Cliff let go of the constraints that hold many psychologists and therapists back right at the beginning of his career when he plunged himself into developing a school in Ukraine. Find out how he did it, what it took and how that experience shaped his career from learning disabilities to management consultancy in this episode.
Cliff is a great example of a psychologist who was willing to step outside of the "normal" roles in order to make a change he saw was needed in the world.
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Setting up a school in the UkraineRosie:
Today I'm speaking to Cliff Hawkins, a clinical psychologist, who over the past 35 years, has had an awe inspiring, diverse career. Just going through his CV it's clear that doing more than therapy has been central to his career from the beginning, and is so much that I think we could all learn from. So I'm just going to jump in and welcome Cliff Hawkins to the podcast. Hi Cliff.
Cliff:
Thank you very much. Thank you Rosie.
Rosie:
So thank you so much for coming on today Cliff. Over the last 35 years you've done some really cool stuff. So if you had to pick just one thing that you've done, what would you say has been the most professionally fulfilling part of your career?
Cliff:
To me, undoubtedly it was having the opportunity to be involved in opening Ukraine's first school for children with severe learning disabilities, shortly after Ukraine separated from the Soviet Union.
Rosie:
Wow, that's an amazing thing to be part of. How on earth did you get into that?
Cliff:
Well, I was very lucky. I was working at the Institute of Psychiatry at the time, with Professor Bill [Euele 00:01:00] and a couple of Ukrainian parents had come to England, to the Institute of Psychiatry, to seek a diagnosis for their young daughter. And I was asked to work with them clinically, and it became clear that when they went back to Ukraine, their child wouldn't be entitled to any support whatsoever, would be excluded from school.
Cliff:
And so Bill [Euele 00:01:26] and I thought, "Well, we need to do something to help here." So we started off by raising money, and quickly we realized that money wasn't sufficient, that what they needed was some help in setting up a school, which would effectively be a private school. And so what I did was, went to Ukraine and started giving lectures at the Institute of Psychology there, about special education in the UK.
Cliff:
And what I learned very quickly was that our task wasn't to replicate a British system of special education in Ukraine. That would be akin to cultural fascism. Rather, what we needed to do, was to help Ukrainian parents develop a Ukrainian system, that could draw on the rich heritage of Russian psychology, as well as the ideas that we'd learned in British psychology.
Rosie:
I mean, that's just amazing on so many levels. To start with, obviously I can imagine thinking "We need to raise some money for this issue." But then how did you take the next steps, when you realized that wasn't going to be adequate, how did you make the links that you needed even?
Cliff:
By firstly raising money to fly me out to Ukraine. This was in the context of the Soviet Union had just ended. Ukraine was in turmoil. Everyone was very optimistic about the future. However, at that particular point, the Ukrainian economy had gone into meltdown, and government systems had gone into meltdown as well.
Cliff:
Luckily, universities hadn't. They were starting to be very keen on inviting westerners to come over and talk about western science, and particularly psychology. And what I found was that there were many Ukrainian psychologists who were very keen on a non-medical approach to special education, and to special needs in general, because previously psychiatry had been the...