Everyone should feel like someone

I don’t know if other people have found this, but I feel like there is much more information out there about Social Work in regard to children than there is for adults. 

I feel that when doing my degree although we did a module in each, I feel like the information for children was much more in depth than it was for adults. I don’t know if this was just my specific module on my course or whether this is more universal, but I find that by the time I finished that module I knew the full section 47 process for children’s safeguarding concerns but for adults I feel like we only really knew what section covered it but not really what it looks like. I feel that in cases where there was the death of the child these were much more publicised that those of adults. Most people have heard of Peter Connolly (Baby P) or Victoria Climbie but I feel like if asked about deaths or serious harm of adults people would not be able to find the names as easily.

They may be able to mention situations such as Winterbourne View because these were so highly publicised at the time. A lot of people’s knowledge about Social Work and what we do comes from what they have read and people hear the term Social Worker and presume that we take people’s children away. I know a lot of Social Workers myself included that don’t work with children so I find it interesting that people presume that Social Worker automatically means children. Assumptions about Social Workers seem to come from people's own experiences with them, if they or someone they know have had a negative experience with a Social Worker a lot of the time they have decided they don’t like Social Workers. It does not matter who you are or why you are involved they have already decided based on your job title alone.

When on my first placement I was involved in running a group for people aged 14-25 and I remember the first session I was at, I introduced myself and explained that I was a Student Social Worker and the first comment I got was “I don’t like Social Workers” with no further explanation. What was interesting was as this person got to know me they opened up a bit more and made a comment that I found fascinating and that was “I wouldn’t have minded having you as a Social Worker”. This demonstrated to me that they had probably had one bad experience with a Social Worker and made a blanket assumption about all of them without any further knowledge and how building up good relationships with people can change their viewpoint.

It shows how important the relationship part of Social Work is. I love the quote that tells us that people will never remember what you say but they will always remember how you made them feel. I am sure that a lot of people can think back and remember that they didn’t like a particular teacher from school, but I bet a lot of them couldn’t tell you why anymore. They just know that something that person did made them feel a negative way about them. I think the same in true in Social Work. I have had people give me feedback about how I make them feel. I had one person early on tell me that they felt like a human in our conversation, this was the first time I had met them, and I had only been there five minutes. I came home and told my husband I’ve done it; I’ve done Social Work because to me that’s what its all about. We are all human and just because I have a title that gives me power doesn’t mean I want to make people feel like they have none.

Everyone should feel like someone.