![southward, with which we stood in, having regular soundings from
twenty-two to seven fathoms.
The mouth of the bay opens in a north-north-west direction. The
land on the south side is of a moderate height; to the northward it
rises into a bluff head, which is the highest part of the coast. In the
channel between them, near the north-east side, lie three
remarkable rocks; and farther in, near the opposite coast, a single
detached rock of a considerable size. On the north head there is a
look-out house, which, when the Russians expect any of their ships
upon the coast, is used as a light-house. There was a flag-staff on it,
but we saw no sign of any person being there.
Having passed the mouth of the bay, which is about four miles
long, we opened a large circular bason of twenty-five miles in
circumference, and at half past four came to an anchor in six
fathoms’ water, being afraid of running foul on a shoal, or some sunk
rocks, which are said by Muller[17]
to lie in the channel of the harbour
of St. Peter and St. Paul. The middle of the bay was full of loose ice,
drifting with the tide, but the shores were still entirely blocked up
with it. Great flocks of wild-fowl were seen of various species;
likewise ravens, eagles, and large flights of Greenland pigeons. We
examined every corner of the bay with our glasses, in search of the
town of St. Peter and St. Paul, which, according to the accounts
given us at Oonalashka, we had conceived to be a place of some
strength and consideration. At length we discovered on a narrow
point of land to the north-north-east a few miserable log-houses and
some conical huts, raised on poles, amounting in all to about thirty,
which from their situation, notwithstanding all the respect we wished
to entertain for a Russian ostrog, we were under the necessity of
concluding to be Petropaulowska. However, in justice to the
generous and hospitable treatment we found here, I shall beg leave
to anticipate the reader’s curiosity, by assuring him that our
disappointment proved to be more of a laughable than a serious
nature. For in this wretched extremity of the earth, situated beyond
every thing that we conceived to be most barbarous and
inhospitable, and as it were out of the very reach of civilization,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/97425-250412045005-0d209812/85/Social-work-and-social-policy-an-introduction-2nd-edition-Edition-Dickens-71-320.jpg)
![consequence of this letter, he said there had been various
conjectures formed about us at Bolcheretsk: that the Major thought
it most probable we were on a trading scheme, and for that reason
had sent down a merchant to us; but that the officer, who was
second in command, was of opinion we were French, and come with
some hostile intention, and were for taking measures accordingly. It
had required, he added, all the Major’s authority to keep the
inhabitants from leaving the town, and retiring up into the country;
to so extraordinary a pitch had their fears risen, from their
persuasion that we were French.
Their extreme apprehensions of that nation were principally
occasioned, by some circumstances attending an insurrection that
had happened at Bolcheretsk a few years before, in which the
commander had lost his life. We were informed, that an exiled Polish
officer, named Beniowski, taking advantage of the confusion into
which the town was thrown, had seized upon a galliot, then lying at
the entrance of the Bolchoireka, and had forced on board a number
of Russian sailors, sufficient to navigate her: that he had put on
shore a part of the crew at the Kourile Islands; and, among the rest,
Ismyloff, who, as the reader will recollect, had puzzled us
exceedingly at Oonalashka, with the history of this transaction;
though, for want of understanding his language, we could not then
make out all the circumstances attending it: that he passed in sight
of Japan; made Luconia; and was there directed how to steer to
Canton; that arriving there, he had applied to the French, and had
got a passage in one of their India ships to France: and that most of
the Russians had likewise returned to Europe in French ships; and
had afterward found their way to Petersburg. We met with three of
Beniowski’s crew in the harbour of Saint Peter and Saint Paul; and
from them we learnt the circumstances of the above story.
On our arrival at Canton, we received a farther corroboration of
the facts, from the gentlemen of the English factory, who told us,
that a person had arrived there in a Russian galliot, who said he
came from Kamtschatka; and that he had been furnished by the
French factory with a passage to Europe.[18]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/97425-250412045005-0d209812/85/Social-work-and-social-policy-an-introduction-2nd-edition-Edition-Dickens-79-320.jpg)
Social work and social policy an introduction 2nd edition Edition Dickens
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- 6. Social Work and Social Policy An understanding of social policy is vital for engaging practically with social work values, and dealing with political and ethical questions about responsibility, rights and our understanding of ‘the good society’. This textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to social policy, tailored to the needs of a social work audience. The new edition of this popular and accessible text analyses current policies and policy themes relevant to social work, and locates them in the context of fundamental social policy principles and debates. It discusses the nature of social policy and its relationship to social work, and covers essential themes such as: • service user participation and involvement • the balance between individual, societal and state responsibility for people’s well-being • the interactions of the state, the private sector, voluntary organisations and the family • the relationships between needs, rights and choices • the purposes and challenges of professional social work • the meanings of ‘equality’, ‘prevention’ and ‘personalisation’. Each chapter ends with activities for reflection and analysis, and suggestions for further reading. Social Work and Social Policy is invaluable for students undertaking social work qualifying courses, all of whom are required to demonstrate an understanding of the social policy contexts of practice. Jonathan Dickens is Professor of Social Work at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the author of another book in the Routledge Student Social Work series, Social Work, Law and Ethics.
- 7. Student Social Work This exciting new textbook series is ideal for all students studying to be qualified social workers, whether at undergraduate or masters level. Covering key elements of the social work curriculum, the books are accessible, interactive and thought-provoking. New titles Human Growth and Development John Sudbery Mental Health Social Work in Context Nick Gould Social Work Placements Mark Doel Social Work A reader Viviene E. Cree Sociology for Social Workers and Probation Officers Viviene E. Cree Integrating Social Work Theory and Practice A practical skills guide Pam Green Lister Social Work, Law and Ethics Jonathan Dickens
- 8. Becoming a Social Worker, 2nd ed. Global Narratives Viviene E. Cree Social Work and Social Policy, 2nd ed. An introduction Jonathan Dickens Forthcoming titles Social Work with Children and Young People, their Families and Carers Janet Warren Mental Health Social Work in Context, 2nd ed. Nick Gould
- 9. This page intentionally left blank
- 10. Social Work and Social Policy An introduction Second edition Jonathan Dickens
- 11. First published 2010 This edition published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 J. Dickens The right of Jonathan Dickens to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dickens, Jonathan, 1961- author. Social work and social policy : an introduction / Jonathan Dickens. -- Second edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-138-01756-6 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-138-01757-3 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-315-78040-5 (ebook) 1. Social service. 2. Social policy. I. Title. HV40.35.D53 2016 361--dc23 2015034062 ISBN: 978-1-138-01756-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-01757-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-78040-5 (ebk) Typeset in Rotis and Tekton by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
- 12. Contents List of figures, tables and boxes xi Acknowledgements xiii Introduction1 Part 1: Core models 5 Overview 5 1 What is social work for? 7 Who is social work for? 8 The roles and tasks of social work today 13 The use of models: the social work diamond 15 Conclusion 18 Questions for reflection 19 Useful websites and further reading 19 2 What is social policy about? 21 Outcomes and well-being: the social policy triangle 22 Services and organisations 29 Conclusion 37 Questions for reflection 37 Useful websites and further reading 38
- 13. viii Contents 3 The role of the state 39 Four welfare approaches 40 The implications for social work 49 The ambiguity of social policy 52 Conclusion 54 Questions for reflection 54 Useful websites and further reading 54 Part 2: Key issues 57 Overview 57 4 Need59 Defining social need 60 Levels of need 61 Need and the Care Act 2014 65 Conclusion 69 Questions for reflection 70 Useful websites and further reading 70 5 Poverty71 Understanding poverty 72 Child poverty 75 Food banks 78 Conclusion: the implications for social work 80 Questions for reflection 81 Useful websites and further reading 81 6 Rights82 Types of human rights 83 The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 87 The Human Rights Act 1998 88 Rights and responsibilities 91 Conclusion 93 Questions for reflection 94 Useful websites and further reading 94
- 14. ix Contents 7 Inequality95 Aspects of inequality 97 Equality policy under the coalition government 2010–15 98 Social class 100 Social class and health 102 Conclusion: the relevance to social work 104 Questions for reflection 106 Useful websites and further reading 106 8 Participation107 Ladders of participation 108 The politics of participation and choice 114 Five key questions 114 ‘Whole systems’ change 117 Conclusion 120 Questions for reflection 120 Useful websites and further reading 121 9 Regulation 122 The welfare jigsaw puzzle 123 Cutting back the red tape? 130 Law and politics 132 Conclusion 134 Questions for reflection 135 Useful websites and further reading 135 Part 3: Current topics 137 Overview 137 10 Prevention and personalisation 139 Early intervention 140 Personalisation 145 Implications for social work 149 Conclusion 150 Questions for reflection 151 Useful websites and further reading 151
- 15. x Contents 11 Commissioning and integration 153 The mixed economy of welfare 154 Ensuring high standards 159 Integrating health and social care 161 Social work practices 164 Conclusion 166 Questions for reflection 166 Useful websites and further reading 167 12 Funding and spending 168 Where the money comes from 170 How the money is spent 172 Paying for social care 175 Conclusion 182 Questions for reflection 183 Useful websites and further reading 183 Conclusion: between the middle and the margins 184 References 187 Index 207
- 16. Illustrations Figures 1.1 The social work diamond 16 2.1 The social policy triangle 26 4.1 A pyramid of need 63 7.1 The social gradient 102 8.1 A ladder of citizen participation (adapted from Arnstein, 1969) 109 8.2 A ladder of children’s participation (adapted from Hart, 1992/1997) 111 8.3 Aspects of participation (adapted from Thomas, 2000) 113 Tables 3.1 The state and welfare 41 5.1 Median weekly income and low income line for different types of household, UK 2013–14, before and after housing costs 74 7.1 National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification 101 12.1 Expenditure and income on local authority adult social care services, England 2013–14, £ million 173 12.2 Expenditure and income on local authority children’s social care services, England 2013–14, £ million 174 Boxes 1.1 The New Labour reviews of social work 14 2.1 Well-being for children: five aspects in the Children Act 2004 23 2.2 Well-being for adults: nine aspects in the Care Act 2014 24
- 17. xii Illustrations 2.3 The Poor Law 27 2.4 The Beveridge report (1942) 30 2.5 Welfare reform 35 3.1 Welfare benefits: insurance, assistance, universalism 44 3.2 The state, parents, childcare and work 46 3.3 What would social work be like? 49 3.4 Radical social work 51 4.1 Assessing and meeting needs under the Care Act 2014 66 5.1 Four questions about poverty 73 5.2 ‘Modest but adequate’ 75 6.1 Human rights 85 6.2 Human rights and the bedroom tax 86 6.3 The force of UN human rights treaties 87 6.4 Three key articles for social work in the European Convention on Human Rights 90 6.5 Rights-based perspectives on the welfare benefits cap, 2015 92 7.1 The Equality Act 2010 96 8.1 A ‘whole systems’ approach to participation 118 9.1 Major government departments for social policy and social work in England, July 2015 124 9.2 A selection of other regulatory and advisory bodies in England, July 2015 125 9.3 Major government departments and regulatory bodies for social work in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, July 2015 126 10.1 The Troubled Families programme 143 11.1 Leutz’ five laws of integration (1999) 163 12.1 Four dilemmas in paying for social care 176 12.2 Free personal care in Scotland 179
- 18. Acknowledgements I am fortunate to have so many outstanding colleagues in the School of Social Work at the University of East Anglia, and I have benefitted from their friendship and helpful advice over many years. In particular, I would like to thank Gillian Schofield and Chris Beckett for their support, and Ann Anka and Yvonne Johnson for help in teaching and assessing the social policy module for social work students at UEA. Thanks to all at Routledge for their help with this second edition. Special thanks and love, as always, to Julia and Caitlin; and this time, a loving welcome to Caitlin’s son, Alfie.
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- 20. 1 Introduction The roles and tasks of social work are always up for grabs, always the subject of discussion, debate and disagreement. Different people have very different views about what social workers are doing and should be doing, and how these responsibilities and functions fit into the broader range of social policies and welfare services – for example, how they link with health and education, ‘welfare to work’, ‘personalisation’, local government and the roles of the private and voluntary sectors. Social work practitioners, managers, local authority councillors, central government ministers, civil servants, journalists, academics, service users, people who have been refused a service, people who provide care for relatives or friends – all will have a view about what social work is or should be, and probably several views. Their own expectations may not always be consistent, and then there will be tensions and sometimes outright conflict with what others think. In this complex and hotly contested context, the central questions are ‘what is social work for?’ and ‘who is social work for?’, and these are the guiding questions that shape this book. My interest is to set social work in its wider context of social policies, social values and other welfare services. The focus is social work in England, but I also refer to developments in the other countries of the United Kingdom (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). Social care and social work are devolved to the different countries of the UK, although other crucial policy areas, notably taxation and welfare benefits, are currently not. There are organisational and policy differences between the four countries, but the underlying issues are recognisably similar, as they will be for readers in other western, democratic and industrialised countries. My approach is to use a variety of ‘models’, or frameworks, to try to capture the main ideas. I say more about this approach in Chapter 1, but also offer a few thoughts here, reflecting on the fact that whatever the political and economic climate, the core questions remain the same. I finished writing the first edition of this book in spring 2009, when the full effects of the global economic crisis of 2008 had still to be felt. The Labour party was still in government, with Gordon Brown as prime minister. In some ways those days seem very distant, but a number of policy themes that are prominent now, were just as important then: ‘personalisation’ and the promotion of personal budgets, paying for Chapter 1
- 21. 2 Introduction long-term care, how to involve the private and voluntary sectors, how to promote individual and family responsibility for people’s well-being. Labour lost the general election of May 2010, and a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government took its place, with David Cameron as prime minister. The new government had a clear policy agenda to reform Britain’s finances, cutting the budget deficit by making significant reductions in public spending rather than increases in taxation. It saw this as the way to re-energise the economy and public services. Rather than the state providing welfare services, mainly through local councils, it envisaged an increasingly important role for businesses and charities to organise, deliver and even fund services; and individuals and families should take more responsibility too. Cameron tried to promote these ideas under the banner of the ‘Big Society’ (Cameron, 2011). In May 2015 the Conservatives won the general election with a (narrow) overall majority, pledged to continue their policies of cutting back public expenditure, especially reducing the welfare budget. But these are certainly not new ideas. In particular, the theme of individuals and families taking responsibility by working, saving and looking after one another goes back centuries. So specific policies may change, new laws might be passed, organisations restructured and new agencies created, but the fundamental challenges and dilemmas remain the same. This context of change and continuity is a vital aspect of social work and social policy. It gives three main challenges for writing a book about them. First is to strike a balance between comprehensiveness and focus, second to ensure that it is relevant to practice, and third that it will have some relevance over time. It is not possible to describe everything about current social policy, which is a huge and fast-changing aspect of government – and there would be no benefit in trying to do so because, inevitably, specific policies and organisational details will change. So I have picked a selection of aspects that seem most relevant to social work, and try to give up-to-date examples and pull out the underlying issues. Some of the contemporary detail will be overtaken by events but should still be useful for following the later developments, and the underlying issues will not change – for example, the need to balance individual freedoms with the safety of others, or the dilemmas of respecting people’s choices but providing services within limited resources. Such key challenges last over time. As Martin Rein (1976: 24) put it, social policy has: … a general tendency … to develop in a cyclic rather than a linear manner. Since the problems are in essence intractable, and can rarely be resolved without sacrificing some strongly held values, the issues tend to be recurrent. Each generation takes up the same issues again and seeks to re-define them in the light of its own political, economic and social reality. One lesson from this quotation is to be wary about political or professional claims to have ‘solved’ social problems, or to have found the perfect way to organise and deliver welfare services. I do not mean this in a jaundiced or defeatist way: on the contrary, it is to stress that the underlying issues are far more important and difficult than organisational and procedural changes alone can ever solve. By focusing
- 22. 3 Introduction on the central ideas and the enduring challenges, I hope that the book will be useful for making sense of policies and organisational structures now and in the future. There is a further dimension to relevance to social work practice. Sometimes, the bigger picture can seem too daunting, and it is more satisfying to stick to the interpersonal aspects of practice, or to concentrate on completing the day-to-day routines and procedures of the job. Certainly, relationships with service users and organisational competence are both crucial, and social workers will fail in their duties to service users if they are not skilled in these. But understanding the policy context is also crucial, in three ways. First, because major features of social work epitomise some of the major themes in social policy, notably about the importance of responsive, preventive services, about listening to and empowering service users, about flexible inter-professional working, about standards, accountability and budgets. Second, because an awareness of the policy picture is vital if social work is not just to be on the receiving end of these policies, responding all the time to an agenda set by others, implementing plans drawn up by people far removed from the realities of front-line practice. Social workers, and other social professionals (Banks, 1999), can influence policy, but to do so they need to ensure that they are aware of what’s going on, and are thinking beyond, or behind, their casework – an often-used image is that they should be looking ‘upstream’. The third reason is that what social workers do, is the reality of social policy for the people they work with. For service users, all the policies in the world are of little use unless they are put into practice by social workers and other front-line public service workers. Lipsky (1980) uses the term ‘street-level bureaucrats’ for such workers, and as he points out, things are more dynamic and subtle than simply ‘putting policy into practice’. He argues that street-level bureaucrats effectively make policy, through their everyday practice – by the way laws and procedures are interpreted and applied, through routines and shortcuts, rule-bending and rule-breaking, strict action sometimes and leniency at others, doing extra work in some cases and not in others. In other words, social workers don’t just implement policy, there’s a sense in which they create it as they go. This book aims to be an introduction to the main ideas about social work and social policy, and also an argument about the role that social work can and should play in making social policy – in the sense mentioned above, that social policy is made in and through everyday practice. In some ways, social work is at the heart of current social policy, because the reality of themes such as personalisation and early intervention depends to a large extent on the practice of social workers. In other ways it is strangely marginal and isolated, left out of new policy initiatives. My argument is that social work could make a significant contribution by bringing a better-informed, more subtle and more humane perspective to social policy, but we need to prove that we can. To explore these themes, the book is structured in three parts. The first part sets out three overarching models – of social work (Chapter 1), social policy (Chapter 2) and the role of the state (Chapter 3). The second part focuses on a selection of key issues in social policy that are especially relevant for social work. It offers a further variety of models to highlight the complexities and tensions, hopefully to clarify the questions and bring out the implications for social work. The themes are need
- 23. 4 Introduction (Chapter 4), poverty (Chapter 5), rights (Chapter 6), inequality (Chapter 7), participation (Chapter 8) and regulation (Chapter 9). The third part of the book looks at current topics that are central to the delivery of welfare services, and where the debates are especially sharp for social work. These are the themes of prevention and personalisation (Chapter 10), commissioning and integration (Chapter 11) and funding and spending (Chapter 12). Each chapter ends with questions for reflection and suggestions for further reading (full details of the suggested texts are in the reference list at the end of the book). The conclusion pulls together the arguments of the book and suggests how we might revitalise the professional standing of social work – not in any self-serving sense, but in a way that raises the challenge to ourselves by reasserting the intellectual, political and ethical dimensions of the everyday job. Chapters 1–12
- 24. Part 1 Core models Overview The chapters in this part of the book introduce three core models for making sense of social work in its broader context of social policies, other social services and social values. Chapter 1 raises crucial questions about social work – what is it for, who is it for, what is its role in society? It explores these questions by giving an account of four periods when others have tried to answer them – 1920, 1968, 1982 and the first decade of the twenty-first century. The history shows that social work’s role and tasks are complex, ambiguous and demanding, and the chapter goes on to describe how ‘models’ can be useful in such circumstances. They pull out the key features of a situation, bringing a sense of perspective and order to the uncertainties and contradictions. It then outlines the first model, the social work diamond, which locates social work in the middle of competing responsibilities to the state, service users, professional values and organisational imperatives. Chapter 2 takes a look at the broader social policy context. It introduces the second model, the social policy triangle, to illustrate the three interweaving objectives of social policy in western countries – to secure people’s well-being, to promote individual responsibility and to facilitate the smooth working of the market economy. It also gives an overview of the range of social services that social policy covers, highlighting their links with social work. Chapter 1 Chapter 2
- 25. 6 Core models Chapter 3 gives the third model, four perspectives on the role of the state in ensuring people’s well- being in capitalist societies. The chapter describes the main features of the minimalist, integrationist, social democratic and radical approaches, and draws out their implications for social work. It discusses the contribution of radical social work. The chapter emphasises that there are complex mixtures of all four approaches in welfare policies and individuals’ beliefs. It illustrates this ambiguity with reference to two important policies for social work – community care and personalisation. Chapter 3
- 26. 7 1 What is social work for? What is social work for, and who is social work for? Different people will give different answers to these questions, but it is impossible to answer them fully without referring to social work’s broader context of social values, social policies and other welfare services. Discussions about the role, or roles, of social work are not new, of course, and are reflected in government policy documents, professional literature, the views of service user groups and in the policies of organisations that employ social workers – to mention just four major sources of ideas. They are also reflected in media coverage about social work, and in debates with other professionals about who should be doing what and how. The differences of opinion are often at the root of disagreements with people who receive social work services, perhaps without wanting to, or those who wish to receive them but do not. The aim of this book is to highlight some of the fundamental debates about social work and social policy, exploring the links between them and the implications that they have for one another. The focus is on social work in the UK, and more specifically England. There are differences in legislation, policies and organisational structures between the four countries of the UK, increasingly so as devolution progresses. However, the underlying issues and dilemmas are similar, as for all western countries with democratic political systems and developed economies. Even where the detail is specifically English, it should still spark ideas about parallels, or contrasts, in readers’ own countries. Social workers are often called upon to deal with the most complex and demanding situations: what sort of people are fit to look after children? What duties do adult children owe to their aged parents?
- 27. 8 Core models If they can’t, or won’t, fulfil them, what responsibility does the state have? Who should pay? What rights do individuals have to live their lives as they see fit, if that jeopardises the health or well-being of others? What about their own health and well-being? These are questions that philosophers and politicians have debated for centuries, and social workers make decisions about them every day (Reamer, 1993; Dingwall et al., 1995). These decisions are often extremely difficult, and the difficulty reflects the tensions between important social values – tensions between choice and safety; liberty and equality; individual responsibility and society’s responsibilities; state help and state control. Social workers make these difficult decisions in a context shaped by legislation, government guidelines, organisational priorities and resource availability. In their daily practice, social workers are more likely to be mindful of meeting legal requirements, following procedures, hitting deadlines, returning telephone calls and e-mails, and balancing budgets, rather than overarching principles like ‘liberty’ or ‘equality’. Yet behind the tasks of practice, and behind policy initiatives such as personalisation or greater integration of services, at the centre of social work, lie those fundamental social principles, with all the tensions, ambiguities and dilemmas that they generate. That is why this book emphasises the importance of understanding social work practice and decision-making in terms of long-standing social values as well as current social policy trends. Who is social work for? One of the debates about ‘who is social work for?’ is whether it should focus on the most vulnerable people in society, the ‘at risk’ cases with the highest levels of need, or whether it should play a greater role with a wider group of people, where need is less urgent, and earlier intervention might prevent later problems. This may mean preventive work with individuals and families, or with groups and communities. But there is a further dimension to it, which is that social work also serves a wider function for society as a whole – for the many, not just the few who receive (or might receive) services. There are two angles to this further dimension: one that sees it as beneficent (everyone benefits from an orderly society in which social problems are minimised and dealt with early on), and the other that sees it as controlling (social work as a subtle – or sometimes not so subtle – way of monitoring people who might cause problems, keeping them in order, so that the rest of society can have a trouble-free life). These questions and debates apply as much to social policy generally as to social work in particular, and we shall return to them throughout the book: whether the focus should be on the very needy or the not-quite-so-needy, and the wider impact on society as a whole. The issues come up especially when we look more closely at social policy (Chapter 2), the role of the state (Chapter 3), models of need (Chapter 4) and prevention (Chapter 9). For now, we explore the significance of these questions by looking at debates about the roles and tasks of social work in the past. This shows us how the same questions come round again and again. To illustrate this, we look at four key stages for social work in England: 1920, the era before the welfare state, when Clement Attlee wrote his book The Social Worker; the Seebohm report of 1968, that saw an Chapters 2, 3, 4, 9
- 28. 9 What is social work for? important role for social work as part of the post-World War II welfare state; the Barclay report of 1982, holding on to that vision even as the post-war welfare consensus was unravelling; and recent debates across the UK about the roles and tasks of social work in our modern era. Even if some of the language has changed, the older reports are shaped by the same issues of how to make services effective, relevant and responsive, how to encourage participation by the people who use them, and how to balance rights and responsibilities, risks and resources. 1920: Clement Attlee and ‘the social service idea’ Clement Attlee is most famous for leading the Labour Party to an overwhelming election victory in July 1945, and being prime minister of the 1945–51 Labour government that created the welfare state (see Box 2.4). The notable achievements were the creation of the National Health Service in 1948, and the passing of the National Assistance Act, also in 1948, which made it a responsibility of national government, rather than local authorities, to ensure that everyone had enough money to live on, finally bringing the Poor Law to an end (see Box 2.3). But Attlee had a long and successful career in national and local politics before then – he had been deputy prime minister throughout the war, leader of the Labour Party since 1935, and an MP since 1922. And before all that, he had been a social worker and social work lecturer, and had even written a book about social work. Clement Attlee was born in 1883, into a prosperous family in Putney, London (there are numerous biographies, including Howell, 2006, and Beckett, 1997; and Attlee’s autobiography, 1954). It was a large, traditional Victorian family, with an ethic of doing good and strong Christian beliefs, although Attlee himself later gave up Christianity. Attlee was educated at Haileybury College, a leading public school (note: ‘public’ here means fee-paying and exclusive) and then at Oxford University. After graduating he trained as a lawyer, but his heart was not in that work, and one evening in 1905 he and his brother visited Haileybury House, a boys’ club in Stepney, set up and paid for by donations from former pupils of his old school. This was to be one of the decisive events of his life. He started volunteering at the club, and although he was a quiet person, he began to enjoy the company of the boys and young men and took on more and more responsibilities in running the club. Within two years he had become the manager, and moved to live in a small house beside it. Nowadays in England we might call him a youth worker, but with a wider conceptualisation of social work, Attlee was a social worker. During those two years, his old attitudes about poverty and society changed completely. When he first went to the Haileybury club, he shared the traditional beliefs of his social class, that individuals were responsible for their own poverty and misfortune, and needed to work harder and lead more responsible lives to overcome them. But now, in the East End of London, as he got to know the boys and their families, his understanding of their lives deepened and his attitudes began to change. He began to realise that in order to understand why people behave the way they do, and how best to help them, one has to look behind individual behaviour, to see the social context. He gives some personal and moving examples of this in his book; for example, the young men might turn up late to play football, but Boxes 2.3 and 2.4
- 29. 10 Core models rather than blame them he came to see that this was because of the long distance from their homes to the playing fields, the poor public transport, and the pressures they were under to work long into the evenings. By late 1907 he was describing himself as a socialist, and joined the Independent Labour Party. The work at the club was in the evenings, and in 1912 Attlee got a day job as a tutor and lecturer in social service at the London School of Economics. He left the job when he joined the army in 1914, but returned to it after the war. In 1920 he wrote The Social Worker. It is an intriguing and inspiring book to read because it gives a picture of social work in its early days, and at an important transitional time for social policy. Many services were provided by charities, but government was beginning to take a more active role in people’s welfare (for example, the first state old age pensions were introduced in 1909). Attlee’s vision of what social work should be like and how it should be done, reflects the struggles of this relatively new profession to decide its purposes and skills, in the context of the debates of the time about the proper roles of the state, the individual and the family, and the charity sector. Attlee argued passionately that social work should be driven by the ideas of citizenship and social justice, not charity. Atlee had started as a volunteer himself, so he was not opposed to all forms of charity or voluntary activity, but he was very mistrustful of the way that charity could all too easily become patronising and self-serving: Charity is always apt to be accompanied by a certain complacence and condescension on the part of the benefactor, and by an expectation of gratitude from the recipient which cuts at the root of all true friendliness … The evil of charity is that it tends to make the charitable think that he has done his duty by giving away some trifling sum, his conscience is put to sleep, and he takes no trouble to consider the social problem any further … Very many do not realise that you must be just before you are generous. (Attlee, 1920: 9, 58) Instead, Attlee proposed ‘the social service idea’, in which all men and women are treated as citizens, and the aim is not benevolence but social justice. Attlee writes ‘The rise of democracy has changed the outlook of the social worker: formerly social work was done for now with the working classes’ (1920: 19, italics original). He considers that social workers should be reformers, researchers and agitators, but above all they must have the right attitude – no superiority, but sympathy and patience based on understanding the lives of the people with whom they are working. 1968: the Seebohm report The 1960s were a period of rapid social change, and in many ways an optimistic time for social work and social policy. The Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services in 1968 is a high point of this era. It is known as the Seebohm report, after Frederic Seebohm who chaired the committee. At the time, local authority social work was split across three main departments, for children, health and welfare.
- 30. 11 What is social work for? Seebohm argued that each department tended to focus on its own responsibilities, failing to recognise the full needs of the people using them – an analysis that is still echoed today in calls for organisational reforms to ensure better inter-agency and inter-disciplinary working (Dickens, 2011). The report called for social work services to be brought together into unified ‘social service departments’, in which social workers would be the lead profession. (Scotland was ahead of the game with the Kilbrandon report (1964) which led eventually to the creation of social work departments under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968.) The Seebohm report led to the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970, and the creation of social services departments in England and Wales in 1971. It is notable, though, that the report itself did not use the term ‘social services’. It used Attlee’s old term, ‘social service’, to emphasise that the new departments were not just to be about providing services to the neediest, but a way for all citizens to give and receive help. Its vision of the new departments is expressed in inspiring, universalist terms, looking to the wider benefits for society as a whole, not just the most needy: We recommend a new local authority department, providing a community based and family oriented service, which will be available to all. This new department will, we believe, reach far beyond the discovery and rescue of social casualties; it will enable the greatest number of individuals to act reciprocally, giving and receiving service for the well-being of the whole community. (Seebohm, 1968: para. 2) To achieve this goal, the report called for field-level social workers to be skilled in working with a wide range of needs, not narrow specialists (paras. 516–20). It called for a greater emphasis on supporting families and individuals to prevent problems emerging or escalating, although accepting this might be hard to achieve given the levels of ‘casualty work’ which absorbed so many resources (paras. 427–54). It also called for social workers to work with voluntary organisations and local people to promote community involvement. It saw the potential for conflict between local authorities and voluntary groups, but regarded this tension as essential ‘if the needs of consumers are to be met more effectively and they are to be protected from the misuse of bureaucratic and professional power in either kind of organisation’ (para. 496). The report called for the ‘maximum participation of individuals and groups in the community in the planning,organisationandprovisionofthesocialservices’,onthegroundsthateveryone‘consumes’social services, directly or indirectly (paras. 491–2). It proposed a national advisory council to regulate social work education, a national inspectorate (whose role would be ‘not so much regulatory as promotional, educational and consultative’: para. 649), and the establishment of local advisory committees, which would include service users (paras. 506, 628). It stressed that the new service would not succeed without adequate resources (paras. 88, 147–51). 1982: the Barclay report In 1980, almost ten years after the creation of social services departments and in a very different political context, the Conservative government of the time commissioned the National Institute of Social Work to
- 31. 12 Core models undertake a review of the role and tasks of social workers. It was chaired by Peter Barclay, and the report was published in 1982. It identified two key roles for social work (Barclay, 1982: 33–4). The report called the first of these ‘social care planning’ (‘to plan, establish, maintain and evaluate the provision of social care’) and the second ‘counselling’ (‘face to face communication’ with service users). It noted that in practice these two were ‘inextricably intertwined’ (p. 41), but the planning role is not limited to casework, and could be used to tackle wider needs in the community. The report called for a new emphasis on community social work, with social workers working in partnership with local people to support and build on community strengths. It acknowledged that this echoed the aspirations of the Seebohm committee, but thought that the time might now be right because of a greater belief, in society generally, in the capacity of ‘ordinary people’. It considered that the constrained finances of the time made a new approach essential, but warned that it would only succeed if well enough resourced. As for regulation and standards, the report debated and rejected the idea of a general social work council, but did call for a probationary year for newly qualified social workers. It also called for local welfare advisory committees (pp. 177–97). Two minority reports were published as appendices, revealing the on-going tensions about the role of social work. One of them, Brown et al. (1982) argued more strongly than the main report for a clear shift to proactive neighbourhood or ‘patch’ based work. The other, by Robert Pinker, resisted the calls for community-based work, arguing that social work would do better to be ‘explicitly selective rather than universalist in focus, reactive rather than preventative in approach and modest in its objectives’ (Pinker, 1982: 237). The Seebohm and Barclay reports’ visions of a preventive, community-based service did not come to pass. By the mid-1980s the dominant political mood was anti-local authorities and anti-welfare, and a succession of child abuse scandals dragged local authority child care social work in a very different direction, becoming much more formalised and investigative, with the focus on risk and statutory responsibilities. In this context, social work was often in conflict with local communities rather than working with them. The ideas of more preventive ways of working and partnership were never abandoned, though. They are reflected in the two major pieces of legislation that shaped social work in England and Wales throughout the 1990s. The Children Act 1989 reflected the importance of working in partnership with parents and children, promoting the upbringing of children by their families as far as possible. The Act has been extensively amended since 1989, but is still in force today. For adult social services, the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 was intended to ensure that assessments were led by people’s needs, not dictated by the available services. The aim was to ensure greater responsiveness to individuals’ circumstances and wishes. Whilst this did enable some creative care plans to be put in place, financial restrictions came into play and assessments soon came to be dominated by the need to ration services (Means et al., 2008). The Act has now been replaced by the Care Act 2014, as part of a programme to reform adult social care and support.
- 32. 13 What is social work for? The roles and tasks of social work today Much has changed since 1920, 1968 and 1982, of course, bringing new opportunities and new challenges. There is demographic change, notably the increased number of older people, many in good health and with resources to enjoy their later years, but also more frail older people with high levels of need. There are increased numbers of people with physical and learning disabilities living in the community. We live in a much more ethnically diverse society, and there are new patterns of family life, with more lone and single parents, and changed expectations about the roles of men and women in the home and in paid employment. There is a greater awareness of the abuse that children and vulnerable adults can suffer, from family members, people in the community and professionals working with them. There are new problems, such as the greater use of illegal drugs, but also new opportunities for people to obtain services, gain knowledge and exchange ideas through information and communication technology. The private sector has become much more significant as a supplier of social care services, perhaps purchased directly by individuals but often commissioned by local authorities. Questions about the roles and tasks of social work are as pertinent as ever in these new circumstances; and the underlying debates and demands come up again and again. In the first decade of the present century, all four countries of the UK undertook reviews of the roles and tasks of social workers, as summarised in Box 1.1. The wider social consequences: reciprocity or control? Let us think again about the wider dimension of social work, and its functions for the rest of society, not just those who receive services. Attlee’s book, the Seebohm report and the majority of the Barclay report all emphasise the positive side, seeing the value of local authority social services as a mechanism through which citizens could work together and demonstrate care for one another. But there is another way of seeing the wider functions of social work and social policy, in terms of the way that they control populations as a whole, not just individuals (see Parton, 1991; Hudson and Lowe, 2009: 111–28). This perspective sees the social professions and welfare services in terms of the influence and power that they assert, not just over those who are subject to the more coercive forms of intervention (children removed from families under court orders, people detained in hospital against their will under mental health legislation), or even over those who are receiving voluntary services, but also over the people who are not receiving a service, ‘everyone else’. The point is that social work, and other welfare services such as education, health, pensions and unemployment benefits, create and enforce wider social expectations and norms. One does not have to receive the services oneself to be aware of what the consequences would be of, say, not caring for one’s children properly, or not saving for one’s old age. In this way, social work and other welfare agencies serve a role for the state, creating a common sense way of seeing things, maintaining social order in quiet but very powerful ways. Ostensibly benign and supportive approaches are far more effective forms of social control than overt repression and punishment of people who break the law or behave anti-socially. The idea is that it is far better if people are disciplined from the beginning, in as unobtrusive a way as possible, through training and care, to obey the law
- 33. 14 Core models Box 1.1 The New Labour reviews of social work Questions about the roles and tasks of social work were raised in New Labour’s reforms of public services. They published a white paper, Modernising Social Services, in 1998, with the goals of ‘promoting independence, improving protection and raising standards’ (DH, 1998). Like the Seebohm and Barclay reports, it stressed that social services are not just about supporting a small number of social casualties, but are ‘an important part of the fabric of a caring society’ (para. 1.3) – because ‘we all benefit if social services are providing good, effective services to those who need them’ (para. 1.2). Despite that positive tone, the white paper highlighted a wide range of shortcomings, portraying local authority social services as failing and in need of radical reform. For adult services, it stressed the need to promote people’s independence whilst safeguarding them from harm, for greater consistency across the country, and for the system to be centred on service users and their families, with more flexible, accessible and individualised services. For children’s services, the priorities were more effective protection from abuse and neglect, better provision and support for children in care, and improving the life chances of children in need, especially through better education and health services. The white paper proposed a range of organisational changes to achieve these goals, including new regulation and inspection systems, and called for greater partnership working between the various statutory agencies involved, and between the statutory sector and the private and voluntary sectors. All four countries of the UK then undertook reviews of the roles and tasks of social workers (see Dickens, 2012). The Welsh review was called Social Work in Wales: A Profession to Value (ADSS (Cymru), 2005), and led to a strategy called Fulfilled Lives, Supportive Communities (WAG, 2007). The Scottish review was entitled Changing Lives: Report of the 21st Century Social Work Review (Scottish Executive, 2006). The Northern Ireland review (Bogues, 2008) led eventually to Improving and Safeguarding Social Wellbeing: A Strategy for Social Work in Northern Ireland (DHSSPS, 2012). The final report of the English review was entitled Social Work at its Best: A Statement of Social Work Roles and Values for the 21st Century (GSCC, 2008). Within six months of the publication of the English report, the case of ‘Baby Peter’ (Peter Connelly) hit the news headlines. Peter had died in 2007 as a result of awful abuse and neglect, and in November 2008 the trial of his mother and two men for his murder provoked a national outcry. The government established a ‘Social Work Task Force’ to undertake a ‘root and branch’ review of the profession in England. It produced three reports in 2009 (SWTF, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c). One of the points made in its first report was that social workers felt their profession was poorly understood by the public and the media, and that it was not good at promoting itself and explaining its roles and objectives (SWTF, 2009a: 6). In response, the second report offered a new, ‘easy to understand’ description of social work. It is less than three hundred words long, in jargon-free language. For example:
- 34. 15 What is social work for? Social work helps adults and children to be safe so they can cope and take control of their lives again … Usually they work in partnership with the people they are supporting … You may think you’ll never need a social worker but there is a wide range of situations where you or your family might need one … (SWTF, 2009b: 50) Any definition that tries to capture a profession in so few words is bound to give a simplified picture, but there is no recognition of the organisational context (tight budgets, highly regulated practice, the challenges of inter-agency co-ordination). Further, the attempt to strike a universal appeal – the idea that anyone might need a social worker, ‘even you’ – arguably underplays the realities of poverty and the very high levels of need that afflict most social work service users. What is more, it is a universalism of receiving (‘you might need one’), rather than of solidarity and giving, very different to the earlier visions of Attlee, Seebohm and Barclay. and behave in socially acceptable ways. This welfare approach will not succeed all the time, of course, and then the more coercive aspects of state services and the law will have to be employed, but welfare agencies and social policy are crucial mechanisms through which modern, liberal democratic states seek to ensure the well-being and regulation of their populations. The use of models: the social work diamond Using models is one way of helping to make sense of complex debates like this, about the roles and tasks of social work. Other terms that could be used for ‘model’ are ‘framework’, ‘approach’, ‘construct’ or ‘theory’. Models work by simplifying matters, pulling out the key themes in a situation, highlighting the central features or ideas. In that sense, they are not descriptive, but analytic. It is better to think of them as caricatures rather than photographs. This does give a danger of over-simplification, but one can recognise people from a good cartoon just as much as from a good photograph: and a good cartoon can deepen understanding by conveying the character of the person depicted, not just their physical appearance. As Richard Titmuss (1974: 30), one of the leading figures for social policy in the UK, put it: The purpose of model-building is not to admire the architecture of the building, but to help us see some order in all the disorder and confusion of facts, systems and choices concerning certain areas of our economic and social life. It may help to think of this book as an exhibition or gallery of different models (O’Brien and Penna, 1998: 1). This analogy helps to clarify the role of models in social policy and social work. Readers are likely to prefer some models to others, just as gallery-goers are likely to have their favourite exhibits. Different models may appear more striking than others, some will have greater relevance and explanatory value,
- 35. 16 Core models depending on the circumstances and interests of the reader. A model is a starting point for reflection, analysis and application. If it helps you to understand things, use it; if not, try looking at things a different way – find another model that works better, or complements the other one (life is complicated, you’re likely to need more than one model at a time), or adapt it – but above all, use it, test it out. Apply the model to your circumstances, in order to shed light on them; but apply your circumstances to the model too, to shed light on it. The key model of social work in this book sees it as poised between the four points of a diamond – its duties to the state, its obligations to service users, its responsibilities to its own professional standards, and its accountability to organisational imperatives. Figure 1.1 introduces the model and shows some State Organisation Service users Profession State Social policy, social work and other social professions as part of the machinery of state support and control. Key factors: Roles of central government and local authorities. National policies, legislation, taxation and government spending. Roles of Parliament, courts, regulatory bodies. Overlaps and tensions between these different parts of the state. Political conflict about the proper role of the state. Profession Social policy, social work and other social professions as ‘top-down’, expert-led activities. Key factors: Professional attributes such as training and expertise, standards and skills, service ethic, self-regulation. But there are criticisms of elitism, self-interest and status, and the disabling effects of professionals. Service users Social policy, social work and other social professions as ‘bottom-up’, user-led activities. Key factors: Roles of individuals, families, and neighbourhoods; campaign groups and self-help groups. Concepts of participation, inclusion, empowerment, control. But there are tensions between different service users, and questions about how much power and choice they really have, or should have. Organisation Social policy, social work and other social professions as activities that are shaped by their organisational setting. Key factors: Type of organisation – statutory (e.g. local authority), voluntary or business? Inter-agency working. Processes for user involvement. Bureaucracy and regulation. Budgets and profits. Figure 1.1 The social work diamond
- 36. 17 What is social work for? of the main features for each point, but the ideas are discussed in more detail throughout the book. Although this book is about social work, the model is also useful for thinking about the work of other social professions (e.g. health professionals, teachers, lawyers, community workers). The dilemmas are not exclusive to social work – other professionals face similar tensions between following law and government policy, responding to consumers, upholding their own values and skills, and complying with organisational procedures and budgets. Walter Lorenz proposes a model of social work that uses the first three of these points in his book Social Work in a Changing Europe (1994). He uses it to great effect, showing the dangers that can arise if social work becomes too closely aligned with any one point. If social work becomes too strongly an agency of state policy, it risks losing its critical voice and becoming oppressive (Lorenz gives the chilling example of social work in Nazi Germany). Alternatively, if it is too closely aligned with particular user groups, it risks becoming the tool of those who are more vociferous or socially powerful, and losing sight of the wider picture, of justice between different groups. And if it becomes too focused on its own professional expertise and status, it risks becoming self-serving and once again oppressive. Lorenz argues that the challenge for social work is to stay balanced between the three points, holding them in creative tension. It is a powerful model, and like all good models opens up new lines of thought. This leads me to add a fourth point, the organisational dimension of social work policy and practice. Organisational goals, structures and dynamics shape the expectations that social workers have about their jobs, and the work that they do, at least as much as formal government policy, disciplinary knowledge and users’ views. This applies whether workers are employed by governmental or non-governmental agencies. The substantial majority of social workers in the UK work for local government (Northern Ireland is the exception, where the main employers are health and social care trusts), but others work for charities and other voluntary organisations, some for private welfare businesses (e.g. private foster care agencies, private children’s homes), and some work independently, as agency workers or taking commissions for particular pieces of work. Whatever the setting, the four points of the diamond come into play. For example, the state is still important for voluntary and private sector organisations, through legislation, national policies and funding; and even the work of an independent social worker is shaped by organisational matters, namely the budget and policies of the commissioning agency. Financial imperatives are a crucial part of this organisational dimension. Workers in all welfare organisations have to show that they are achieving value for money, may well be involved in lengthy work to secure funding for their plans, and often have to make tough decisions about the allocation of limited resources between needy causes. Thinking more about the organisational and financial dimension, a major trend in current UK social policy is the restructuring of public services in order to get them to achieve the goals of greater economy, efficiency and effectiveness, and closer links between the public sector and other providers of welfare. This ‘mixed economy of welfare’ includes statutory agencies; private, profit-making businesses; charities and voluntary organisations; and informal sources of help and support (families, friends, neighbours). There have always been these different components, but the balance between them is changing as more and more services are provided by the private and voluntary sectors. This is discussed further in Chapter 11. Chapter 11
- 37. 18 Core models An important feature of the diamond is that there are tensions within each of the four points as well as between them. So, within the state there may sometimes be conflict between political priorities and court decisions, and there is often tension between central and local government. There may be tensions between different service users (e.g. a child and parent), and between service user groups, particularly in a world of limited resources. Organisations are torn between being lean and efficient, or flexible and open. Professionals have to reconcile their responsibilities to the state, service users and the organisation. The four points are continually interacting with one another, adapting themselves and bringing about change in the others in a dynamic, on-going manner. For example, notions of professionalism have changed to accommodate the greater emphasis now placed on involving service users – listening to their views and empowering them to make their own choices are now seen as professional things to do. (Although even this is not truly ‘new’: as we saw earlier, Clement Attlee emphasised the importance of this as long ago as 1920.) The increasing profile of service users and carers is also challenging notions about the proper roles of the state and welfare organisations, pressing them to become more responsive and enabling. But pressure is never all in one direction. Legal responsibilities about protecting people from harm, and organisational requirements such as compliance with tight procedures and keeping within tight budgets, can restrict the influence of service users and limit the extent of professional discretion. In terms of the state’s powers, government policy has dramatically changed the organisational requirements and context of social work practice in recent years. Under the New Labour government of 1997–2010 there was an emphasis on targets, performance indicators and inspections, and the creation of a whole new range of regulatory agencies. Under the coalition government there was change of rhetoric, with more talk of cutting back on bureaucracy, devolving power to local areas, and encouraging welfare professionals to exercise their professional judgment; but that certainly does not mean an end to inspection and regulation (see Chapter 9). And yet the flow is not all one-way, government-down. Welfare organisations may resist externally-imposed requirements, re-interpret them or modify them; and state policies only take effect, only become ‘real’, through the activities of street-level bureaucrats such as social workers (Lipsky, 1980; Evans and Harris, 2004; Ellis, 2011). For service users, it is the decisions and actions of frontline workers that have the most direct impact on their lives, putting formal government policies into practice. Conclusion This chapter opened with the questions that guide this book – what is social work, and who is it for? To begin to get some answers, it looked back at four important periods when those questions have been debated before – the start of the twentieth century, the 1960s, the 1980s, and the beginning of the twenty-first century. It has shown how social workers play a pivotal role in the way that legislation, government policies, organisational policies, and professional values are put into practice, the ways that they actually affect people’s lives. It has also introduced the first of the core models, the social work diamond, as a way of helping to make sense of the challenges of putting policies into practice. Social workers have to pay attention to four Chapter 9
- 38. 19 What is social work for? sets of responsibilities – to the state, to the organisation, to professional standards and to service users. The greatest challenge is that these different requirements do not always pull in the same direction, and social workers have to think clearly, in demanding situations, to make fine judgments on difficult issues. Underneath the pressures and busy-ness of day-to-day practice, the same essential dilemmas come up, year after year: how are professional standards, state policies, organisational requirements and service users’ interests to be balanced; who are the service users; and how are the supportive and controlling aspects of social work to be reconciled? There are no easy answers to these questions. The important thing is to be sensitive to the questions, rather than trying to settle the debate. It is impossible for any single report or statement to satisfy fully all the different interests involved. It may be possible to find some points on which service users, family carers, social workers, managers, academics, civil servants, local politicians and national politicians will all agree, but such matters are likely to be very bland. As things become more specific, and in the realities of practice, disagreements are bound to occur. The challenge of social work, and for social workers, is being in the middle of these competing demands. Questions for reflection • Who do you think social work is for? • Look back to the social work diamond. Think about a social welfare agency where you have worked or been on placement. What were the competing demands on you? • Look back to the summaries of Attlee’s, Seebohm’s and Barclay’s visions of social work. What lessons do you see for the present day? • Think about (or find out about) current policies and programmes for a particular group of social work service users (e.g. policies for older people, or for children and young people in care). How do they reflect the issues raised in the historical material? And how do they reflect the tensions in the social work diamond? Useful websites and further reading Clement Attlee’s book is easily available on the internet, and is well worth reading: https://archive.org/details/ socialworker00attliala. The British Association of Social Workers’ code of ethics (2012) is worth reading for another view on the roles and values of social work: www.basw.co.uk. The Community Care website is a good way to follow the news and debates about social work. You can follow it on Twitter, and register for a weekly e-mail to help you keep up to date: www.communitycare.co.uk.
- 39. 20 Core models For an introduction to social work, recommended books are: Horner (2013) What is Social Work? Context and Perspectives, 4th edn. Howe (2014) The Compleat Social Worker. Parker and Doel (eds) (2013) Professional Social Work. Payne (2006) What is Professional Social Work? 2nd edn.
- 40. 21 2 What is social policy about? The first chapter made the point that social work exists and is practised within a wider social policy context; indeed, more than that, it is at the heart of many social policy themes and dilemmas. This chapter adds to the picture by exploring in more depth what we mean by ‘social policy’, and what it is for. It proposes a model, the social policy triangle, as a way of making sense of the underlying issues and purposes of social policy in western, capitalist countries. It highlights the links and overlaps with social work, and sets the scene for further exploration of the themes in later chapters. The first section of the chapter considers the outcomes and objectives of social policy, the things it is meant to achieve, and describes the triangle. The second section looks more specifically at the range of services and organisations that deliver welfare services, drawing out the relevance for social work and the importance of an integrated, joined-up approach. A point to stress at the start, is that social policy is political, in two senses of the word. It is political in a party politics sense – different political parties promote policies which they believe will benefit the nation as a whole, but also which they calculate will help them to win elections. And it is political in a wider sense, to do with power and control – who decides, or should decide, what people’s needs are, whose needs should be met, and how those needs are best met? Politicians, judges, government advisers (the state)? Doctors, teachers, social workers (the welfare professionals)? Managers, directors, accountants (the organisational aspect)? Or service users, carers, consumers, citizens themselves? Asking these questions shows that the tensions social workers face in having to balance the demands of state,
- 41. 22 Core models profession, organisation and service users (the social work diamond) are not at all unique to social work – they are typical of social policy more generally. Another point worth noting at the beginning is the way that the term ‘social services’ is used in social policy literature. For many social workers in England, the term ‘social services’ refers to local authority social services departments, as created in the early 1970s after the Seebohm report (see Chapter 1). For over 30 years these were the major employers of social workers in England, and the major provider of ‘personal social services’. They were restructured into separate children’s and adults’ departments as part of the New Labour reforms to social work (and specifically in response to the Victoria Climbié child abuse case: Laming, 2003, 2009), but the term still has deep resonance for social workers in England (and there are some departments which have re-combined children’s and adult services: Garboden, 2011). In Wales, there is still a statutory duty on local authorities to appoint a director of social services, although the departments themselves are structured in a variety of ways. (Scotland has social work departments, Northern Ireland has health and social care trusts.) However, in social policy texts, the term ‘social services’ often carries a wider meaning, referring to the whole range of services that are intended to meet people’s welfare needs. This includes, amongst others, education, health and income maintenance, as well as social care. So, when reading social work and social policy texts, it is important to be aware of the way that the term ‘social services’ is being used. Outcomes and well-being: the social policy triangle In England and Wales, the Children Act 2004 specifies five aspects of children’s well-being, or outcomes, which local authorities and other agencies are meant to help them achieve. These are shown in Box 2.1. The Care Act 2014 (which applies only to England) specifies nine aspects for adults, shown in Box 2.2. (Wales has a very similar list in the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, which is due to be implemented in April 2016.) Before looking at them in detail, it is important to consider the use of the terms ‘well-being’ and ‘outcomes’. There is much debate about the relationship between the concepts of well-being and welfare (see, for example, Kendall and Harker, 2002; Jordan, 2008; Taylor, 2011). In the past, the terms may have been used interchangeably, but in modern political and social policy debates a difference between them has developed. Welfare may still be used for the services, but the desired outcomes are more likely to be described in terms of people’s well-being. The concept of welfare itself is an honourable one, with the image of people ‘faring well’, but for some it has come to carry negative connotations, and a more limited meaning than well-being. From this perspective, welfare is seen to be about dealing with problems rather than promoting people’s choices, independence and overall happiness. It is often associated with welfare benefits, payments to help people in financial need. It is seen as being about state-run services that encourage dependency, rather than promoting individual autonomy and responsibility. Well-being is portrayed as a more positive objective for all individuals, not just the neediest. But the term welfare is still sometimes used as an Chapter 1
- 42. 23 What is social policy about? Box 2.1 Well-being for children: five aspects in the Children Act 2004 The Children Act 2004 specifies five aspects of children’s well-being (s. 10(2) for England and s. 25(2) for Wales). Local authorities and their partner agencies are meant to cooperate to ensure that children achieve them: a physical and mental health and emotional well-being; b protection from harm and neglect; c education, training and recreation; d the contribution made by them to society; e social and economic well-being. These five aspects were originally introduced in the New Labour green paper Every Child Matters (HM Treasury, 2003: 14), and subsequently developed in Every Child Matters: Change for Children (HM Government, 2004). Although the Every Child Matters programme is no longer government policy, the five objectives are still in force, under the Children Act 2004. (Scotland has a policy framework known as Getting It Right For Every Child, GIRFEC, which identifies eight areas of children’s well-being: to ensure that children are safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included: see Scottish Government, 2012.) The five objectives were captured in the slogan ‘Be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution, achieve economic well-being.’ They carry wider implications than simply safeguarding children from the most extreme forms of harm. They apply to all children, and are about well-being, not just risk: • ‘Be healthy’ includes physical and mental health, sexual health, healthy lifestyles. • ‘Stay safe’ includes safety from maltreatment and neglect, from accidents, from bullying, from crime and anti-social behaviour. • ‘Enjoy and achieve’ includes attending and enjoying school, meeting educational standards. • ‘Make a positive contribution’ includes engaging in decision-making, law abiding behaviour, and choosing not to bully or discriminate. • ‘Achieve economic well-being’ includes being ready for employment, living in decent homes and households free from low income.
- 43. 24 Core models Box 2.2 Well-being for adults: nine aspects in the Care Act 2014 Under the Care Act 2014, local authorities in England have a general duty to promote the well- being of adults when undertaking their tasks relating to care and/or support. Section 1(1) of the Act, which came into force in April 2015, specifies nine aspects of well-being: a personal dignity (including treatment of the individual with respect); b physical and mental health and emotional well-being; c protection from abuse and neglect; d control by the individual over day-to-day life (including over care and support, or support, provided to the individual and the way in which it is provided); e participation in work, education, training or recreation; f social and economic well-being; g domestic, family and personal relationships; h suitability of living accommodation; i the individual’s contribution to society. The Act also sets out key principles for achieving these goals, including the participation (as far as possible) of the person themselves, taking full account of their views and wishes; the importance of preventing or delaying the development of needs for care and support; the importance of safeguarding the person from harm; and balancing the well-being of the individual with the well-being of the people who care for them. These aims and principles are not new, but build on a long succession of policy debates and proposals about social care for adults, and best social work practice. Now, they are captured in primary legislation. The statutory guidance that the government issues to local authorities about how they should implement the Act says that: the core purpose of adult care and support is to help people to achieve the outcomes that matter to them in their life … Well-being covers an intentionally broad range of the aspects of a person’s life … A local authority can promote a person’s well-being in many ways. How this happens will depend on the circumstances, including the person’s needs, goals and wishes … The focus should be on supporting people to live as independently as possible for as long as possible. (DH, 2014: paras 1.7, 1.8, 1.15)
- 44. 25 What is social policy about? objective, and not always in a negative way: for example, promoting ‘the welfare of the child’ is still one of the central aims for courts and local authorities under the Children Act 1989. Furthermore, well-being is not a straightforward concept itself, and has been criticised for bringing ‘an individualised and marketised view of social provision’ (Taylor, 2011: 779). Taylor (2011) argues that the distinctions are exaggerated and unhelpful, and that welfare and well-being are inter-dependent. As for ‘outcomes’, this is also an important word from a policy-making point of view. The reason for thinking in terms of outcomes is to get away from a narrow focus on ‘inputs and outputs’ – that is to say, to shift attention away from systems and services, to the results, the difference that they make to the quality of people’s lives: do they improve their well-being? Of course, this is a worthy ambition, and all policy makers and practitioners would agree with it – but even so, a great deal of time and energy is often absorbed in designing and reorganising systems, structures and services, and whilst this is going on this can detract from the quality of the service offered. Look at the various aspects of well-being in the Children Act 2004 and the Care Act 2014. Who could disagree with any of them? On the surface they seem uncontroversial, but they become rather more interesting when we push hard at the questions ‘what are they for?’ and ‘who are they for?’. What might lie behind the stated outcomes? To answer this question, we need to set them in context. We need to step back from the current detail to look first at the larger purposes of social policy, and then at the wider range of social services. We can say that the overriding objective of social policy in western, democratic nations with capitalist economic systems, and its overriding challenge, is to balance three demands – to ensure the well-being (and welfare) of citizens, to promote the values of individual responsibility and family autonomy, and to upholdeconomicfreedomandprosperity.Icallthisthe‘socialpolicytriangle’.Obviouslyitisasimplification, but it helps to draw attention to the tensions, contradictions and difficult balances that have to be struck. It shows the links between economic policy and social policy, something that has been very apparent since the global economic crisis of 2008–9. Governments around the world have invested staggering sums of money to prop up the world economy, with the professed goal of preserving people’s jobs and savings; but in order to pay back these debts, many have adopted (or been forced to adopt) strict austerity programmes, cutting back spending on public services (and in the process, threatening some people’s jobs and savings). Figure 2.1 shows some of the questions the triangle generates, and the links between them. The tension between well-being and the economy is that high quality social services are expensive. If the services are provided by the state, then that will mean a high tax bill – but individuals and businesses, on the whole, do not like to pay high taxes. The fear of politicians and policy-makers is that if taxation is too high, businesses will move their factories and offices to other countries, where wages and taxes are lower. In our globalised world, this seems easier than ever. On the other hand, defenders of public services such as health, education and pensions, argue that they support the economy by producing a skilled and healthy workforce. More than that, they give people a sense of social and financial security, which builds a general sense of well-being in society, as well as individual well-being.
- 45. 26 Core models Well-being Economy Responsibility Well-being • What sort of things are important to ensure a person’s ‘well-being’? Income, health, education, employment? What about choice, control, friendships, leisure activities? • What level of well-being? Should public services aim to provide the highest possible standards or a basic minimum? • Whose well-being? Are public services only for the extremely vulnerable or a wider population? • Who deserves help? What happens to people who are judged not to deserve it? • How to balance the well-being and freedoms of individuals with the well-being and freedoms of others? • Who decides what needs are met, and how? Politicians, experts, consumers? • Why do people need social services? Individual failings, policy shortcomings, wider social and economic forces? • When should public services be provided? Early on (preventive services) or not until later, when need is clearly established? • Who provides? State, businesses, charities, families? • Who pays, and how? Taxation, donors, user charges? • What about people who are not state citizens? Immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers? Responsibility • How to help individuals take responsibility for their own well-being and that of their families (e.g. to work, save, bring up children, care for older relatives)? • What responsibilities does society have when people cannot do these things? • What to do if people refuse to comply? In other words, how to balance responsibility and individual freedom? • When to intervene compulsorily? • How best to help people who need assistance – state intervention, or through voluntary organisations, or private agencies? • How to balance responsibilities and rights of different individuals or groups (e.g. children or parents, women or men, employed or unemployed)? • What allowance to make for cultural, religious and ethnic differences? Economy • How to protect people from the unfairnesses of the capitalist economy (e.g. redundancy, low pay, high prices for essential goods), but in ways that do not unduly restrict business freedom and incentives? • How to pay for public services without raising taxes too high? • How to run services efficiently, economically and effectively? • How to help (or oblige?) people to work, rather than rely on welfare benefits? • How to ensure that there is a suitably skilled and plentiful workforce? • How to involve businesses and voluntary organisations in providing public services? • Should there be more private saving or voluntary giving? If so, how should the state change people’s financial behaviour? • Is redistribution of wealth an objective (i.e. through taxation) – or is it better to allow the better-off to keep more of their money? Figure 2.1 The social policy triangle
- 46. 27 What is social policy about? The relationship between well-being and responsibility also has two sides. Welfare critics say overly- generous provision from the state undermines individual responsibility – it discourages people from saving for their old age, it weakens family ties because people no longer feel an obligation to help their relatives (‘someone else will do it’), and it saps people’s dynamism by taking away the need to ‘get on’, making life too soft and too dull. On the other hand, supporters of social services argue that most people who need help do so not because they are lazy or irresponsible, but because their needs are so great – financial, emotional, intellectual, physical and social. Maybe they do not have families to help, or their needs are so demandingthattheirfamiliescannotcope.Abitoftimelyhelpwillenablesometoresumeself-responsibility. Others will need longer-term support, and it should be accepted as society’s responsibility to provide that. The relationship between responsibility and the economy is that for most people, the primary way of being responsible for oneself and one’s family is to work, to earn money. Welfare sceptics argue that social services make life too easy and too expensive, undermining responsibility and the economy. Supporters argue that they give the vital help people need in times of trouble, and more than that have a positive role in building up a skilled, responsible workforce and a thriving market for goods and services. Questions about the relationships between well-being, responsibility and the economy recur throughout social policy and throughout social work. We focus on them again in Chapter 3, but Box 2.3 gives a historical picture, by looking at the way they have interacted over the centuries in the Poor Law. Box 2.3 The Poor Law The tensions between well-being, economy and responsibility go right back to the beginnings of the modern state and its role in welfare, the Poor Law. There were numerous versions of the Poor Law, but three key dates are 1601, the Elizabethan Poor Law; 1834, the Poor Law Amendment Act (the Victorian or New Poor Law); and 1948, the final end of the Poor Law, with the passing of the National Assistance Act that year. The Poor Law emphasised that the first responsibility of those who could work, was to work; for those who could not work, the first people to have responsibility for them were members of their family; and if there were none, or if they could not meet those responsibilities, then the local community, the parish, was to help. People who came from outside the parish were not entitled to receive help, and would be sent back to their own areas. There was also a distinction between those who deserved help, called the ‘impotent poor’ (young children, older people, people who were sick or disabled) and those who did not, the ‘able-bodied’. Most who got help received it in the form of food and small sums of money (a ‘dole’) to support them in their own homes. This was called outdoor relief, but there was also indoor relief, the poorhouse for the deserving poor and the workhouse for those considered able to work. Even so, and especially in times of economic hardship, most would receive outdoor relief. Chapter 3
- 47. 28 Core models By the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was growing concern about the cost and effects of the Poor Law, and a Royal Commission was set up in 1832 to investigate what could be done – in our terminology, how the system could be modernised. The 1834 Act aimed to end outdoor relief for able-bodied men and their families, and sharpened the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor (in terms we might use, it raised the eligibility criteria). The expectation was that all but the extremely needy would work. If they could not support themselves on the outside, they would have to go into the workhouse, where the old and sick would receive care but others would be made to work for their keep. The 1834 Act introduced the notion of ‘less eligibility’, which meant that conditions in the workhouse were designed to be so undesirable that no-one would choose to go unless they absolutely could not avoid it. In this way, it was thought, only the most desperate would claim relief. In reality, there was considerable opposition to the Act and it was implemented differently in different parts of the country. In some places it was enforced rigidly, but outdoor relief was never ended. It continued to be used for the majority of people who needed help (including the able-bodied, who were made to work for it). The state, via the Poor Law, was not the only source of help (and control). There was a growing number of charities in the Victorian era, and also the growth of working class self-help organisations. Help from charities involved home visiting by charitable visitors, often upper and middle class women, to assess need and monitor behaviour. Supplies and money were given in return for living a responsible life (e.g. not drinking, caring for the children, working). The practice and underlying principles here, of visiting, assessment and material assistance in return for responsible behaviour, were characteristic of the nineteenth century middle class philanthropy movement, and mark the beginnings of casework techniques and professional social work. But help was not only ‘top-down’: there were also self-help organisations such as friendly societies (to encourage saving and give money to their members in times of trouble), the Co-operative movement, trades unions and the beginnings of the Labour Party. (For the historical background, see Harris, 2008, Fraser, 2009, Pierson, 2011; Bamford, 2015.) The fearful image of the workhouse and the shame associated with having to go ‘on the parish’ were deeply scarred into the consciousness of working people, as was the shame of receiving charity, and resentment at the intrusive and patronising conditions that went with it. The National Assistance Act of 1948 finally ended the Poor Law by transferring responsibility for financial assistance to central government, and separating it from accommodation and residential care (which were local authority responsibilities). Given that it only ended in 1948, it is sobering to realise that even now there are people alive for whom the Poor Law is not distant history, but living memory.
- 48. 29 What is social policy about? The legacy of the Poor Law is still with us today, in various ways. For some, it is in the shame of having to accept help from the state. For many, it is reflected in suspicious attitudes towards people who rely on state welfare, especially unemployment benefits – that they are ‘welfare scroungers’, not deserving of help but rather of a tough, no-nonsense regime that obliges them to go to work. The strict eligibility criteria for state assistance, notably for financial help for people out of work but also for social care, reflect the old concerns to ensure that people use their own resources first and only rely on the state in extreme circumstances. The notion that people should return to their own parish for assistance may no longer exist, but on occasions there are arguments between local authorities about which is responsible for an individual or family who has moved into their area. And in our globalised world it is also echoed in the idea that foreign citizens should have limited entitlements to state assistance, and that (except for exceptional circumstances) asylum-seekers should be made to return to their own countries rather than stay in the UK. Services and organisations So, with what sort of social services is social policy concerned? Traditionally, it has been the ‘big five’ that made up the core of the British welfare state after the second world war: health, education, housing, income maintenance (also called ‘social security’ – it includes pensions, unemployment and disability benefits, child benefit), and the personal social services. The key elements of the post-war welfare state are summarised in Box 2.4. Newer approaches to social policy add other services, such as criminal justice, transport, leisure and the environment, and emphasise the importance of a co-ordinated approach to tackle disadvantage and promote well-being. Although the focus of social policy is often the role of the state, modern approaches also combine this with a wider look at the roles of international bodies, voluntary organisations and even businesses. The following discussion looks at the primary themes and debates about the main social services, highlighting their relevance for contemporary social work. Health Looking at health, the traditional focus in the UK has been the working of the National Health Service (NHS). All the major political parties in the UK claim to be the best defenders of the NHS, committed to it but also resolved to reform and improve it. They often disagree strongly about what those reforms should be, in particular how the budget should be controlled and what place there is for private health care providers. They all claim that they will preserve the principle that health care provided by or through the NHS should be (largely) free at the point of need, paid for out of general taxation rather than individuals having to pay directly to get a service; but that does not necessarily mean that all the services will be provided directly by NHS bodies. Despite the political and public popularity of the NHS, there are often complaints about matters such as inefficiency, high costs, long waiting lists for treatment, and poor hygiene in hospitals, although the majority of people who use its services report good experiences (e.g. CQC, 2015a). Nevertheless, such criticisms have led to frequent organisational changes and restructurings in the drive to deliver services more effectively and economically.
- 49. 30 Core models Box 2.4 The Beveridge report (1942) The principles of the post-war welfare state were laid out in the ReportoftheInter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and the Allied Services, published in 1942. Known as the Beveridge report, after William Beveridge who chaired the committee and wrote the report, it aimed to tackle the five ‘giants’ of want (poverty), ignorance, idleness, disease and squalor. The report was undoubtedly important, but not completely revolutionary: it built on existing services and developments, especially the reforms of the Liberal government before the first world war (including the first state old age pension and national insurance for ill health and unemployment). In the context of its own era, it aimed to strike a balance between the three imperatives of well-being, responsibility and the economy. To tackle want, the national insurance system would be improved, and there would be a safety net of national assistance, the income support of its day, funded out of general taxation – but benefits were to be paid at subsistence levels, to make sure that there was an incentive for those who could work, to do so (see Box 3.1 for more on the difference between insurance and assistance approaches). To tackle idleness and help people exercise proper responsibility for themselves and their family, labour exchanges (which Beveridge had helped create in 1909) would help them find work. This service was aimed at men: Beveridge’s vision assumed full male employment, with women staying at home to look after the family. To tackle ignorance, there would be an expanded state education system; to tackle disease, a national health service; and to tackle squalor, good quality housing to be rented from local authorities. The personal social services did not feature in this model, but came to have a role as a residual service for those whose needs were not adequately met by the main services. Their work expanded greatly in the twenty years after the second world war, but was under-resourced and spread across many local authority departments. When the Seebohm committee was set up in 1965, its task was to review this situation (as described in Chapter 1). Chapter 1 Box 3.1 The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced major and controversial reforms to the NHS in England, under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. The government’s white paper for the reforms, published in July 2010, stated that its aims were to give greater choice and control to patients, in particular to extend the right to choose treatments and providers; to ensure more personalised care to meet each individual’s needs and wishes; to focus on outcomes and quality standards, including greater use of payment by results to drive up performance; and to empower professionals and providers by freeing them from top-down control and giving them responsibility for commissioning and budgets (DH, 2010a). Promoting a competitive market between providers was seen as a key part of this (competition in the NHS had been part of New Labour policy too, but the coalition government sought to extend it). The reforms also gave responsibility for local health improvements (‘public health’) to local authorities. It created health and well-being boards, which are based within local authorities but work
- 50. Other documents randomly have different content
- 51. for his crime by a part or the whole of his property and effects. These were the only facts that came to our knowledge on this head. The religion of these people resembles, in most of its principal features, that of the Society and Friendly Islands. Their Morais, their Whattas, their idols, their sacrifices, and their sacred songs, all of which they have in common with each other, are convincing proofs, that their religious notions are derived from the same source. In the length and number of their ceremonies, this branch indeed far exceeds the rest; and, though in all these countries, there is a certain class of men, to whose care the performance of their religious rights is committed; yet we had never met with a regular society of priests, till we discovered the cloisters of Kakooa in Karakakooa Bay. The head of this order was called Orono; a title which we imagined to imply something highly sacred, and which, in the person of Omeeah, was honoured almost to adoration. It is probable, that the privilege of entering into this order (at least as to the principal offices in it), is limited to certain families. Omeeah, the Orono, was the son of Kaoo, and the uncle of Kaireekeea; which last presided, during the absence of his grandfather, in all religious ceremonies at the Morai. It was also remarked, that the child of Omeeah, an only son, about five years old, was never suffered to appear without a number of attendants, and such other marks of care and solicitude, as we saw no other like instance of. This seemed to indicate, that his life was an object of the greatest moment, and that he was destined to succeed to the high rank of his father. It has been mentioned, that the title of Orono, with all its honours, was given to Captain Cook; and it is also certain, that they regarded us, generally, as a race of people superior to themselves; and used often to say, that great Eatooa dwelled in our country. The little image, which we have before described, as the favourite idol on the Morai in Karakakooa Bay, they call Koonooraekaiee, and said it was Terreeoboo’s god; and that he also resided amongst us. There are found an infinite variety of these images, both on the Morais, and within and without their houses, to which they gave different names; but it soon became obvious to us in how little
- 52. estimation they were held, from their frequent expressions of contempt of them, and from their even offering them to sale for trifles. At the same time, there seldom failed to be some one particular figure in favour, to which, whilst this performance lasted, all their adoration was addressed. This consisted in arraying it in red cloth; beating their drums, and singing hymns before it; laying bunches of red feathers, and different sorts of vegetables, at its feet; and exposing a pig, or a dog, to rot on the whatta that stood near it. In a bay to the southward of Karakakooa, a party of our gentlemen were conducted to a large house, in which they found the black figure of a man, resting on his fingers and toes, with his head inclined backward; the limbs well formed and exactly proportioned, and the whole beautifully polished. This figure the natives called Maee; and round it were placed thirteen others of rude and distorted shapes, which they said were the Eatooas of several deceased chiefs, whose names they recounted. The place was full of whattas, on which lay the remains of their offerings. They likewise give a place in their houses to many ludicrous and some obscene idols, like the Priapus of the ancients. It hath been remarked, by former voyagers, that both among the Society and Friendly Islanders, an adoration is paid to particular birds; and I am led to believe, that the same custom prevails here; and that, probably, the raven is the object of it, from seeing two of these birds tame at the village of Kakooa, which they told me were Eatooas; and, refusing every thing I offered for them, cautioned me, at the same time, not to hurt or offend them. Amongst their religious ceremonies may be reckoned the prayers and offerings made by the priests before their meals. Whilst the ava is chewing, of which they always drink before they begin their repast, the person of the highest rank takes the lead in a sort of hymn, in which he is presently joined by one, two, or more of the company; the rest moving their bodies, and striking their hands gently together, in concert with the singers. When the ava is ready, cups of it are handed about to those who do not join in the song,
- 53. which they keep in their hands till it is ended; when, uniting in one loud response, they drink off their cup. The performers of the hymn are then served with ava, who drink it after a repetition of the same ceremony; and, if there be present one of a very superior rank, a cup is, last of all, presented to him, which, after chanting some time alone, and being answered by the rest, and pouring a little out on the ground, he drinks off. A piece of the flesh that is dressed is next cut off, without any selection of the part of the animal; which, together with some of the vegetables, being deposited at the foot of the image of the Eatooa, and a hymn chanted, their meal commences. A ceremony of much the same kind is also performed by the chiefs, whenever they drink ava, between their meals. Human sacrifices are more frequent here, according to the account of the natives themselves, than in any other islands we visited. These horrid rites are not only had recourse to upon the commencement of war and preceding great battles, and other signal enterprizes; but the death of any considerable chief calls for a sacrifice of one or more Towtows, according to his rank; and we were told, that ten men were destined to suffer on the death of Terreeoboo. What may (if any thing possibly can) lessen, in some small degree, the horror of this practice, is, that the unhappy victims have not the most distant intimation of their fate. Those who are fixed upon to fall, are set upon with clubs wherever they happen to be; and, after being dispatched, are brought dead to the place where the remainder of the rites are completed. The reader will here call to his remembrance the skulls of the captives, that had been sacrificed at the death of some great chief, and which were fixed on the rails round the top of the Morai at Kakooa. We got a farther piece of intelligence upon this subject at the village of Kowrowa; where, on our inquiring into the use of a small piece of ground, inclosed with a stone fence, we were told that it was an Here-eere, or burying-ground of a chief; and there, added our informer, pointing to one of the corners, lie the tangata and waheene taboo, or the man and woman who were sacrificed at his funeral.
- 54. To this class of their customs may also be referred that of knocking out their fore-teeth. Scarce any of the lower people, and very few of the chiefs, were seen, who had not lost one or more of them; and we always understood, that this voluntary punishment, like the cutting off the joints of the finger at the Friendly Islands, was not inflicted on themselves from the violence of grief, on the death of their friends, but was designed as a propitiatory sacrifice to the Eatooa, to avert any danger or mischief to which they might be exposed. We were able to learn but little of their notions with regard to a future state. Whenever we asked them, whither the dead were gone? we were always answered, that the breath, which they appeared to consider as the soul, or immortal part, was gone to the Eatooa; and, on pushing our inquiries farther, they seemed to describe some particular place, where they imagined the abode of the deceased to be; but we could not perceive, that they thought, in this state, either rewards or punishments awaited them. Having promised the reader, in the first chapter, an explanation of what was meant by the word taboo, I shall, in this place, lay before him the particular instances that fell under our observation, of its application and effects. On our inquiring into the reasons of the interdiction of all intercourse between us and the natives, the day preceding the arrival of Terreeoboo, we were told, that the bay was tabooed. The same restriction took place at our request, the day we interred the bones of Captain Cook. In these two instances the natives paid the most implicit and scrupulous obedience; but whether on any religious principle, or merely in deference to the civil authority of their chiefs, I cannot determine. When the ground near our observatories, and the place where our masts lay, were tabooed, by sticking small wands round them, this operated in a manner not less efficacious. But though this mode of consecration was performed by the priests only, yet still, as the men ventured to come within the space, when invited by us, it should seem, that they were under no religious apprehensions; and that their obedience was limited to our refusal only. The women could, by no means, be
- 55. induced to come near us; but this was probably on account of the Morai adjoining; which they are prohibited, at all times, and in all the islands of those seas, from approaching. Mention hath been already made, that women are always tabooed, or forbidden to eat certain kind of meats. We also frequently saw several at their meals, who had the meat put into their mouths by others; and, on our asking the reason of this singularity, were told that they were tabooed or forbidden to feed themselves. This prohibition, we understood, was always laid on them, after they had assisted at any funeral, or touched a dead body, and also on other occasions. It is necessary to observe, that, on these occasions, they apply the word taboo indifferently both to persons and things. Thus they say, the natives were tabooed, or the bay was tabooed, and so of the rest. This word is also used to express any thing sacred, or eminent, or devoted. Thus the king of Owhyhee was called Eree-taboo; a human victim tangata-taboo; and, in the same manner, among the Friendly Islanders, Tonga, the island where the king resides, is named Tonga- taboo. Concerning their marriages, I can afford the reader little farther satisfaction than informing him that such a relation or compact exists amongst them. I have already had occasion to mention, that at the time Terreeoboo had left his queen Rora-rora at Mowee, he was attended by another woman, by whom he had children, and to whom he was very much attached; but how far polygamy, properly speaking, is allowed, or how far it is mixed with concubinage, either with respect to the king, the chiefs, or among the inferior orders, too few facts came to our knowledge to justify any conclusions. It hath also been observed, that, except Kainee Kabareea, and the wife of the Orono, with three women whom I shall have occasion hereafter to mention, we never saw any female of high rank. From what I had an opportunity of observing of the domestic concerns of the lowest class, the house seemed to be under the direction of one man and woman, and the children in the like state of subordination as in civilized countries.
- 56. It will not be improper in this place to take notice, that we were eye-witnesses of a fact, which, as it was the only instance we saw of any thing like jealousy among them, shows at the same time that not only fidelity but a degree of reserve is required from the married women of consequence. At one of the entertainments of boxing, Omeeah was observed to rise from his place two or three times, and to go up to his wife with strong marks of displeasure, ordering her, as it appeared to us from his manner, to withdraw. Whether it was, that being very handsome he thought she drew too much of our attention; or without being able to determine what other reason he might have for his conduct, it is but justice to say that there existed no real cause of jealousy. However, she kept her place; and when the entertainment was over joined our party, and soliciting some trifling presents, was given to understand that we had none about us, but that if she would accompany us toward our tent she should return with such as she liked best. She was accordingly walking along with us, which Omeeah observing, followed in a violent rage, and seizing her by the hair began to inflict with his fists a severe corporal punishment. This sight, especially as we had innocently been the cause of it, gave us much concern, and yet we were told that it would be highly improper to interfere between man and wife of such high rank. We were, however, not left without the consolation of seeing the natives at last interpose; and had the farther satisfaction of meeting them together the next day, in perfect good humour with each other; and what is still more singular, the lady would not suffer us to remonstrate with her husband on his treatment of her, which we were much inclined to do, and plainly told us that he had done no more than he ought. Whilst I was ashore at the observatory at Karakakooa Bay, I had twice an opportunity of seeing a considerable part of their funeral rites. Intelligence was brought me of the death of an old chief in a house near our observatories, soon after the event happened. On going to the place, I found a number of people assembled and seated round a square area, fronting the house in which the deceased lay, whilst a man in a red-feathered cap advanced from an
- 57. interior part of the house to the door, and putting out his head, at almost every moment uttered a most lamentable howl, accompanied with the most singular grimaces and violent distortions of his face that can be conceived. After this had passed a short time, a large mat was spread upon the area, and two men and thirteen women came out of the house and seated themselves down upon it, in three equal rows, the two men and three of the women being in front. The necks and hands of the women were decorated with feathered ruffs, and broad green leaves, curiously scolloped, were spread over their shoulders. At one corner of this area, near a small hut, were half a dozen boys waving small white banners, and the tufted wands or taboo sticks which have been often mentioned in the former chapters, who would not permit us to approach them. This led me to imagine that the dead body might be deposited in this little hut; but I afterward understood that it was in the house where the man in the red cap opened the rites, by playing his tricks at the door. The company just mentioned being seated on the mat, began to sing a melancholy tune, accompanied with a slow and gentle motion of the body and arms. When this had continued some time, they raised themselves on their knees, and in a posture between kneeling and sitting, began by degrees to move their arms and their bodies with great rapidity, the tune always keeping pace with their motions. As these last exertions were too violent to continue long, they resumed at intervals their slower movements; and after this performance had lasted an hour, more mats were brought and spread upon the area, and four or five elderly women, amongst whom I was told was the dead chief’s wife, advanced slowly out of the house, and seating themselves in the front of the first company, began to cry and wail most bitterly, the women in the three rows behind joining them, whilst the two men inclined their heads over them in a very melancholy and pensive attitude. At this period of the rites, I was obliged to leave them to attend at the observatory, but returning within half an hour found them in the same situation. I continued with them till late in the evening, and left them proceeding with little variation, as just described, resolving, however, to attend early in the morning to see the remainder of the ceremony. On my arrival at the
- 58. house, as soon as it was day, I found to my mortification the crowd dispersed and every thing quiet, and was given to understand that the corpse was removed, nor could I learn in what manner it was disposed of. I was interrupted in making farther inquiries for this purpose by the approach of three women of rank, who, whilst their attendants stood near them with their fly-flaps, sat down by us, and entering into conversation soon made me comprehend that our presence was a hindrance to the performance of some necessary rites. I had hardly got out of sight before I heard their cries and lamentations; and meeting them a few hours afterward, I found they had painted the lower part of their faces perfect black. The other opportunity I had of observing these ceremonies was in the case of an ordinary person, when, on hearing some mournful female cries issue from a miserable-looking hut, I ventured into it, and found an old woman with her daughter weeping over the body of an elderly man who had but just expired, being still warm. The first step they took was to cover the body with cloth, after which, lying down by it, they drew the cloth over themselves, and then began a mournful kind of song, frequently repeating, Aweh medoaah! Aweh tanee! Oh my father! Oh my husband! A younger daughter was also at the same time lying prostrate in a corner of the house, covered over with black cloth, repeating the same words. On leaving this melancholy scene, I found at the door a number of their neighbours collected together, and listening to their cries with profound silence. I was resolved not to miss this opportunity of seeing in what manner they dispose of the body; and therefore, after satisfying myself before I went to bed that it was not then removed, I gave orders that the sentries should walk backward and forward before the house, and in case they suspected any measures were taking for the removal of the body, to give me immediate notice. However, the sentries had not kept a good look-out, for in the morning I found the body was gone. On inquiring what they had done with it? they pointed toward the sea, indicating most probably thereby that it had been committed to the deep, or perhaps that it had been carried beyond the bay, to some burying-ground in
- 59. another part of the country. The chiefs are interred in the Morais, or Heree-erees, with the men sacrificed on the occasion by the side of them; and we observed that the Morai where the chief had been buried, who, as I have already mentioned, was killed in the cave after so stout a resistance, was hung round with red cloth.
- 60. BOOK VI. TRANSACTIONS DURING THE SECOND EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH, BY THE WAY OF KAMTSCHATKA; AND ON THE RETURN HOME, BY THE WAY OF CANTON AND THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.
- 61. O CHAP. I. DEPARTURE FROM ONEEHEOW.—FRUITLESS ATTEMPT TO DISCOVER MODOOPAPAPPA.—COURSE STEERED FOR AWATSKA BAY.—OCCURRENCES DURING THAT PASSAGE.—SUDDEN CHANGE FROM HEAT TO COLD.—DISTRESS OCCASIONED BY THE LEAKING OF THE RESOLUTION.—VIEW OF THE COAST OF KAMTSCHATKA. —EXTREME RIGOUR OF THE CLIMATE.—LOSE SIGHT OF THE DISCOVERY.—THE RESOLUTION ENTERS THE BAY OF AWATSK.— PROSPECT OF THE TOWN OF SAINT PETER AND SAINT PAUL.— PARTY SENT ASHORE.—THEIR RECEPTION BY THE COMMANDING OFFICER OF THE PORT.—MESSAGE DISPATCHED TO THE COMMANDER AT BOLCHERETSK.—ARRIVAL OF THE DISCOVERY.— RETURN OF THE MESSENGERS FROM THE COMMANDER.— EXTRAORDINARY MODE OF TRAVELLING.—VISIT FROM A MERCHANT, AND A GERMAN SERVANT BELONGING TO THE COMMANDER. n the 15th of March, at seven in the morning, we weighed anchor, and passing to the north of Tahoora, stood on to the south- west, in hopes of falling in with the island of Modoopapappa, which, we were told by the natives, lay in that direction, about five hours sail from Tahoora. At four in the afternoon, we were overtaken by a stout canoe, with ten men, who were going from Oneeheow to Tahoora, to kill tropic and man-of-war birds, with which that place was said to abound. It has been mentioned before, that the feathers
- 62. of these birds are in great request, being much used in making their cloaks, and other ornamental parts of their dress. At eight, having seen nothing of the island, we hauled the wind to the northward, till midnight, and then tacked, and stood on a wind to the south-east, till day-light next morning, at which time Tahoora bore east north-east, five or six leagues distant. We afterward steered west south-west, and made the Discovery’s signal to spread four miles upon our starboard beam. At noon, our latitude was 21° 27ʹ, and our longitude 198° 42ʹ; and having stood on till five in the same direction, we made the Discovery’s signal to come under our stern, and gave over all hopes of seeing Modoopapappa. We conceived, that it might probably lie in a more southerly direction from Tahoora, than that in which we had steered; though, after all, it is possible, that we might have passed it in the night, as the islanders described it to be very small, and almost even with the surface of the sea. The next day, we steered west; it being Captain Clerke’s intention to keep as near as possible in the same parallel of latitude, till we should make the longitude of Awatska Bay, and afterward to steer due north for the harbour of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in that bay; which was also appointed for our rendezvous, in case of separation. This track was chosen on account of its being, as far as we knew, unexplored; and we were not without hopes of falling in with some new islands on our passage. We had scarcely seen a bird, since our losing sight of Tahoora, till the 18th in the afternoon, when, being in the latitude of 21° 12ʹ, and the longitude of 194° 45ʹ, the appearance of a great many boobies, and some man-of-war birds, made us keep a sharp look-out for land. Toward evening, the wind lessened, and the north-east swell, which, on the 16th and 17th, had been so heavy as to make the ships labour exceedingly, was much abated. The next day, we saw no appearance of land; and at noon, we steered a point more to the southward, viz. west by south, in the hopes of finding the trade- winds (which blew almost invariably from the east by north) fresher as we advanced within the tropic. It is somewhat singular, that
- 63. though we saw no birds in the forenoon, yet toward evening we had again a number of boobies and man-of-war birds about us. This seemed to indicate, that we had passed the land from whence the former flights had come, and that we were approaching some other low island. The wind continued very moderate, with fine weather, till the 23d, when it freshened from the north-east by east, and increased to a strong gale, which split some of our old sails, and made the running rigging very frequently give way. This gale lasted twelve hours; it then became more moderate, and continued so, till the 25th at noon, when we entirely lost it, and had only a very light air. On the 26th in the morning, we thought we saw land to the west south-west, but, after running about sixteen leagues in that direction, we found our mistake; and night coming on, we again steered west. Our latitude, at this time, was 19° 45ʹ, which was the greatest southing we made in this run; our longitude was 183°, and variation 12° 45ʹ E. We continued in this course, with little alteration in the wind, till the 29th, when it shifted to the south-east and south south-east, and, for a few hours in the night, it was in the west; the weather being dark and cloudy, with much rain. We had met, for some days past, several turtles, one of which was the smallest I ever saw, not exceeding three inches in length. We were also accompanied by man-of-war birds, and boobies of an unusual kind, being quite white (except the tip of the wing, which was black), and easily mistaken, at first sight, for gannets. The light winds which we had met with for some time past, with the present unsettled state of the weather, and the little appearance of any change for the better, induced Captain Clerke to alter his plan of keeping within the tropical latitudes; and accordingly, at six this evening, we began to steer north-west by north, at which time our latitude was 20° 23ʹ, and our longitude 180° 40ʹ. During the continuance of the light winds, which prevailed almost constantly ever since our departure from the Sandwich Islands, the weather was very close, and the air hot and sultry; the thermometer being generally at 80°, and sometimes at 83°. All this time, we had a
- 64. considerable swell from the north-east; and in no period of the voyage did the ships roll and strain so violently. In the morning of the 1st of April, the wind changed from the south-east to the north-east by east, and blew a fresh breeze, till the morning of the 4th, when it altered two points more to the east, and by noon increased to a strong gale, which lasted till the afternoon of the 5th, attended with hazy weather. It then again altered its direction to the south-east, became more moderate, and was accompanied by heavy showers of rain. During all this time, we kept steering to the north-west, against a slow but regular current from that quarter, which caused a constant variation from our reckoning by the log, of fifteen miles a day. On the 4th, being then in the latitude 26° 17ʹ, and longitude 173° 30ʹ, we passed prodigious quantities of what sailors call Portuguese men-of-war (holothuria physalis), and were also accompanied with a great number of sea birds, amongst which we observed, for the first time, the albatross and sheerwater. On the 6th, at noon, we lost the trade-wind, and were suddenly taken a-back, with the wind from the north north-west. At this time, our latitude was 29° 50ʹ, and our longitude 170° 1ʹ. As the old running-ropes were constantly breaking in the late gales, we reeved what new ones we had left, and made such other preparations, as were necessary for the very different climate with which we were now shortly to encounter. The fine weather we met with between the tropics, had not been idly spent. The carpenters found sufficient employment in repairing the boats. The best bower-cable had been so much damaged by the foul ground in Karakakooa Bay, and whilst we were at anchor off Oneeheow, that we were obliged to cut forty fathoms from it; in converting of which, with other old cordage, into spun-yarn, and applying it to different uses, a considerable part of the people were kept constantly employed by the boatswain. The airing of sails and other stores, which, from the leakiness of the decks and sides of the ships, were perpetually subject to be wet, had now become a frequent as well as a laborious and troublesome part of our duty.
- 65. Besides these cares, which had regard only to the ships themselves, there were others, which had for their object the preservation of the health of the crews, that furnished a constant occupation to a great number of our hands. The standing orders, established by Captain Cook, of airing the bedding, placing fires between decks, washing them with vinegar, and smoking them with gunpowder, were observed without any intermission. For some time past, even the operation of mending the sailors’ old jackets had risen into a duty both of difficulty and importance. It may be necessary to inform those who are unacquainted with the disposition and habits of seamen, that they are so accustomed in ships of war to be directed in the care of themselves by their officers, that they lose the very idea of foresight, and contract the thoughtlessness of infants. I am sure, that if our people had been left to their own discretion alone, we should have had the whole crew naked, before the voyage had been half finished. It was natural to expect that their experience, during our voyage to the north last year, would have made them sensible of the necessity of paying some attention to these matters; but if such reflections ever occurred to them, their impression was so transitory, that, upon our return to the tropical climates, their fur jackets, and the rest of their cold country clothes, were kicked about the decks as things of no value; though it was generally known, in both ships, that we were to make another voyage toward the pole. They were, of course, picked up by the officers; and, being put into casks, restored about this time to the owners. In the afternoon, we observed some of the sheathing floating by the ship; and, on examination, found that twelve or fourteen feet had been washed off from under the larboard-bow, where we supposed the leak to have been, which, ever since our leaving Sandwich Islands, had kept the people almost constantly at the pumps, making twelve inches water an hour. This day we saw a number of small crabs, of a pale blue colour; and had again, in company, a few albatrosses and sheerwaters. The thermometer, in the night-time, sunk eleven degrees; and although it still remained
- 66. as high as 59°, yet we suffered much from the cold; our feelings being, as yet, by no means reconciled to that degree of temperature. The wind continued blowing fresh from the north, till the eighth, in the morning, when it became more moderate, with fair weather, and gradually changed its direction to the east, and afterward to the south. On the ninth, at noon, our latitude was 32° 16ʹ; our longitude 166° 40ʹ; and the variation 8° 30ʹ E. And on the tenth, having crossed the track of the Spanish galleons from the Manillas to Acapulco, we expected to have fallen in with the Island of Rica de Plata, which, according to De Lisle’s chart, in which the route of those ships is laid down, ought to have been in sight; its latitude, as there given, being 33° 30ʹ N., and its longitude 166° E. Notwithstanding we were so far advanced to the northward, we saw this day a tropic bird, and also several other kinds of sea-birds; such as puffins, sea-parrots, sheerwaters, and albatrosses. On the eleventh, at noon, we were in latitude 35° 30ʹ, longitude 165° 45ʹ; and during the course of the day, had sea-birds, as before, and passed several bunches of sea-weed. About the same time, the Discovery passed a log of wood; but no other signs of land were seen. The next day the wind came gradually round to the east, and increased to so strong a gale, as obliged us to strike our top-gallant yards, and brought us under the lower sails, and the main top-sail close reefed. Unfortunately we were upon that tack, which was the most disadvantageous for our leak. But, as we had always been able to keep it under with the hand-pumps, it gave us no great uneasiness, till the 13th, about six in the afternoon, when we were greatly alarmed by a sudden inundation, that deluged the whole space between decks. The water, which had lodged in the coal-hole, not finding a sufficient vent into the well, had forced up the platforms over it, and in a moment set every thing afloat. Our situation was indeed exceedingly distressing; nor did we immediately see any means of relieving ourselves. A pump, through the upper decks into the coal-hole, could answer no end, as it would very soon
- 67. have been choked up by the small coals; and, to bale the water out with buckets, was become impracticable, from the number of bulky materials that were washed out of the gunner’s store-room into it, and which, by the ship’s motion, were tossed violently from side to side. No other method was therefore left, but to cut a hole through the bulk-head (or partition) that separated the coal hole from the fore-hold, and by that means to make a passage for the body of water into the well. However, before that it could be done, it was necessary to get the casks of dry provisions out of the fore-hold, which kept us employed the greatest part of the night; so that the carpenters could not get at the partition till the next morning. As soon as a passage was made, the greatest part of the water emptied itself into the well, and enabled us to get out the rest with buckets. But the leak was now so much increased, that we were obliged to keep one half of the people constantly pumping and baleing, till the noon of the 15th. Our men bore, with great cheerfulness, this excessive fatigue, which was much increased by their having no dry place to sleep in; and, on this account, we began to serve their full allowance of grog. The weather now becoming more moderate, and the swell less heavy, we were enabled to clear away the rest of the casks from the fore-hold, and to open a sufficient passage for the water to the pumps. This day we saw a greenish piece of drift-wood, and fancying the water coloured, we sounded, but got no bottom with a hundred and sixty fathoms of line. Our latitude, at noon this day, was 41° 52ʹ, longitude 161° 15ʹ; variation 6° 30ʹ east; and the wind soon after veering to the northward, we altered our course three points to the west. On the 16th, at noon, we were in the latitude of 42° 12ʹ, and in the longitude of 160° 5ʹ; and as we were now approaching the place where a great extent of land is said to have been seen by De Gama, we were glad of the opportunity which the course we were steering gave, of contributing to remove the doubts, if any should be still entertained, respecting the falsehood of this pretended discovery. For it is to be observed, that no one has ever yet been able to find
- 68. who John de Gama was, when he lived, or what year this pretended discovery was made. According to Mr. Muller, the first account of it given to the public was in a chart published by Texeira, a Portuguese geographer, in 1649, who places it in ten or twelve degrees to the north-east of Japan, between the latitudes of 44° and 45°; and announces it to be land seen by John de Gama, the Indian, in a voyage from China to New Spain. On what grounds the French geographers have since removed it five degrees to the eastward, does not appear; except we suppose it to have been in order to make room for another discovery of the same kind made by the Dutch, called Company’s Land; of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. During the whole day, the wind was exceedingly unsettled, being seldom steady to two or three points; and blowing in fresh gusts, which were succeeded by dead calms. These were not unpromising appearances; but, after standing off and on, the whole of this day, without seeing any thing of the land, we again steered to the northward, not thinking it worth our while to lose time in search of an object, the opinion of whose existence had been already pretty generally exploded. Our people were employed the whole of the 16th, in getting their wet things to dry, and in airing the ship below. We now began to feel very sharply the increasing inclemency of the northern climate. In the morning of the 18th, our latitude being 45° 40ʹ, and our longitude 160° 25ʹ, we had snow and sleet, accompanied with strong gales from the south-west. This circumstance will appear very remarkable, if we consider the season of the year, and the quarter from which the wind blew. On the 19th, the thermometer, in the day-time, remained at the freezing point, and at four in the morning fell to 29°. If the reader will take the trouble to compare the degree of heat, during the hot sultry weather we had at the beginning of this month, with the extreme cold which we now endured, he will conceive how severely so rapid a change must have been felt by us. In the gale of the 18th, we had split almost all the sails we had bent, which being our second best suit, we were now reduced to
- 69. make use of our last and best set. To add to Captain Clerke’s difficulties, the sea was in general so rough, and the ships so leaky, that the sail-makers had no place to repair the sails in, except his apartments, which, in his declining state of health, was a serious inconvenience to him. On the 20th, at noon, being in latitude 49° 45ʹ N. and longitude 161° 15ʹ E.; and eagerly expecting to fall in with the coast of Asia, the wind shifted suddenly to the north, and continued in the same quarter the following day. However, although it retarded our progress, yet the fair weather it brought was no small refreshment to us. In the forenoon of the 21st, we saw a whale, and a land-bird; and, in the afternoon, the water looking muddy, we sounded, but got no ground with an hundred and forty fathoms of line. During the three preceding days, we saw large flocks of wild-fowl, of a species resembling ducks. This is usually considered as a proof of the vicinity of land; but we had no other signs of it, since the 16th; in which time we had run upward of an hundred and fifty leagues. On the 22d, the wind shifted to the north-east, attended with misty weather. The cold was exceedingly severe, and the ropes were so frozen, that it was with difficulty we could force them through the blocks. At noon, the latitude, by account, was 51° 38ʹ, longitude 160° 7ʹ; and on comparing our present position with that given to the southern parts of Kamtschatka, in the Russian charts, Captain Clerke did not think it prudent to run on toward the land all night. We therefore tacked at ten; and, having sounded, had ground agreeably to our conjectures, with seventy fathoms of line. On the 23d, at six in the morning, being in latitude 52° 09ʹ, and longitude 160° 07ʹ, on the fog clearing away, the land appeared in mountains covered with snow; and extending from north three quarters east, to south-west, a high conical rock, bearing south- west, three quarters west, at three or four leagues distance. We had no sooner taken this imperfect view, than we were again covered with a thick fog. Being now, according to our maps, only eight leagues from the entrance of Awatska Bay, as soon as the weather cleared up, we stood in to take a nearer view of the land; and a
- 70. more dismal and dreary prospect I never beheld. The coast appears straight and uniform, having no inlets or bays; the ground, from the shore, rises in hills of a moderate elevation, behind which are ranges of mountains, whose summits were lost in the clouds. The whole scene was entirely covered with snow, except the sides of some of the cliffs, which rose too abruptly from the sea for the snow to lie upon them. The wind continued blowing very strong from the north-east, with thick hazy weather and sleet, from the 24th till the 28th. During the whole time, the thermometer was never higher than 301 ⁄2°. The ship appeared to be a complete mass of ice; the shrowds were so incrusted with it, as to measure in circumference more than double their usual size; and, in short, the experience of the oldest seaman among us, had never met with any thing like the continued showers of sleet, and the extreme cold, which we now encountered. Indeed, the severity of the weather, added to the great difficulty of working the ships, and the labour of keeping the pumps constantly going, rendered the service too hard for many of the crew, some of whom were frost-bitten, and others laid up with bad colds. We continued all this time standing four hours on each tack, having generally soundings of sixty fathoms, when about three leagues from the land; but none at twice that distance. On the 25th, we had a transient view of the entrance of Awatska Bay; but, in the present state of the weather, we were afraid of venturing into it. Upon our standing off again, we lost sight of the Discovery; but, as we were now so near the place of rendezvous, this gave us no great uneasiness. On the 28th, in the morning, the weather at last cleared, and the wind fell to a light breeze from the same quarter as before. We had a fine warm day, and as we now began to expect a thaw, the men were employed in breaking the ice from off the rigging, masts, and sails, in order to prevent its falling on our heads. At noon, being in the latitude of 52° 44ʹ, and the longitude of 159°, the entrance of Awatska Bay bore north-west, distant three or four leagues; and about three in the afternoon a fair wind sprung up from the
- 71. southward, with which we stood in, having regular soundings from twenty-two to seven fathoms. The mouth of the bay opens in a north-north-west direction. The land on the south side is of a moderate height; to the northward it rises into a bluff head, which is the highest part of the coast. In the channel between them, near the north-east side, lie three remarkable rocks; and farther in, near the opposite coast, a single detached rock of a considerable size. On the north head there is a look-out house, which, when the Russians expect any of their ships upon the coast, is used as a light-house. There was a flag-staff on it, but we saw no sign of any person being there. Having passed the mouth of the bay, which is about four miles long, we opened a large circular bason of twenty-five miles in circumference, and at half past four came to an anchor in six fathoms’ water, being afraid of running foul on a shoal, or some sunk rocks, which are said by Muller[17] to lie in the channel of the harbour of St. Peter and St. Paul. The middle of the bay was full of loose ice, drifting with the tide, but the shores were still entirely blocked up with it. Great flocks of wild-fowl were seen of various species; likewise ravens, eagles, and large flights of Greenland pigeons. We examined every corner of the bay with our glasses, in search of the town of St. Peter and St. Paul, which, according to the accounts given us at Oonalashka, we had conceived to be a place of some strength and consideration. At length we discovered on a narrow point of land to the north-north-east a few miserable log-houses and some conical huts, raised on poles, amounting in all to about thirty, which from their situation, notwithstanding all the respect we wished to entertain for a Russian ostrog, we were under the necessity of concluding to be Petropaulowska. However, in justice to the generous and hospitable treatment we found here, I shall beg leave to anticipate the reader’s curiosity, by assuring him that our disappointment proved to be more of a laughable than a serious nature. For in this wretched extremity of the earth, situated beyond every thing that we conceived to be most barbarous and inhospitable, and as it were out of the very reach of civilization,
- 72. barricadoed with ice and covered with summer snow, in a poor miserable port far inferior to the meanest of our fishing towns, we met with feelings of humanity, joined to a greatness of mind and elevation of sentiment, which would have done honour to any nation or climate. View of Karakakooa in Owhyhee. During the night, much ice drifted by us with the tide, and at day- light I was sent with the boats to examine the bay, and deliver the letters we had brought from Oonalashka to the Russian commander. We directed our course toward the village I have just mentioned; and having proceeded as far as we were able, with the boats, we got upon the ice, which extended near half a mile from the shore. Mr. Webber and two of the seamen accompanied me, whilst the master took the pinnace and cutter to finish the survey, leaving the jolly-boat behind to carry us back. I believe the inhabitants had not yet seen either the ship or the boats, for even after we had got on the ice we could not perceive any signs of a living creature in the town. By the time we had advanced a little way on the ice, we observed a few men hurrying backward and forward, and presently after a sledge drawn by dogs,
- 73. with one of the inhabitants in it, came down to the sea-side, opposite to us. Whilst we were gazing at this unusual sight, and admiring the great civility of this stranger which we imagined had brought him to our assistance, the man, after viewing us for some time very attentively, turned short round and went off with great speed toward the ostrog. We were not less chagrined than disappointed at this abrupt departure, as we began to find our journey over the ice attended not only with great difficulty but even with danger. We sunk at every step almost knee-deep in the snow, and though we found tolerable footing at the bottom, yet the weak parts of the ice not being discoverable, we were constantly exposed to the risk of breaking through it. This accident at last actually happened to myself; for stepping on quickly over a suspicious spot, in order to press with less weight upon it, I came upon a second before I could stop myself, which broke under me, and in I fell. Luckily I rose clear of the ice, and a man that was a little way behind with a boat-hook throwing it to me, I laid it across some loose pieces near me, and by that means was enabled to get upon firm ice again. As we approached the shore we found the ice, contrary to our expectations, more broken than it had been before. We were, however, again comforted by the sight of another sledge coming toward us, but instead of proceeding to our relief the driver stopt short, and began to call out to us. I immediately held up to him Ismyloff’s letters; upon which he turned about and set off back again full speed, followed, I believe, not with the prayers of any of our party. Being at a great loss what conclusions to draw from this unaccountable behaviour, we continued our march toward the ostrog with great circumspection, and when we had arrived within a quarter of a mile of it, we perceived a body of armed men marching toward us. That we might give them as little alarm and have as peaceable an appearance as possible, the two men who had boat-hooks in their hands were ordered into the rear, and Mr. Webber and myself marched in front. The Russian party, consisting of about thirty soldiers, was headed by a decent-looking person, with a cane in his hand. He halted within a few yards of us, and drew up his men in a
- 74. martial and good order. I delivered to him Ismyloff’s letters, and endeavoured to make him understand, as well as I could (though I afterward found in vain), that we were English, and had brought them papers from Oonalashka. After having examined us attentively, he began to conduct us toward the village in great silence and solemnity, frequently halting his men to form them in different manners, and making them perform several parts of their manual exercise, probably with a view to show us that if we had the temerity to offer any violence, we should have to deal with men who were not ignorant of their business. Though I was all this time in my wet clothes, shivering with cold and sufficiently inclined to the most unconditional submission, without having my fears violently alarmed, yet it was impossible not to be diverted with this military parade, notwithstanding it was attended with the most unseasonable delay. At length we arrived at the house of the commanding officer of the party, into which we were ushered, and after no small stir in giving orders, and disposing of the military without doors, our host made his appearance, accompanied by another person, whom we understood to be the secretary of the port. One of Ismyloff’s letters was now opened, and the other sent off by a special messenger to Bolcheretsk, a town on the west side of the peninsula of Kamtschatka, where the Russian commander of this province usually resides. It is very remarkable that they had not seen the ship the preceding day, when we came to anchor in the bay, nor indeed this morning till our boats were pretty near the ice. The panic with which the discovery had struck them we found had been very considerable. The garrison was immediately put under arms. Two small field- pieces were placed at the entrance of the commander’s house, and pointed toward our boats, and shot, powder, and lighted matches were all ready at hand. The officer in whose house we were at present entertained was a serjeant, and the commander of the ostrog. Nothing could exceed the kindness and hospitality of his behaviour, after he had recovered from the alarm occasioned by our arrival. We found the house
- 75. insufferably hot, but exceedingly neat and clean. After I had changed my clothes, which the serjeant’s civility enabled me to do by furnishing me with a complete suit of his own, we were invited to sit down to dinner, which I have no doubt was the best he could procure, and considering the shortness of time he had to provide it, was managed with some ingenuity. As there was not time to prepare soup and bouilli, we had in their stead some cold beef sliced, with hot water poured over it. We had next a large bird roasted, of a species with which I was unacquainted, but of a very excellent taste. After having eaten a part of this it was taken off, and we were served with fish dressed two different ways, and soon after the bird again made its appearance, in savoury and sweet pâtés. Our liquor, of which I shall have to speak hereafter, was of the kind called by the Russians quass, and was much the worse part of the entertainment. The serjeant’s wife brought in several of the dishes herself, and was not permitted to sit down at table. Having finished our repast, during which it is hardly necessary to remark that our conversation was confined to a few bows, and other signs of mutual respect, we endeavoured to open to our host the cause and objects of our visit to this port. As Ismyloff had probably written to them on the same subject in the letters we had before delivered, he appeared very readily to conceive our meaning; but as there was unfortunately no one in the place that could talk any other language except Russian or Kamtschatdale, we found the utmost difficulty in comprehending the information he meant to convey to us. After some time spent in these endeavours to understand one another, we conceived the sum of the intelligence we had procured to be, that though no supply either of provisions or naval stores were to be had at this place, yet that these articles were in great plenty at Bolcheretsk. That the commander would most probably be very willing to give us what we wanted; but that till the serjeant had received orders from him, neither he nor his people, nor the natives, could even venture to go on board the ship. It was now time for us to take our leave, and as my clothes were still too wet to put on, I was obliged to have recourse again to the
- 76. serjeant’s benevolence, for his leave to carry those I had borrowed of him on board. This request was complied with very cheerfully, and a sledge drawn by five dogs, with a driver, was immediately provided for each of our party. The sailors were highly delighted with this mode of conveyance; and what diverted them still more was, that the two boat-hooks had also a sledge appropriated to themselves. These sledges are so light, and their construction so well adapted to the purposes for which they are intended, that they went with great expedition and perfect safety over the ice, which it would have been impossible for us with all our caution to have passed on foot. On our return we found the boats towing the ship toward the village, and at seven we got close to the ice, and moored with the small bower to the north-east and best bower to the south-west, the entrance of the bay bearing south by east and south three quarters east, and the ostrog north one quarter east, distant one mile and a half. The next morning the casks and cables were got upon the quarter-deck, in order to lighten the ship forward, and the carpenters were set to work to stop the leak, which had given us so much trouble during our last run. It was found to have been occasioned by the falling of some sheathing from the larboard-bow, and the oakum between the planks having been washed out. The warm weather we had in the middle of the day began to make the ice break away very fast, which drifting with the tide had almost filled up the entrance of the bay. Several of our gentlemen paid their visits to the serjeant, by whom they were received with great civility; and Captain Clerke sent him two bottles of rum, which he understood would be the most acceptable present he could make him, and received in return some fine fowls of the grouse kind, and twenty trouts. Our sportsmen met with but bad success; for though the bay swarmed with flocks of ducks of various kinds and Greenland pigeons, yet they were so shy that they could not come within shot of them. In the morning of the 1st of May, seeing the Discovery standing into the bay, a boat was immediately sent to her assistance, and in the afternoon she moored close by us. They told us that after the
- 77. weather cleared up on the 28th, the day on which she had parted company, they found themselves to leeward of the bay, and that when they got abreast of it the following day and saw the entrance choked up with ice, they stood off after firing guns, concluding we could not be here; but finding afterward it was only loose drift-ice, they had ventured in. The next day the weather was so very unsettled, attended with heavy showers of snow, that the carpenters were not able to proceed in their work. The thermometer stood at 28° in the evening, and the frost was exceedingly severe in the night. The following morning, on our observing two sledges drive into the village, Captain Clerke sent me on shore to inquire whether any message was arrived from the commander of Kamtschatka, which, according to the serjeant’s account, might now be expected, in consequence of the intelligence that had been sent of our arrival. Bolcheretsk by the usual route is about one hundred and thirty-five English miles from St. Peter and St. Paul’s. Our dispatches were sent off in a sledge drawn by dogs, on the 29th about noon. And the answer arrived, as we afterward found, early this morning, so that they were only a little more than three days and a half in performing a journey of two hundred and seventy miles. The return of the commander’s answer was, however, concealed from us for the present, and I was told on my arrival at the serjeant’s, that we should hear from him the next day. Whilst I was on shore the boat which had brought me, together with another belonging to the Discovery, were set fast in the ice, which a southerly wind had driven from the other side of the bay. On seeing them entangled, the Discovery’s launch had been sent to their assistance, but soon shared the same fate, and in a short time the ice had surrounded them near a quarter of a mile deep. This obliged us to stay on shore till evening, when finding no prospect of getting the boats off, some of us went in sledges to the edge of the ice, and were taken off by boats sent from the ship, and the rest staid on shore all night.
- 78. It continued to freeze hard during the night, but before morning on the 4th a change of wind drifted away the floating ice, and set the boats at liberty, without their having sustained the smallest damage. About ten o’clock in the forenoon, we saw several sledges driving down the edge of the ice, and sent a boat to conduct the persons who were in them on board. One of these was a Russian merchant from Bolcheretsk named Fedositsch, and the other a German called Port, who had brought a letter from Major Behm, the commander of Kamtschatka, to Captain Clerke. When they got to the edge of the ice, and saw distinctly the size of the ships which lay within about two hundred yards from them, they appeared to be exceedingly alarmed, and before they would venture to embark, desired two of our boat’s crew might be left on shore as hostages for their safety. We afterward found that Ismyloff, in his letter to the commander, had misrepresented us, for what reasons we could not conceive, as two small trading boats; and that the serjeant, who had only seen the ships at a distance, had not in his dispatches rectified the mistake. When they arrived on board, we still found, from their cautious and timorous behaviour, that they were under some unaccountable apprehensions; and an uncommon degree of satisfaction was visible in their countenances, on the German’s finding a person amongst us, with whom he could converse. This was Mr. Webber, who spoke that language perfectly well; and at last, though with some difficulty, convinced them, that we were Englishmen, and friends. M. Port being introduced to Captain Clerke, delivered to him the Commander’s letter, which was written in German, and was merely complimental, inviting him and his officers to Bolcheretsk, to which place the people, who brought it, were to conduct us. M. Port at the same time, acquainted him, that the Major had conceived a very wrong idea of the size of the ships, and of the service we were engaged in; Ismyloff in his letter, having represented us as two small English packet-boats, and cautioned him to be on his guard; insinuating, that he suspected us to be no better than pirates. In
- 79. consequence of this letter, he said there had been various conjectures formed about us at Bolcheretsk: that the Major thought it most probable we were on a trading scheme, and for that reason had sent down a merchant to us; but that the officer, who was second in command, was of opinion we were French, and come with some hostile intention, and were for taking measures accordingly. It had required, he added, all the Major’s authority to keep the inhabitants from leaving the town, and retiring up into the country; to so extraordinary a pitch had their fears risen, from their persuasion that we were French. Their extreme apprehensions of that nation were principally occasioned, by some circumstances attending an insurrection that had happened at Bolcheretsk a few years before, in which the commander had lost his life. We were informed, that an exiled Polish officer, named Beniowski, taking advantage of the confusion into which the town was thrown, had seized upon a galliot, then lying at the entrance of the Bolchoireka, and had forced on board a number of Russian sailors, sufficient to navigate her: that he had put on shore a part of the crew at the Kourile Islands; and, among the rest, Ismyloff, who, as the reader will recollect, had puzzled us exceedingly at Oonalashka, with the history of this transaction; though, for want of understanding his language, we could not then make out all the circumstances attending it: that he passed in sight of Japan; made Luconia; and was there directed how to steer to Canton; that arriving there, he had applied to the French, and had got a passage in one of their India ships to France: and that most of the Russians had likewise returned to Europe in French ships; and had afterward found their way to Petersburg. We met with three of Beniowski’s crew in the harbour of Saint Peter and Saint Paul; and from them we learnt the circumstances of the above story. On our arrival at Canton, we received a farther corroboration of the facts, from the gentlemen of the English factory, who told us, that a person had arrived there in a Russian galliot, who said he came from Kamtschatka; and that he had been furnished by the French factory with a passage to Europe.[18]
- 80. We could not help being much diverted with the fears and apprehensions of these good people, and particularly with the account M. Port gave us of the serjeant’s wary proceedings the day before. On seeing me come on shore, in company with some other gentlemen, he had made him and the merchant, who arrived in the sledges we had seen come in the morning, hide themselves in his kitchen, and listen to our conversation with one another, in hopes that, by this means, they might discover whether we were really English or not. As we concluded, from the commission and dress of M. Port, that he might probably be the commander’s secretary, he was received as such, and invited, with his companion, the merchant, to dine with Captain Clerke: and though we soon began to suspect, from the behaviour of the latter toward him, that he was only a common servant, yet this being no time to sacrifice our little comforts to our pride, we prevented an explanation, by not suffering the question to be put to him; and, in return for the satisfaction we reaped from his abilities as a linguist, we continued to let him live on a footing of equality with us.
- 81. B CHAP. II. SCARCITY OF PROVISIONS AND STORES AT THE HARBOUR OF SAINT PETER AND SAINT PAUL.—A PARTY SET OUT TO VISIT THE COMMANDER AT BOLCHERETSK.—PASSAGE UP THE RIVER AWATSKA.—ACCOUNT OF THEIR RECEPTION BY THE TOION OF KARATCHIN.—DESCRIPTION OF A KAMTSCHADALE DRESS.— JOURNEY ON SLEDGES.—DESCRIPTION OF THIS MODE OF TRAVELLING.—ARRIVAL AT NATCHEEKIN.—ACCOUNT OF HOT SPRINGS.—EMBARK ON THE BOLCHOIREKA.—RECEPTION AT THE CAPITAL.—GENEROUS AND HOSPITABLE CONDUCT OF THE COMMANDER AND THE GARRISON.—DESCRIPTION OF BOLCHERETSK.—PRESENTS FROM THE COMMANDER.—RUSSIAN AND KAMTSCHADALE DANCING.—AFFECTING DEPARTURE FROM BOLCHERETSK.—RETURN TO SAINT PETER AND SAINT PAUL’S, ACCOMPANIED BY MAJOR BEHM, WHO VISITS THE SHIPS.— GENEROSITY OF THE SAILORS.—DISPATCHES SENT BY MAJOR BEHM TO PETERSBURG.—HIS DEPARTURE AND CHARACTER. eing now enabled to converse with the Russians, by the aid of our interpreter, with tolerable facility, our first inquires were directed to the means of procuring a supply of fresh provisions, and naval stores; from the want of which latter article, in particular, we had been for some time in great distress. On inquiry, it appeared, that the whole stock of live cattle, which the country about the bay could furnish, amounted only to two heifers; and these the serjeant very readily promised to procure us. Our applications were next made to
- 82. the merchant, but we found the terms upon which he offered to serve us, so exorbitant, that Captain Clerke thought it necessary to send an officer to visit the commander at Bolcheretsk, and to inquire into the price of stores at that place. As soon as this determination was communicated to M. Port, he dispatched an express to the commander, to inform him of our intentions, and at the same time, to clear us from the suspicions that were entertained with respect to the designation and purposes of our voyage. Captain Clerke having thought proper to fix on me for this service, I received orders, together with Mr. Webber, who was to accompany me as interpreter, to be ready to set out the next day. It proved, however, too stormy, as did also the 6th, for beginning a journey through so wild and desolate a country; but, on the 7th, the weather appearing more favourable, we set out early in the morning in the ship’s boats, with a view to reach the entrance of the Awatska at high water, on account of the shoals with which the mouth of that river abounds: here the country boats were to meet us, and carry us up the stream. Captain Gore was now added to our party, and we were attended by Messrs. Port and Fedositsch, with two Cossacks, and were provided, by our conductors, with warm furred clothing; a precaution which we soon found very necessary, as it began to snow briskly just after we set out. At eight o’clock, being stopped by shoal water, about a mile from the mouth of the river, some small canoes, belonging to the Kamtschadales, took up us and our baggage, and carried us over a spit of sand, which is thrown up by the rapidity of the river, and which, they told us, was continually shifting. When we had crossed this shoal, the water again deepened; and here we found a commodious boat, built and shaped like a Norway yawl, ready to convey us up the river, together with canoes for our baggage. The mouth of the Awatska is about a quarter of a mile broad; and as we advanced, it narrowed very gradually. After we had proceeded a few miles, we passed several branches, which we were told emptied themselves into other parts of the bay; and that some of
- 83. those on the left hand flowed into the Paratounca river. Its general direction from the bay, for the first ten miles, is to the north, after which it turns to the westward: this bend excepted, it preserves, for the most part, a straight course; and the country through which it flows, to the distance of near thirty miles from the sea, is low and flat, and subject to frequent inundations. We were pushed forward by six men, with long poles, three at each end of the boat; two of whom were Cossacks, the others Kamtschadales; and advanced against a strong stream, at the rate, as well as I could judge, of about three miles an hour. Our Kamtschadales bore this severe labour, with great stoutness, for ten hours; during which we stopped only once, and that for a short time, whilst they took some little refreshment. As we had been told, at our first setting out in the morning, that we should easily reach an ostrog, called Karatchin, the same night, we were much disappointed to find ourselves, at sun- set, fifteen miles from that place. This we attributed to the delay occasioned in passing the shoals we had met with, both at the entrance of the river, and in several other places, as we proceeded up it; for our boat being the first that had passed up the river, the guides were not acquainted with the situation of the shifting sand- banks, and unfortunately the snow not having yet begun to melt, the shallowness of the river was at its extreme. The fatigue our men had already undergone, and the difficulty of navigating the river, which would have been much increased by the darkness of the night, obliged us to give up all thoughts of continuing our journey that evening. Having therefore found a place tolerably sheltered, and cleared it of the snow, we erected a small marquée, which we had brought with us; and, by the assistance of a brisk fire, and some good punch, passed the night not very unpleasantly. The only inconvenience we laboured under was, the being obliged to make the fire at some distance from us. For, although the ground was, to all appearance, dry enough before, yet when the fire was lighted, it soon thawed all the parts round it into an absolute puddle. We admired much the alertness and expedition with which the Kamtschadales erected our marquée, and cooked our
- 84. provisions; but what was most unexpected, we found they had brought with them their tea-kettles, considering it as the greatest of hardships not to drink tea two or three times a day. We set out as soon as it was light in the morning, and had not advanced far, before we were met by the Toion, or chief of Karatchin, who had been apprized of our coming, and had provided canoes that were lighter, and better contrived for navigating the higher parts of the river. A commodious vessel, consisting of two canoes, lashed close together with cross spars, lined with bear-skins, and furnished with fur cloaks, was also provided for us. We now went on very rapidly, the Toion’s people being both stout and fresh, and remarkable for their expertness in this business. At ten we got to the ostrog, the seat of his command, where we were received at the water-side by the Kamtschadale men and women, and some Russian servants belonging to Fedositsch, who were employed in making canoes. They were all drest out in their best clothes. Those of the women were pretty and gay, consisting of a full loose robe of white nankeen, gathered close round the neck, and fastened with a collar of coloured silk. Over this they wore a short jacket, without sleeves, made of different coloured nankeens, and petticoats of a slight Chinese silk. Their shifts, which had sleeves down to the wrists, were also of silk; and coloured silk handkerchiefs were bound round their heads, concealing entirely the hair of the married women, whilst those who were unmarried, brought the handkerchief under the hair, and suffered it to flow loose behind. This ostrog was pleasantly situated by the side of the river; and consisted of three log-houses; three jourts, or houses made under ground; and nineteen balagans, or summer habitations. We were conducted to the dwelling of the Toion, who was a plain decent man, born of a Russian woman, by a Kamtschadale father. His house, like all the rest in this country, was divided into two apartments. A long narrow table, with a bench round it, was all the furniture we saw in the outer; and the household stuff of the inner, which was the kitchen, was not less simple and scanty. But the kind attention of our
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