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 Ukraine

Rosie:

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 dominant model. And thankfully from our point of view, psychiatry had been completely discredited, because of psychiatrist's collusion with state sponsored detention with people in psychiatric hospitals.

Cliff:

So many of the parents of children I was working with, I was told those parents were simply not prepared to have their child see a psychiatrist, but because clinical psychology was virtually unknown, they didn't mind seeing a clinical psychologist, and so we were able to fill that vacuum.

Rosie:

Wow. What a context. At that time, how did that compare to the context you were working under in this country?

Cliff:

Well, it was surreal. I was working at that point in the NHS actually, with adults with learning disabilities, in a regular NHS job. Following normal NHS rules, and all the benefits and costs that that implied. And then I was working in, effectively a wild west scenario in Ukraine, where normal rule of law didn't apply. Bribery was the way to get things done. At that point, I didn't speak a word of Russian, so I was reliant on interpreters, and not always sure how far I could trust either the interpreter's ability, or their motives. And so it was a real contrast.

Cliff:

But what I found was that the confidence I learned from making things happen in Ukraine, then transferred to other areas of my professional, and indeed my personal life, that I thought "Well if I can achieve this, I can achieve anything."

Rosie:

Yeah, I bet. Because often when I speak to other psychologists in this country, and we're trying to set things up, we're trying to get things moving. The red tape is really intimidating, and sometimes you just feel like, "I just don't even understand commissioning enough to actually put forward an idea." Right? But actually you did that in a system where you didn't speak the language, you didn't have the cultural references. So I suppose we should probably stop moaning.

Cliff:

We found whiskey was the way to cut through the red tape. Scotch whiskey was very, very expensive on the black market, and we found that bottles of scotch whiskey miraculously enabled things to happen. So I don't know if that would work in the NHS.

Rosie:

I don't know. I mean, I haven't tried it. Yeah, so that sounds like an amazing experience, but certainly must've been an intimidating one. How did you feel flying out with that mission in your mind?

Cliff:

My first thought, the first time I flew out was, "I can't speak the language." Like most people of my generation, I knew nothing about Russia or the Soviet Union, other than cossack hats and bears. I bought myself a tape, Teach Yourself Russian, a couple of weeks before I went, and it didn't work at all. I still couldn't speak a word of Russian. So on the flight I was desperately reading Teach Yourself Russian books, and thinking, "Well, this isn't going to work."

Cliff:

And what I learned was that didn't matter, that my training as a clinical psychologist meant that body language was key. So often, if I was interviewing a parent of a child with a learning disability, I would often have an interpreter of sorts there. However, what I found was that by focusing on the parent, I'd pick up the odd word, and there were more similarities than differences in how that parent was talking. So over time, I found that I could learn the keywords, and that my clinical psychology training was sufficient. That I could get the message from what the parent was saying, or the grandparents. In that society, often the grandparent, or the grandmother, is the key carer, rather than the mother.

Rosie:

Gosh, I mean, that's really inspiring to me, particularly, because of my husband's job, we're moving to Turkey for a couple of years.

Cliff:

Oh right.

Rosie:

Yeah. And I'm not going to work clinically in Turkey. I'll still be carrying on my online practice, but I've been trying to learn the language, using the Rosetta Stone, and there's just something missing isn't there? There's no human. And I have been saying to my husband optimistically, that I feel like I'll pick it up more when I can see somebody speaking it to me. I'm very comforted by your story, because you went out there and did something amazing and ambitious. My only hope is to survive. And so if you can do that, maybe I can survive it.

Rosie:

So you must've had no idea really how this was going to end up when you were first going out there. How did things take shape? What was the timeline?

Cliff:

Things took a lot longer than we expected, because of the collapse of Ukrainian economy. So we raised quite a lot of money in the UK. People running the London Marathon, and so on. And what we did was we enabled a group of teachers and parents to open a school in a disused school building. So it was effectively a private school.

Cliff:

We raised the money to pay the teacher's salaries, and we paid them in US dollars, which gave us a massive advantage. So we were able to poach teachers from the state sector, who were being paid in the local money, which was becoming worthless because of hyperinflation. So a comparatively small amount of US dollars went a long, long way.

Cliff:

At the Institute of Psychiatry, we set up a charity specific to this project, and initially we thought we would support it for five years financially, and in terms of expertise. We didn't want this to be a British school. We wanted it to be supporting a Ukrainian school. What we found though, was that as the five years were coming to an end, the school still wasn't able to be self sufficient financially. So we carried on supporting it, and we set ourselves an absolute deadline of 10 years, and we stuck to that. So at the end of 10 years we pulled out completely.

Cliff:

And I'm still in contact with people in the school. I'm still friends with many of the people, and the school is still going. It's thriving, and it's a Ukrainian school. It's not a British school. And we're very pleased about that.

Rosie:

That's amazing, that's amazing.

Cliff:

Though I have no formal contact. Excuse me?

Rosie:

I was just saying, I'm not surprised that the timeline had to be extended a bit. But I love the fact that you were flexible with that. Flexible enough to be like, "This is still the goal. This is still what we want. But actually it needs a bit more nurture. It needs a bit more time, before we can set it free," in that way.

Rosie:

So for that five year period, were you out there the whole time?

Cliff:

No, no. I would go out typically for a couple of weeks at a time. By this stage I'd left the Institute of Psychiatry. I was working in the NHS full time. And luckily that employer was very good at giving me study leave, and I used all my annual leave of course, and would typically be there for a week or two at a time. Often taking other colleagues, professionals with me, psychologists, speech and language therapists, OTs.

Cliff:

And then when I was in the UK I'd be cutting lots of links. There weren't good computer links at that point. A lot of the contact had to be either by telephone, or fax. That was in the very early days of email. And so I would be project managing from the UK, and then going there to Ukraine whenever I needed to. And also as it turned out, then going to other former Soviet countries to learn from what they were doing.

Cliff:

Some former Soviet countries were further ahead, in terms of special education, and clearly it was going to be more useful for Ukraine to make links with, for example, Belarus and Lithuania, than it was to always be dependent on a distant country such as the UK.

Rosie:

Wow. I mean what really strikes me, from what you've said so far, is that you had a very, what I would call even now, progressive mindset in that, I think when I think back to that period, because this was the early nineties.

Cliff:

Yes. Early to mid nineties, yeah.

Rosie:

So in my household we didn't have a computer. Wouldn't even have thought about having a computer, in fact. I think my parents knew what they were, but that's about it. So the idea that you would do something as ambitious as starting relationships in different countries, and introducing people to each other, and setting up a network in that way. Did you have a background that put you in that mindset?

Cliff:

I don't think so. What we found was that the former Soviet countries were way ahead of the UK, in terms of understanding of things such as email, and the possibilities. So the first emails was I was getting, were from colleagues in former Soviet countries, not from the UK, or from the US.

Cliff:

And I think in the UK, because certainly people in my generation had a stereotype of Russia and the Soviet Union. That stereotype is a stereotype, and in fact the Soviet Union and Soviet countries put a lot of store by science, much more so than in the UK. A scientist is a term of respect in former Soviet countries, whereas in the UK it usually suggests someone who's a bit wacky, a bit weird.

Rosie:

Yes. I've noticed that actually. I did some research in the Czech Republic when I was there.

Cliff:

Oh yes.

Rosie:

And when I arrived they had a little sign for me and my colleague that said, "Welcome rockstar scientists."

Cliff:

Right, right, yes.

Rosie:

I feel that you wouldn't see that in the UK. Probably the favourite label I've ever been given.

The kick to do something different in clinical psychology

Cliff:

I think what I did bring was a mistrust of working within the system. It seemed to me that to be a truly effective clinical psychologist, it was necessary to work outside the system, as well as within the system, to not be constrained, not to be a drone, if you like.

Cliff:

I think that many clinical psychologists are constrained, by definition, where intelligent people, to have got over the various hurdles to qualify. And then I think particularly the NHS can constrain us, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally, so that we're not making the most of our gifts.

Rosie:

I think that's true actually. I think I didn't particularly want to go into private practice when I did. It was life circumstances for me dictated it. But, and I thought it was just going to be terrifying, frankly, at the beginning. But what I found about a year in, is I started to find my creativity with it, and I started to really enjoy the fact that I was like, "I think we need a group. Oh, I'll do a group."

Rosie:

And it was like, "Oh, there's no layers of approval." I mean sure, I still do service evaluation of my own, but there's not that extra layer of scrutiny that can sometimes be a bit oppressive. But it does usually take a bit of a kick for a lot of us NHS psychologists to start thinking like that.

Rosie:

So where did your kick come from? Because it seems like you had it so early in your career?

Cliff:

I think I was lucky, in that I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a psychologist, from the age of 15. And in those days being a psychologist was most definitely a wacky idea. And I remember the school I went to was a very old fashioned traditional, boys only school. And I remember our headmaster with the boys who he thought were promising, he would have an interview with each of us.

Cliff:

And I remember him saying to me, "Well Hawkins, what do you want to do when you leave school?" And I said, "Well, I'm going to become a psychologist." And he just looked at me and said, "But you could have a really good career. You could be a doctor, or a lawyer." Because in those days, being a psychologist was just a bizarre concept. So because I decided so young, I didn't know there were different types of psychologists, and I didn't know who employed them.

Cliff:

Because I'd read some psychology books, I just thought this sounds like an interesting thing to do. And so I never really had the concept that I had to work in a particular way. I just thought, "Well, as long as I'm using psychology then that's fine."

Cliff:

And coming back to what you were saying, Rosie, about private practice, the work in Ukraine, of course I wasn't earning any money. In fact, over time it was costing me money, but what I gained from that was far more important. And I think for me, private practice might be about making more money, might be about making less money. It might be about making no money at all. But it does enable that freedom, that sometimes people find they don't get enough of, working for the state.

Rosie:

And that's another thing that I think came through in that story, was that although you weren't doing it for profit, you weren't money minded about it for your personal gain, you had to use money, to get the job done. That sustainability was a big part of how that project grew.

Cliff:

Yes, because I was representing a UK charity, and so we had to follow UK charity laws. Unfortunately that didn't necessarily chime well with the Ukrainian way of doing business, where I would often be looking at Ukrainian accounts and thinking, "Well where's this money gone?" Knowing full well it had gone in bribes. And thinking "Well I can't tell the UK charity, this is the money we've spent on bribes." So I was having to reconcile different ways of operating different cultures, if you like.

Rosie:

That sounds like a massive challenge. I mean I would ask how you overcame it, but I don't know, can you answer that?

Cliff:

Well I think we just put down amounts for salaries, which was true. The amount that people were paid was sometimes not the amount that they received, for various reasons. And what also had to do was to make sure that the Ukrainian people were writing the accounts, in a way that were decipherable in the UK. So we had to make the two cultures match. And luckily the charity, the UK charity trustees were very sympathetic and understandable, and understanding, and so they helped us make things work.

Taking a new direction. What is management consultancy and how can psychologists do it well?

Rosie:

I mean there's just so many reasons that that project was improbable, that the success of that was unlikely. And it's just really inspiring to hear how you pushed through all of those barriers. I mean, looking at your CV, I can see that you've got qualifications in business, that those [inaudible 00:18:35] data.

Rosie:

So what inspired you to study? I think it was with the Open University, where I also have studied.

Cliff:

Right, right.

Rosie:

So what inspired you to study business with the OU?

Cliff:

Well, partly because of the work in Ukraine. I realized that I could be a project manager, and I enjoyed project management, and it seemed to be something I was reasonably competent at doing. And so a few years later I saw an advert in what was then the BPS Appointments memorandum, asking for associates to do management consultancy. And by then I was head of a psychology department in the NHS.

Cliff:

So I thought, "Well I'll give this a go." And it was a company called Organisation Resource Limited, and they were a company set up by clinical psychologists to work in business. And they took me on as an associate, applying clinical psychology