TRIBUTE TO MURRAY RYBURN
Social policy and welfare academic, practitioner and family man
By Leonie Jordan and Kate Morris
Murray Ryburn, social worker, academic and family man, has died, after a hard fought battle with Motor Neurone Disease, on 10 October 2008 in Christchurch, New Zealand. Murray brought to the final chapter of his hugely productive life the courage, conviction and humour that he had shown in his professional life and his friendships. Murray’s work, much of it alongside FRG, in opening up the closed worlds of adoption and care planning was vitally important in changing UK policy and practice. Many parents in the UK today have connections, direct and indirect, with children whom they either gave up to adoption or who were adopted against their wishes, because of Murray’s commitment to fight against the traditional approaches to planning for children unable to live with their families.
Murray was born and grew up with three siblings, in Oamaru, New Zealand, the son of a Presbyterian Minister and a teacher in a family where a love of learning and social justice were part of everyday family life. He completed a first degree and Masters in History at Canterbury University. After practising in the probation services in New Zealand, Murray came in 1976 to England and began working in the emerging discipline of residential care for young women. This led him to undertake Masters degree in social policy at LSE, where he met his future wife, Liz Horner. By any measure, Murray was one of the most qualified practitioners in his field.
He then qualified and registered as a psychotherapist, although he continued to practice as a social worker in London in the field of adoption and care planning for children who had been removed from the care of their parents. Well ahead of the practice beliefs at that time, and sometimes impatient and frustrated with what he considered to be a lack of vision and moral conviction amongst welfare professionals and policy makers, Murray in his practice sought to find ways of keeping children and young people safely in their extended family network and, where this was not possible, to ensure that connections were established and supported between the child’s family and their new family.
He returned to NZ in 1983 to practise as a social worker in child welfare, adoption and relationship counselling with his wife, Liz, also a qualified social worker. There, he found care planning and adoption policy and practice was informed by a much more open approach, more in line with his beliefs; shared care of children within family networks and contact post adoption was not unusual. He began to write about his experiences and saw key changes in NZ social care practice which had begun to embrace models of family protection and resolution based on family meetings traditionally used by Maori families (whanau).
He returned to adoption practice in Croydon, England in 1988, and sought again to encourage professionals and policy makers to shift from the model of closed adoption where children did not sometimes have information about, let alone any form of contact with, members of their birth family after an adoption order was made. He began working with Family Rights Group, who were promoting ideas and policy about care planning and family involvement when a local authority intervened in a child’s life, ideas which became foundation principles in the Children Act 1989. Murray assisted Jo Tunnard, Celia Atherton, Mary Ryan, Sheila Macdonald and other colleagues to develop the guidance issued to support the interpretation of the legislation and also training which was rolled out on a national programme.
Murray introduced with Kate Morris, now at Birmingham University and who was then at FRG and other colleagues, the model of family group meetings with pioneering enthusiasm and energy. Together they organised people from NZ who had experienced this way of working in their own lives to come to England to share their knowledge and experiences. This model, which in various forms is now widely used by social workers in local authorities, aims to enable families to have an opportunity to make a plan to protect the well being of a child with support from service providers, a model which builds on family strengths with the professionals using their skills to support the family, not to take over decision making for them.
His quest for knowledge and growing interest in research and writing prompted him to join the academic world, taking up a lecturing post at Birmingham University in 1990. He was promoted to senior lecturer in 1994 and Director of Social Work courses. His students will remember how willing Murray was to challenge, to debate, to enable students to think for themselves, believing that this was an essential skill to avoid becoming overwhelmed in professional practice by procedures and ‘received wisdom’. Those who heard him lecturing whether to students, talking to family members or to large conferences were in awe of his ability to deliver both an erudite and practical analysis of research in considerable detail with no reference to notes, often illustrated with surprising and witty references to so called dysfunctional families who bore a close resemblance to the families of Presidents and other well known figures. Despite this busy schedule he continued to work with FRG, often joining colleagues to deliver training and present his vision at conferences.
Whilst at Birmingham University, he pursued his research and disseminated his findings, which laid the foundation for the significant revision of aspects of adoption law in this country, particularly in ideas of greater openness, the importance for the adopted child of continuity and connections between their birth and adoptive family. This work was aligned with the values and issues that Alison Richards and Bridget Lindley were pursuing at FRG. His work, Open Adoption; Research, Theory and Practice published in 1994 together with a second volume, Contested Adoption: Research, Law, Policy and Practice are seminal texts used by both students and practitioners today. He was a member of several key editorial boards, as well as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s research advisory group. He also acted as a persuasive and robust expert witness in adoption proceedings (often in cases were FRG had initially given advice to a birth parent) and assisted many parents to challenge what were, at times, ill thought through plans for children separated from their birth parents, their siblings and relatives. His writings in this field are used as seminal texts for all working in the field of adoption and social care.
Upon his return to NZ in 1998, Murray continued to act as an expert witness but his health deteriorated due to constant headaches which had plagued him for many years. These were unrelated to the later diagnosis of MND. Unable to concentrate at the level he required of himself in writing and teaching, he became the full time carer for his three children and used his considerable energy and creative talent on carpentry and building work, creating with his wife Liz, welcoming family homes, where visitors from many parts of the world found such warm hospitality.
Murray’s restless energy was balanced throughout his working and family life by the remarkable ability of his wife, Liz Ryburn, to hold the many strands together. His evident love for Liz, his three children and their family network were at the heart of everything he believed in and cared about.
Those of us who had the honour and the pleasure of working with Murray have abiding memories of how much we learnt from him, how truly exciting it was to work with him – often the contents of the training course would come together on the helter skelter journey to the venue – and how we were challenged in the best way possible to excel in order to ‘keep up’ with his energy and his vast and deep knowledge of issues in social care practice. At a time when professional practice is under such scrutiny and when families may well in the end be the ones to lose out if ill considered and hasty proposals are pushed through, campaigning organisations such as FRG are absolutely central. The cool and principled wisdom of Murray Ryburn, which was so valuable to FRG, will be much missed.
In an early work he wrote about adoption practice, Murray and his co writer Jenny Rockel set out in the frontspiece a tenet which encapsulates Murray’s connection to his country’s heritage and to his quest for knowledge and understanding.
‘Nga taonga o nga tupuna tukua iho kia koe
The treasures of your ancestors must be passed on to you’
In the goodbyes he said to everyone he loved, his concerns were that we lived life well and that the principles that informed everything he did continued after he had gone. He sought to live life well and to die well – although he recognised himself that this was ‘a big ask’, but with the support of his family he has managed both.