Social Worker Sharing

  The Christmas period is an interesting one because people will tell others “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”, but we don’t always know how people feel about this time of year. Most of the conversations this time of year as people break up for their holidays is positive, hope you have a nice time. That kind of thing. For some people Christmas might be the worst time of year for them. Especially when we think about Social Work, the main group of people I support are older people a lot of who live alone. Some are fortunate and have family nearby who will be visiting but for others this may be a long, lonely time because places close for Christmas. The clubs they usually attend once a week might not be on because the people who run it want their own time off for Christmas. This can leave people feeling really lonely and could potentially cause them to feel quite low in mood so the positivity that we try to have when we are finishing for Christmas might actually just make them...

  Safeguarding is something that underpins all Social Work practice regardless of what area of Social Work you are in. It is drilled into you throughout your studies and although I don’t work in children’s services, I still know exactly which section of which law it is. There are a million different ways we safeguard the people we support. It can be higher level at risk of harm or neglect, or it may be that they need money for heating so that they can survive. It could be that their child takes £200 every time they visit and the difficulties in situations like this is that the person may be happy with that and if they have the capacity to decide that then it is not up to up to say otherwise. I have heard a lot of examples of situations where it is financial, but the person is happy with that, I have experienced these types of safeguarding situations myself. I have been fortunate that because I am still new to this I have yet to experience a high-level safeguarding situation whi...

  I recently wrote a post on here about carers and how they are unsung heroes. I got some feedback from that blog post which asked me to discuss some more specifics about this so I will give it a try. I am not currently, or have I ever been what I would classify as a carer for anyone so some of this is my opinion or how I think something will impact. Some of the information comes from a fact sheet about carers which I will link at the end of the blog if you want to read into it a bit further. I think the first thing it is important to explain is what makes someone a carer? To be someone’s carer you don’t have to be the person getting them washed and dressed in a morning, they can have paid carers coming in to support with that and you can still be their carer. You might organise their care package and look after their money for them, you are still a carer. You might keep them company because you are worried about them being on their own, in your eyes you are visiting a parent but ...

  I find it really interesting that in Social Work we talk so often about everyone being an individual and we look at people’s strengths whereas when we are children in school, we are expected from a young age to fit into a specific box and be able to do Maths and English for example. When I was in a training session this week, they had set a multiple intelligence survey for us to complete before the next session that is usually used with children to establish what areas they are smart in. It refers to 8 different things, all of which bring in the different aspects of someone’s personality so if you are really good at music you would be seen as music smart or if you are really good at Maths you would be math or logic smart. I like the approach that this takes because I feel that it recognises that everyone has their own strengths, and it is not the same for everyone. They say that anyone who completes it will have 3 areas that stand out for them and that’s what happened with ...