Love is an action and in professional helping, or when helping a friend or family member, it involves a range of capacities and values. This podcast focusses on the key ability of the non-judgmental attitude. In social work, a seminal text on the casework relationship by Felix Biestek (1957) was where I learnt about this professional attitude. However, lately I’ve been pondering whether I have actually helped anyone during my career and how hard it is to even bear this thought. I went back to Biestek’s ideas to clarify a long held belief in this idea of the non-judgmental attitude to see if I could improve my understanding of its relevance all these years later. It has remained puzzling to me how we do a lot of judging and evaluating in helping yet are meant to be non-judgmental.

The podcast refers to relevant parts of Biestek’s book which provides a still useful definition and some insights into why it matters and how it is similar to acceptance. Interestingly, he defines acceptance in turn as a ‘special kind of love’ and thereby makes the link for me between the non-judgmental attitude and acceptance as love informed skills. I outline some ways to practice from a non-judging approach such as non-judgmental listening; self and societal awareness to ensure biases and prejudices don’t unwittingly seep into our interactions, and; understanding the socio-political and economic factors. These factors can create circumstances not of a person’s choosing and not under their full control to change. Thus, to judge the person by blaming or shaming them can cause a lot of harm and detract from our intentions of helping.

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