Introducing 'The Balance Papers'

Where Evidence Meets Understanding

Ok I’ll admit I’m not sure if merging my professional and personal thoughts is a great idea but I’ve decided to do it anyway. Here are some of my thoughts on a new venture in Independent Social Work in the creation of Balance Labs Ltd.

So why post about social work when most of my readers are not social workers? Good question. The answer is that my belief is that Social Work is a public service that involves children and their families and I strongly believe that it should be part of a wider public discourse because we all belong to families and many of us have children.

Bringing up a child is probably the most challenging thing most of us will ever do. We should learn from the best among us and support those who, through their own early trauma or poverty, simply cannot manage the demands and complexity involved. As they say ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.

The brainless diatribes against social workers and families vomited out of the press don’t help every time there is a disastrous misjudgement and no practice only ever learns from it’s disasters and mistakes but also what it does well. Even primarily, what it does well!

I believe we need a huge restoration of empathy and compassion in the practice of social work and resistance to the digital surveillance of workers and families

Social Work needs to be accountable and explanatory and needs to engage in dialogue with the nation outside of the brainless diatribes of the Daily Mail and their ilk when there are disastrous misjudgements and failures.

It may well turn out that this project requires a separate Substack but I’m hoping not. As my treasured subscribers I’m sure you will let me know. Please do share your thoughts. Please!

Here goes!

Preface — Why Balance Matters
Balance Labs Ltd (2025)

Balance is not a slogan. It’s a method.

In the work of children’s services, every decision is made at the crossroads of risk and hope. To navigate that intersection demands more than expertise; it requires discipline — the discipline to stay balanced when everything else leans toward extremes.

The Balance Papers were written to articulate that discipline. They’re not policy, nor are they theory. They are reflections — drawn from decades of practice, leadership, and learning — on how social work can remain both analytical and humane.

Each essay explores one aspect of professional balance:

• Thinking — how we hold uncertainty without losing clarity.

• Words — how we write with precision and care.

• Humanity — how we stay present and compassionate in the midst of pressure.

If they share a single conviction, it’s this: evidence and empathy are not rivals. They are partners in the search for truth.

Balance is not passive. It’s active — a stance that must be re-chosen every day, especially on the days when clarity feels most fragile. You cannot ride a bicycle without moving forward. Balance is not static-it is fluid. Remember when you played on a see-saw on your own because you had no friend on the other side to provide balance-tiny minor adjustments kept you level in the middle. Or you fell off!

May these reflections steady your thinking and widen your sense of what is possible.

Balance Labs Ltd — Where evidence meets understanding.