While I was thinking about VRCs, I re-read this post of Dan’s about how specialising in the problems of Irish immigrants was no longer as good a career move for a north London social worker as it had been in – say – 1981, although I think what he meant with regard to the date was “when he moved to Camden”.
Looking back, it’s ironic and probably inevitable that this post appeared on the 22nd of November, 2008, just as the hypothetical social worker’s career prospects were about to be dramatically revived, before presumably running into the cuts wall a couple of years later. History makes fools of us all.
Geography, however, is the original time machine; it wasn’t at all clear to me, over the Camden-Islington border in Holloway, that Islington Council could do without another social worker specialising in the problems of Irish immigrants, and it’s even less so now.