Critical Conversations with Dr Sue Robson

Introduction 

We recently hosted our very first in-person ‘Critical Conversations’ series at our new office in Holborn. This series aims to bring women from the women’s sector together to discuss timely and thought-provoking topics that often go unspoken or overlooked. For each session, we will invite a speaker to lead the discussion from a position of expertise, then encourage others to share their thoughts and experiences.  

The first session exceeded expectations with the brilliant Dr Sue Robson delivering an emotive and insightful presentation about her life’s work as an academic, researcher and community development practitioner. She explored how we can deconstruct a ‘professional’ model of working and relate to women in a different way – not as ‘clients’ or ‘service-users’ or as ‘women that need help from an expert’. Rather, she is advocating for a more equal and reciprocal relationship where all parties have something of themselves to share and experiences to learn from. Sue is interested in models of working that seek to break down the barriers between us, in order to foster trust, nurturing, empowerment and solidarity.  

Click here for more information about Sue's work at Tina's Haven.

Background 

Tina’s Haven was established in September 2022 by a group of practitioners wanting to work with women considered ‘complex’ who have ultimately been traumatised and subsequently neglected by the state. Sue defines Tina’s Haven not as an organisation, but as a “catalyst for emancipatory practice for mothers severed from their children from trauma-based addiction”. Multi-disciplinary practices such as trauma-informed, arts and nature-based, were combined to create a holistic and emancipatory model. Tina’s Haven worked with 28 women who were homeless at the time, 70% of whom were birth mothers severed from their children. Tina’s Haven is based on a re-wilded farm in the Northeast, which is a crucial component of women’s healing journeys, enabling them to establish a deep connection to nature and its liberatory potential. Their initial 5 weeks of work culminated in a public photography exhibition.

Owing to Sue’s determination to disrupt and overcome class-based models of professionalism and practice, Tina’s Haven served as a sort of ‘liminal space’. One in which self-determination and agency were central to the practice of recovery and healing. Critical to this was disrupting the notion of professionalism by the practitioners. So, instead of 'rational' detachment and ensuring an absence of emotion and feeling, practitioners were encouraged to centre the self in their practice, creating a more equal relationship between the practitioner and the woman accessing the service. The deconstruction of the power dynamic between the groups enabled a deeper connection across all the women in the space. It also created moments of possibility to break, what Sue refers to as, “naive consciousness”, which is a state of solitude in which women are unable to recognise their experience as structurally rooted and intrinsically connected. Sue spoke of “critical incidents” that often occur that disrupt naive consciousness. Critical incidents can happen in storytelling between women when they share similar experiences of gender-based trauma, thus enabling women to recognise their experience within a wider culture of violence against women and girls as opposed to an individual experience in which fault and blame are oftentimes internalised. The practitioners being open, centring love, emotion and passion, and sharing their own stories allows for a deeper connection between all the women. It also rejects the possibility of superiority or inferiority complexes that often arise in dominant class-based models of professionalism. This also results in a transformational experience for the practitioners, too.  

Sue and the other practitioners discovered a natural desire in the women to share their stories in an effort to be heard and understood, perhaps for the first time. The key themes that arose from these stories included childhood trauma, violence and substance misuse in teenage years (accompanied by a huge stigma attached to women), family estrangement, poor relationships with other women, and victim blaming.