Social Worker Sharing

  It can be very difficult especially in the early days of being a Social Worker to realise that no matter what you offer or do for someone it may still not be enough. The longer you are in the role the more you learn ways to come to terms with it or manage your own feelings on the subject. It is definitely still not easy. We come into Social Work initially to help people or when we very first apply we think we are coming in to save them. We are coming to make everything better, to swoop in and fix everything. This is definitely not the case. I have sat on panels interviewing for Social Work students to get on the course at my local higher education university and these are the types of things that you hear people say. That and the word vulnerable quite a lot which is an entirely other topic that I have also written a blog about. As I mentioned in a previous blog I am now classed as an experienced Social Worker so that has meant that I get allocated more complex cases includ...

Well it is finally happening. I have just finished my Practice Educator training this week. On day 2 of the training we talked a lot about values and we did an interesting exercise which got you thinking about your own value base but also what you prioritise most. We started with more options then narrowed it down and I found this actually quite difficult to do because although it was just crossing out a choice it made me feel like I was losing a part of myself. Obviously I know that is not what it actually did but that is how it felt to do it. It felt like forgetting or deciding that a value I hold close my heart is not as important as something else. We got into some very interesting discussions about how what we prioritise value wise changes depending on where we are in our lives and how what we chose now is not what we would have chosen 5 years ago and is probably not what we would choose 5 years plus into the future. Obviously values are a big part of Social Work as they ar...

 I know I missed last month and that is because I had a loss in my family and did not have the brain power to write a blog at the time, when my head was already overwhelmed. Something had to fall by the wayside and the blog was it last month. I have been supporting my mum through a lot of the aftermath, the processes that need to be followed and the aspects of it that are extremely tricky depending on what documentation exists out there. I know that we advocate for advanced decision making, RESPECT forms and Not for resuscitation but something that I found had made this whole process more difficult is the lack of an up to date will. It causes unnecessary difficulties for those left behind who are trying to sort out funerals, property and other aspects of planning when additional meetings are required to sort out things that would have been much easier had they been done beforehand. I see a lot of people on our list who are on Goldline which is our local support for people dee...

I attended a very interesting full day of training this week and although there was a lot of information included that I could write about I am going to specifically focus on an activity we did that was linked to the wheel of power. For those people that have not heard of the wheel of power, which I will be honest I hadn't until this course it is a wheel that looks at different aspects of identity such as gender, wealth, race etc and demonstrates that those who in the centre of the wheel hold power based on that particular characteristic or aspect of their identity and that those on the outer edges are marginalised. I got into an interesting conversation about this with someone who is outside of the Social Work world afterwards who based on the categories on this wheel has the power in 8 out of 12 categories. They commented on the fact that they do not feel they have privilege or power based on these. I explained how that is because they have not had the experiences that othe...

How would you like to be told to make a decision without all the relevant information? How would you like it if someone made a decision for you and didn't even ask you what you thought? How would you like it if someone disregarded what you wanted because it was easier for them? I would be angry, frustrated, sad, upset and many other emotions but there are so many conversations that happen in Social Work specifically with older people where we are told that they need something because family would find it easier not necessarily because it is what is best for the person. I have had cases where people don't really want me there because they hold Power of Attorney and have already made a decision. I have explained more times than I can count that Power of Attorney for Health and Welfare only kicks in or becomes active when someone loses capacity to make the specific decision. It does not allow you to make decisions for someone who has the capacity to make it for themselves. I...

  I had a conversation with a colleague the other day about how our experiences can impact our practice. We were talking specifically about safeguarding cases and if you are someone who has ever experienced an abusive situation how you would manage this. We talked about other scenarios and I gave the example that when I first started on my final placement in a hospital team it was around the time of the anniversary of losing my grandma so I remember talking to my practice educator in the first couple of weeks of placement about how I thought I would struggle with taking cases where someone had the same medical experience as she did because it would potentially be triggering for me at that time. It felt good to not only be able to have those conversations with someone who was so supportive but reflecting back on it the fact that I was able to recognise that for myself was so important to my development. Obviously we can't always avoid something we would struggle with but it i...