indicating a type of dialogue identified by the analysis and accout-ability chapters. The characteristics of each dialogue allowed me to qualify the amount of time spent talking about various aspects of people’s Human Rights within organisational conversations.

 

 

I found that an organisation’s commitment to uphold the rights of individuals from marginalised groups can be apparent in the naming of their interests in text and conversations. Legitimacy may seem accidental from a theoretical standpoint, but accountability was in evidence in most conversations. Critical to human rights, being account-able speaks to legitimate engagement. Naming ableism is a further step, because it is not enough to not intentionally hurt, an organisation needs to speak to the discrimination groups face and the cultural oppression they are disadvantaged by.  Without conversation, and a language describing the nuance, being nice to individuals has minimal impact on social aspects of belonging from a community perspective. 

 

 

 

Reference  

Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Mauthner, M., Birch, M., Jessop, J., & Miller, T. (2002). Ethics in qualitative research. (M. Mauthner, Ed.) London: Sage.

Oswick, C., Fleming, P., & Hanlon, G. (2011). From borrowing to blending: rethinking the processes of organizational theory building . Academy of Management Review, 318–337.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sinclair, A. (1995). The chameleon of accountability. Accounting Organizations and Society, 20(2/3), 219-237.

Spradley, J. P. (1979). The Ethnographic Interview. Waverland Press.

 

I got a bit giddy yesterday. Probably because I spend my time writing these days ... thesis oblige! So Attending a conference was a huge treat. The following is an attempt to organise my thoughts... if not my feelings. 

On Thursday 13th September 2018, it was the annual conference of Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Responsible Business at Fazeley Studios, in Birmingham. 

It was wonderful to meet a few of the authors of the texts I’ve been guided by over the past few years. It seems that liberated from their parenthesis, their voices had humour, warmth and sparkle. Talking to a few people before I left, ideas of hope and courage left me with feelings of excitement about the future.  As evidence seems to suggest, it is positive emotion that helps us engage with new ideas, complexities and nuances. I feel this is important, because as I have read, if you are happy to receive new information, you are far more likely to trust it’s source, the divergent voice, and consider its significance in a reflexive way. So being invited to join a movement urging us not to be pessimists or optimists but possiblemists made sense to me - on many levels. 

Trust emerged as a golden thread. Tying together notions of accountability, transparency, purpose, co-creation and collaboration. I was struck, during Ian Thomson’s opening speech, that given their number, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals could give us a headache.  I do wrestle daily with a tendency to see things in binary, when in conversations about sustainability the perspectives are multiple, complex and intertwined. As we also heard, the tendency with multiple lists is to cherry pick, to prioritise, and present things in a linear fashion. This, I think, introduces a hierarchy, which can reduce / increase the importance of some measures. Where some interests are marginalised I worry that in an effort to gain focus we can also lose the human detail - the angry voice in a painful story.  Dissonant, smaller, or less prominent issues get lost in a complexity we try to tidy. We can lose sight of significant interactions, the very real human tragedies, that fall between procedural cracks and beyond organisational measures.

In terms of leadership, and within the forests of literature that have been printed to support its development, authors highlight the need for an ability to engage with flatter hierarchies, multiple perspectives and alternative visions. To accept another’s voice in shared story - even where it disrupts common assumptions. This demands a degree of reflexivity, because complexity and nuance are important, and a willingness to engage beyond the boundaries of our own interests, our own experience or the mindset of our disciplines. As Hargreaves warns us, our ability to sustain leadership activity depends on a full menu, not the choice of a few dishes. To be able to think of issues of diversity, inequality and social justice, for example, we need to consider lots of stuff that may lie beyond our own experience. Yet, I have noticed that what is beyond our own experience is often the easiest to reject. Our trust is challenged by the testimony of those we find less likeable, or where personal tales seem to exaggerate personal issues in isolated cases. Doing my own research, I have read that despite being well documented, disabled people’s leadership activity has not been accepted as evidence of its existence and the voice of disabled professionals and activists is often dismissed.  I don’t claim that individuals set out to silence disabled people in a shared narratives, but the fact there hasn’t been a word akin to sexism and feminism to denote similar abuse of power toward the disabled population speaks volumes!!  The irony amuses me, that when I tell people that the voice of disabled people is not trusted, I’m sometimes told that what I am saying is not true!

A 'quick and dirty' job!

I have been in the process of migrating blogs from one account to another. In the chaos I found this one. It was a joy to write!

A 'quick and dirty' job!

I thought I'd write a post on one of the key phrases I use to make a not-so-subtle point. It is always a delight when others pick them up and start using them with energy! 

I'll start with 'quick and dirty' because of its instant success wherever it gets used!! It’s no doubt due to its inherent sexual frisson. The phrase was coined by a very good friend of mine. She admitted to me one day that with two young children some things just did not get the time they used to! I also thought that the sex angle would also draw a few extra readers to my blog! Shameful - I know!! 

Quick and dirty is a trick I use when I intentionally want to cut a long and challenging job down to a ½ hour task - a flying start. Thanks to a conversation with @roz_davies and the intro to the Promodoro timer, I'm now amazed what can be achieved in 25 mins!! I set the timer at a time of day when I usually don't get much done - let alone started!! And Instead of procrastinating over something that could take 2 to 6 hours, I give it a go! 

I recently listened to Iva Barr, the 86 year old woman who ran the London marathon talk about participation in similar terms. She said something along the lines of "no one is asking you to be the best, just show up, and have a go!" So it appears the idea has legs! (Groan!)  I guess that's the spirit behind my 'quick and dirty'! It's better to do something, however small, rather than do nothing at all. 

Let's face it our lives just do not allow for perfection do they? Sometimes, I think we set our goals so high we forget that what matters is to just pitch in at all. Perfectionism is dangerous when it stops us giving things a go. In some circumstances it is all well and good, but not at the price of not doing the job at all. For the most part, daily activity only requires that we get things done the best we can. In Eva's words it's not always necessary to  win the race!

Brené Brown, speaks of the power of 'showing up', being at the event - being enough. That in competition, like in so many circumstances in our life, it’s being there that is important! Winning is the goal maybe, but not the full purpose. I see so many people talking themselves out of achieving their dreams because they get so wrapped up in aiming so high they don’t even start. They argue themselves silly, and forget that same energy could have got them started.   

To me, it is doing anything I care about that matters! Whether it be cooking, biking, gardening, cleaning, or dare I say sex! None require excellence, let's face it, there's no leaderboard out there! The joy is the doing and the celebration of having done it. The satisfaction may not be in the performance, for example writing, but in the blog!

So let’s hear it for the 'quick and dirty'! A reminder to each other that getting stuck in means we are enoughto matter.Getting the job doneto the best standard - given time and energy - without fear of failure! It’s too easy to opt out, leave the work to others, denying ourselves the pleasure of an achievement - however small - our contribution the world. There are so many things we can do to change our lives, none that require absolute perfection, but all needing action.  

Transformation: disruption and conversation

Disruption 

Having unpacked the subdivision of the public conversation, in Life’s 3 conversations recently.  I now want to explore why the character of community and democratic conversations matter to transformation. Because storytelling is so important to the disruption of the status quo, where dialogue is seen as action in the pursuit of greater equality.

Conversations within organisations can have an impact on the story told about their purpose and the worth of their activities for the populations they serve. When workers get together to share their personal stories, their strength and energy have the potential to influence the organisation’s storytelling in a wider context. This has significance in a society where the marginalisation of certain groups is pronounced, and as a result the voice of certain individuals/groups are absent from the market conversation. Viewed as a form of respectful activism, a space for community and democratic conversation, encourages the participation of silenced or alternative voices, and helps highlight positive differences at group levels. In turn, I would hope, the energy created for shared interest can disrupt an established power imbalance and go on to challenge unacknowledged inequality more widely.

For those organisation's situated within the market sector, the focus on monetary quantity is understandable. I'm not saying it's about good or bad conversations, but it is about disrupting an over dominant narrative: a focus on money outside its place of relevance. As the reams of well-being and sustainability literature suggest the consumerism driving excessive growth is corrosive to community: our relationships and our health (James, 2007; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Therefore, I think that holding a space for community/democratic dialogue encourages people to talk differently about shared interest, in a personal way that re-establishes a little balance to cultural bias (Agar, 1994). This may encourage members of marginalised groups more specifically to interrupt an increasingly overbearing financial rectitude that reduces what matters to what has a cost. Striping what matters to cost is limiting and disempowering, because while equated to neutrality numbers cannot qualify adequately what has worth or value to people. Martin (1998) suggests that where monetary interests are wrongly assumed to be efficient accounts, they do very little more than secure the notion that all is equal.  Therefore, when a market conversation is deemed efficient, yet only deals with technical knowledge, it is not value-free. Rationality may be questioned in terms of democratic direction, because financial conversations often lack the moral impact on individual choice and the long-term consequence at a societal level (McGilchrist, 2012; Ehrenfeld & Hoffman, 2013). Viewed thus any resulting inequality may be ignored as the unavoidable collateral damaged of growth (Speth, 2008). While daily practice may accommodate for the outcomes of inequality, decisions that are taken without acknowledgment of disadvantage at a cultural level are likely to do little to challenge growing inequality that is unsustainable (Ehrenfeld & Hoffman, 2013).

Shared passion: What makes your heart sing?

The character of community and democratic dialogue fuels the intentionality behind coproduction. As articulated by Edgar Cahn in the story of Timebanking, thinking together is a celebration, a non-financial exchange that seems to help groups affirm belonging and possibility. Where financial considerations do not dominate the conversation there is potential to build social capital that is quite literally priceless. Positive feelings, according to well-being research, provide a 'broaden-and-build' attitude that not only facilitates knowledge development in the individual, but acceptance and respect within groups. Put simply, when happy we explore further and become less judgemental to difference. Community conversations may facilitate our ability to be more account-able by re-negotiating shared ideas and joint movement on a regular basis.

Viewed as a route to joint knowledge base, learning supported by the connection of freely chosen relationships. As such conversations can act to secure an understanding of democratic action and community interest.

When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative... Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves.  Through learning we become able to do something we were never able to do. Through learning we repercieve the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend out capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. (Senge, 2006, p. 13)  

What’s important is the nature of freely exchanged strategic ideas that creates new possibilities for groups; as relational endeavour provides both the personal energy and possible direction for change (Kretzmann & McKnight, 2003). It is the storytelling that has potential to change an organisation's story. Because of the way organisational interests are shared in public [in reports, documents, social media, press releases], they have an impact on how activity is perceived across localities.  So for example, the focus on cost in an annual report from a support service may suggest how workers understand ‘care’; and in turn this will affects the understanding of what has worth or value for the people in receipt of the help provided?

The impact, therefore, of in-and-across-house network can serve to secure and extend the worth and value of shared learning and negociated purpose as a lever to change.  

© April 2016 Laura (Mole) Chapman

Agar, M. (1994). Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation. New York: Harper Collins.

Cahn, E. (2000). No More Throw-away People, The Co-Production Imperative. . Washington: Essential Books.

Ehrenfeld, J., & Hoffman, A. (2013). Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability. Stanford, California: Stanford Business Books.

James, O. (2007). Affluenza - How to be successful and stay sane. London: Vermillion.

Kretzmann, J., & McKnight, J. (2003). Building Communities from the Inside Out. Chicago: ACTA Publications.

Martin, P. (2005). Making happy people, the nature of happiness and its origins in childhood. London: Harper Colins.

McGilchrist, I. (2012). The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning. Yale: Yale University Press .

Munro, R. (1998). Ethics and Accounting: the Dual Technologies of Self. In M. Parker, Ethics and Organization (pp. 197 - 221). London: Sage .

Senge, P. (2006). The Fifth Discipline, The art & practice of the learning organisation. London: Random House.

Speth, J. G. (2008). The bridge at the edge of the world : capitalism, the environment, and crossing from crisis to sustainability. [Kindle edition]. New Haven:: Yale University Press.

Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2009). The Spirit Level, Why more equal societies almost always do better. London: Allen Lane.