Our 'lived experience' is not in the past - it's a 'living' thing

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 14 April, 2022

Dominic Watters may be responsible for bringing a new term into existence within social work. Instead of describing people as having ‘lived experience’ he refers to ‘living experience’

The aim is to underline the immediacy of the situations people are facing and that their experiences are not a passive event of the past, but happening now and urgently need addressing.

For Dominic, this isn’t just a distant theoretical concept too - it’s based on his actual experience of being a social work student living in poverty.

“It’s what I see every day,” says the single father who lives on a council estate in Kent with his 15-year-old daughter.

“I see my neighbours are struggling financially. Speaking as someone living in poverty who is on pay as you go gas and electric and finding it hard to feed myself as well as my daughter, I feel it is such an important issue. I experience the debilitating effect of poverty and how that can dim someone’s aspirations.”

Dominic has spent the last two years studying for a Masters in social work. During that time, he has turned his passion against injustice into a campaign around food insecurity.

Last year, he launched Food is Care, a concept and a campaign to increase understanding of food poverty in social work. He wants to see it recognised both within the Professional Capabilities Framework and in England regulator Social Work England’s professional standards.

Together with the Social Workers Union Campaign Fund and the Campaign Collective, he has recently carried out a survey that found two thirds of social workers are concerned about families being unable to feed their children.

This year he wrote to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi asking for a meeting to discuss food insecurity. He has also written to the Prime Minister in support of England footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaigning on free school dinners.

“When I first started speaking about this people said it was a concern of public health and not in the social work arena,” says Dominic.

“It is through the campaign work I have been doing, coupled with people who are giving it attention in the media, that it is more accepted that this should be a concern of ours.”

Studying to become a social worker has also raised Dominic’s understanding of the structural inequality that he and others experience in society. It has motivated his campaigning work which he sees as part of his professional identity.

“I have a deep sense that injustices should be challenged,” he says.

“I don’t speak about things I haven’t experienced. When you are living the inequality you are discussing it’s hard for it not to be personal.

“In a capitalist society you feel like a failure if every week you are experiencing food insecurity, having to feed your daughter while you go without.

“It doesn’t make you feel extremely successful but at the same time it has given me the fuel to do the campaign work and come up with the concept of Food is Care.

“I was on a placement where I saw the children in care in semi-supported living experiencing this. They were surviving on food donations and food banks and I would go home thinking ‘this is what I am going through’ and realise that it is a shared disadvantage that some of the most marginalised people experience in society.”

A year ago, Dominic published a book supported by PSW featuring essays written by social workers, academics and people using services highlighting the inequalities of Covid.

Called Social Distancing in Social Work: Covid Capsule One, it is now on the reading lists of several university social work courses.

He is currently in the process of reissuing an updated version of the book in light of the current cost of living crisis and is looking for more contributions from social workers.

“There is a lot of attention on this cost of living crisis, but for people like me living in poverty have been in a cost of living crisis for years now,” he says.

“It is only now that it is hitting the middle classes who have a voice that is listened to that it is being given this focus.”

Dominic recently met with the UN’s food special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri and today, 14 April, he is due to meet representatives from The Food Foundation charity and End Child Food Poverty to discuss seed funding for his campaign work.

If successful, he plans to use this to continue pushing for food insecurity to be recognised within social work practice.

“I have had a meeting with the regional representative for Social Work England,” he says.

“She was really encouraging about my work. Apparently for them to review the professional standards it has to go to Parliament. The long-term objective of Food is Care is saying the government needs to review this, perhaps with a judicial review about why food insecurity isn’t included in terms of wellbeing in law.”

To enquire about contributing to the Social Distancing in Social Work book email Dominic at notetodominic@gmail.com

#FoodisCare

Dominic can be found on Twitter @SingleDadSW