Social Worker Sharing

  I went for an opticians appointment this week and whilst they were doing the pre screening a box popped up on the screen to ask my ethnicity and the person immediately closed the box. I volunteered my ethnicity to her and she explained that she feels uncomfortable asking because you never know how someone will react and it got me thinking. Isn't it interesting what people see as difficult questions and what makes one person uncomfortable to ask wouldn't faze the next person. I personally am pretty comfortable asking most things and I am happy to answer questions about myself and parts of my identity that others would feel uncomfortable asking about. As part of our role we have to make sure that the person's record is up to date with all parts of their identity and some of those can be tricky to ask. People don't always feel comfortable asking about gender identity or sexual orientation. Through discussions at workshops I have attended people mainly found this ...

  One of the most frustrating things I have found so far about being a Social Worker is when you can see that someone has been let down and there is nothing you can do about it. I have been allocated a couple of cases recently where it feels like people have been left to slip through the cracks one way or another then by the time we get involved there have been sometimes months of worry and unnecessary stress that could have been alleviated if we had been allowed to be involved sooner. A lot of people who have never had the need for a Social Worker do not understand how the system works which makes sense but when they reach out for support that is what they should get and not feel like they have been fobbed off for one reason or another. The one that frustrates me the most is when they have a good amount of money in the bank which makes them a self-funder. In this instance they can make decisions about what they would like to do or where they would like to be without needing ...

  When you ask people why they became Social Workers the default answer is to help people and actually this is a smaller part of it than you think. It feels like we spend a lot of time managing things. Managing risk and managing care. Also we spend much more time than you would like doing paperwork. The important part of what we do is a small part of it. There are small shafts of light in the darkness which make our job worthwhile and when these become few and far between that is when people struggle with burnout. A bit like in your own life when you feel that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I have had two conversations this week that are those shafts of light. Actions that can seem like a small thing that have made a huge impact on someone's life. They are why I do what I do. One was a new case, family are concerned and have been waiting weeks for someone to be allocated. All I did today was call, introduce myself and arrange to go meet up them but you would ha...

We talk a lot in Social Work about the importance of communication and generally we are talking about the communication between us and the people we work with. Those who are also involved in the care of the people we support such as families. The thing that I find most frustrating is that this doesn't always happen when it should the most. I had a visit booked this week and when I arrived I was told that they were waiting for an ambulance to take the person I was going to see to hospital to be checked out. I am glad that they were doing what needed to be done for the person but found myself frustrated that nobody thought to give me a call, let me know they weren't themselves or tell me the reason why because I had travelled a long way to get to this visit only to pretty much turn around and travel back. This is time that I could have used to provide support for someone else that ended up wasted due to the simple lack of a phone call. I know people are busy but I felt t...

 After my recent return to work I have been catching up with everything. I went through the over 3000 emails I came back to and sorted all my IT issues. I am now back on the system and have cases allocated to me. This has meant that I feel more like I am back at work. One of the things I have had to do is update some documentation from cases I worked on before I went on maternity leave. I didn't expect this to have an impact on me but when I went to look at them and realised that of the four I need to update, two of them had passed away. This reminded me of the trickier side of our job, one of the people was someone I worked with for a long time and the first time I met them they were still at home with a package of care. I saw them go through all the stages that lead to the end of their life but was not there at the very end. It hit me hard when I saw this and found myself trying not to cry. I am quite an emotional person so me crying isn't a big shock but it just really ...