Social Worker Sharing

  When working in Social Work we don’t do it for the positive comments because if we did, we would be sorely disappointed. There is a lot of assumptions made about Social Workers and what we do. I have found that when I say that I am a Social Worker people automatically assume that I work with children. The media show that Social Workers remove children, and some people genuinely believe that they are paid for doing so. Like they get some kind of bonus based on it. That is probably the furthest thing from Social Work values that could happen. Social Work values focus on social justice and improved outcomes. Social Workers don’t want to remove children from their families but if it is the best thing for them and the only option at that moment then that is what they are going to do because the child in that instance is the focus and at the centre not the parents. I see similar experiences when working with adults where family members believe that someone should be in care but...

  Social work is a balancing act. Not in a literal sense but definitely in a metaphorical plate spinning way. We balance our case load, our diary, training, self-improvement, meetings, and the needs of people. When we are working with someone we are also working with the family, carer, or care provider. This can make situations trickier because what the family think a person need does not always match up with what the person wants. It can be incredibly frustrating and that can be directed at us a lot of the time. Usually this is nothing personal they are just frustrated with a difficult process that they don’t necessarily always understand, and you are the face that they put on that. You are the person representing that agency therefore it becomes your fault. Even when it’s not. I have had many conversations about whether someone has capacity. This is usually one person saying they do and someone else saying they don’t. I always explain that it is not a blanket statement,...

  I had prepared a topic I was going to talk about this week and then something that happened this week changed my mind. The team I work in the cases I work on are generally on my case loads for a few months and then closed. There will always be outliers to that which are there a little longer but that has been my experience so far. I have one person I have been working with for approximately 5 months and I went to visit them this week. This is the fourth time I have seen them due to hospitalisations and periods of time where we were seeing how everything was working before reviewing the situation. The difficultly is that in that time this person is not the same anymore. When I first got involved, we were organising a move from their own home with a care package to an extra care scheme because they needed just a bit more than could be managed at home. They are now in a nursing home being nursed in bed and requiring 24-hour support. I work in a team where we support a lot ...