First steps to thinking relationally

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase.

-Martin Luther King Jr

At Participle, we strongly believe that a 21st century welfare system must work relationally. (In fact we believe it so strongly, that’s what we’ve named our blog.) So what does that look like?

The Living Wage: “It has made me happier and less isolated.”

Perrine works as a home care support worker. In her job, she needs to build relationships with her clients, so that she can understand and support them as well as she can. This type of work requires a lot of emotional labour, which is difficult to do if you are exhausted, hungry, or lacking in your own social support network. Here’s how being paid the Living Wage helps her do her best work and lead a better life, in her own words: 

Fighting Fear: You Don’t Have to Go It Alone

October is a monster-y month. Halloween is right around the corner, and as the days get shorter you find yourself in the dark long before you thought you would. As the leaves turn and we start to dread the long grey UK winter, it’s a good time to reflect on the role fear plays in our lives.

Building local networks for better education: the Compass-NUT Inquiry

The relentless emphasis on the market and league tables, together with the uncoupling of schools, colleges and universities from local authority control over the last 20 years has created a fragmentation of local education services. That’s why we at Compass, in partnership with the National Union of Teachers, have been very busy over the last year conducting interviews, having seminars with students and experts as well as holding national and local events to get to the bottom of the question: How do we build a more equal and democratic model of education?