Skip to main content

About Me

My photo
Natalie
My name is Natalie, I started this blog as a Newly Qualified Social Worker working with adults. I have now progressed to a level 3 Social Worker and want to continue sharing my experiences.

The point of Social Work


As I explained in a previous blog I am currently working on a project separate from my team. I have really enjoyed this but it has feel a step away from Social Work even though I am completing Care Act Assessments as I would be in my normal job and asking the same questions. I think because there has been a time crunch on the project it has meant that I have been getting the information quicker and then getting everything processed. Which has been the best for the people in the situation but has meant there has been less opportunity to relationship build.

I have enjoyed working on this project up to now and it is coming to the end of the process and I am looking forward to going back to my own team. I have found that when visiting people for the odd cases I am still holding in my own team I have really enjoyed the opportunity to relationship build and support people in a more holistic way as opposed to working through a process to be completed as soon as possible.

It has made me realise how much I enjoy long term work and although short term is enjoyable I would not want that to be my job long term. I like to get to know the person, visit numerous times and view them in a more holistic way. It allows you to delve deeper into whether what they have got at present is working or is something needs to be changed. It also means that you can identify other support they may require, either paid or from the community because it gives them a chance to discuss with you other aspects of their lives.

I find that it also gives the chance to get to know the family and provide them with any required support. There have been occasions where although the initial visit was focused on issues with a care provider through having an in depth discussion I recognised that this person also needed mental health support and some social relationships. This allowed me to look at options that provide this and refer them for counselling and provide information on local groups that could be of interest to them. The person was so grateful I was given really good feedback and to me that was a standard visit and viewing someone holistically.

This is a big part of Social Work practice that I feel like I have been missing at the moment and look forward to getting back to.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Racism

The topic of this blog is going to be racism. As I am sure you can tell from the picture on my profile I am a white woman so I am not necessarily the best person to be writing about this topic but I wanted to give some musings following a recent conference I attended where the focus was all about racism. We did an activity to help us recognise our own privilege. I was sat with colleagues from multiple different cultures and countries. Throughout the activity I was completing my own but also watching how other people were responding to it. It was a list of scenarios or situations and if it was relevant to you then you had to add something to a bag. There was a list of approximately 25 statements. I think I added 6 to my bag but I watched as colleagues added easily double if not triple the amount that I did. I found that it made my heart feel heavy because although I know I have privilege for some aspects of my identity there are some aspects where I do not. I could see people speci...
2 comments
Read more

Poverty

I knew I wanted to write about poverty for this blog and had already started writing it when someone mentioned to me on a training course about being anti racist that one of the chapters in the anti-racist social worker in practice book is about the link between racism and poverty. I did not want to write about poverty without thinking about the connection or different experiences people can have due to other factors and how the same as other characteristics about people can link via Intersectionality poverty is something that will be experienced differently based on characteristics such as race. Within that chapter it talks about the changes to tax benefits from a survey completed in 2023 by We Are Citizens Advice which shows how different families are impacted money wise. I was extremely surprised that black families are impacted by over triple the amount of white families and Asian families almost double the amount of white families. I understand that we are in a cost of livin...
1 comment
Read more

Burnout

Well the I suppose you'd call it inevitable happened. I hit burnout. It's why there hasn't been a blog for a couple of months. I did not have the brain power to think about anything more than day to day survival and to be honest even that was a struggle. When joining the profession, training, on placement and in pretty much every form of media related to Social Work you regularly hear the word burnout but it does not really describe how it actually feels so I am going to do just that. Firstly let me start by talking about the lead up to the actual time off because this was not something that had happened overnight. It is something I believe was beyond the surface for months beforehand. I had people relying on me though so I just pushed it to the back, took on extra responsibilities to distract myself and probably made it all worse if I'm being honest. I noticed months ago that I felt to be falling out of love with front line Social Work. I wasn't sure if I n...
Post a Comment
Read more