Lived experience reflections - brutal workplace racist attack shared by our Founder June Symonds

Racism can cause appalling harm. It can put lives at risk. At last Thursday’s Community Anti-Racism Conference in Horsham, West Sussex, I shared my experience of a brutal workplace attack many years ago during my social work practice. Thank you to Vivian Okeze-Tirado and VOT Inclusive Communities CIC for creating space for honest reflection, powerful learning and a commitment to change. As a Social Worker and Founder of Kind Ambition, I want my experience to encourage learning, rather than condemnation. That learning requires us to acknowledge the harm and examine how our services can better protect children and those supporting them. As I shared reflections from lived experience, I reflected that, had crucial information from the young person’s chronology been shared and carefully considered in the risk assessment, the attack could have been prevented. My reflections call on services to: • Provide a full, accurate chronology: ensure those responsible for a child’s care receive the relevant history, known risks and significant information they need, promptly and securely. • Understand the child’s experiences: consider both what has happened to them and what has been missing, including safety, nurturing relationships and consistent care. • Translate information into therapeutic support: use that understanding to shape compassionate, trauma-informed care tailored to the child. • Recognise and address racism: take racist attitudes, incidents and threats seriously, including their implications for risk assessment and safety planning. • Protect those providing care: equip practitioners, foster carers and other caregivers with the information, supervision and practical support needed to work safely. My sincere thanks to Sarah Dillon for granting permission for her poem, Make This Make Sense, to be shared, and to Janice Whyne for reading it so movingly. Sarah’s poem reinforces why understanding a child’s world yesterday matters to their care today. Without that knowledge, children can miss out on the trauma-informed, therapeutic support they need, while those caring for them can face risks they have not been equipped to recognise or manage. Children deserve informed, compassionate care. Those providing that care deserve safety. We must act so that no other social care practitioner goes through what I went through. My lived experience, alongside other personal and professional experiences, is central to why we do the work we do at Kind Ambition. We encourage reflection on ourselves and our practice, strengthen cultural awareness and responsiveness, promote anti-racist practice, and build partnerships that protect children, strengthen families and support those who care for them. It is time to have the uncomfortable conversations. It is time to reflect. It is time to turn learning into changes in our practice. It is time for humanity to inspire a kinder world. There is no place for racism in our society. Thank you