PLEASE NOTE THAT BOOKING THROUGH THE IASW IS OPEN TO IASW MEMBERS ONLY

 THIS EVENT IS FULLY BOOKED. THERE IS NO WAITING LIST. 

The HSE National Safeguarding Office, School of Social Policy, Social Work & Social Justice, UCD and the Irish Association of Social Workers are hosting a Seminar on the 20th February next from 2.30pm to 4.30pm in the Phoenix Suite Aisling Hotel, Parkgate Street, Dublin. 

Ms.  Kathryn Mackay Lecturer in Social Work at Stirling University Scotland will present on the subject of “Living with Harm? Exploring Autonomy, Mental Incapacity and Inability to Safeguard”.  This will be followed by a panel discussion. 

Places for this seminar are limited so early booking is advised. Booking is open to IASW members only - one place per member. 

Choosing to Live with Harm? Exploring Autonomy, Mental Incapacity and Inability to Safeguard

Inquiries and serious case reviews into the failure to protect adults from harm and abuse highlight the need for practitioners to better assess an adult’s ability to safeguard themselves as distinct from mental incapacity.  Failures though, are also attributed to cultural factors within services that lead to the breaches of adults’ human rights to liberty, to respect for private and family life and to be protected from inhumane treatment.  In this seminar, Kathryn will draw upon her research over the last ten years, with practitioners and people who have experienced adult safeguarding, to open up the concepts of choice and autonomy to critical scrutiny. In particular, she will highlight the dangers of overly focusing on an adult’s decisional as opposed to executional decision-making ability.  In so doing she adopts judging with care approach (Sevenhuijsen 1998) that draws upon both an ethic of justice and an ethic of care. Such an approach incorporates the emotional, relational and environmental, as well as the informational and cognitive elements of assessing capacity and ability to safeguard. It also acknowledges the importance of relationship- based practice and of support for practitioners to work with the uncertainties inherent within adult support and protection practice.   

Sevenhuijsen, S. (1998) Citizenship and the ethics of care: feminist considerations on justice, morality and politics.   London: Routledge.

MS KATHRYN MACKAY

Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA

Kathryn has 12 years’ experience working with disabled and older adults as a social worker and team manager. Her research and writing explores the interface between law (and policy) and frontline practice. It opens up the complexities of incapacity, choice and professional discretion in ways that avoid simplistic binary understandings. Her approach to research has increasingly involved practitioners and people with experience as co-researchers. Most recently she and Dr. Fiona Sherwood-Johnson formed a partnership with an advocacy project and their older member to explore safety and vulnerability in everyday life. She has also just completed her PhD by publication titled ‘Exploring the role of social work in supporting or limiting the rights of citizens subject to adult protection legislation’.  Within this, she argues that we need to blend an ethic of care with an ethic of justice to create conceptual and practice models that reflect the role of identity, emotions and relationships in supporting and protecting adults.  Kathryn’s understanding of the challenges and facilitators of safeguarding practice has also been enriched by being the Pathway Lead on Post-Graduate Certificate in Applied Professional Studies (Adult Services, Support and Protection) which attracts practitioners from a range of settings across Scotland. Copies of Kathryn’s reports and publications can be accessed via the University website: https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/255732