Social Worker Sharing

This blog follows on from my last one about racism so if you have not read that one I recommend reading it first. That talks about my observations and discussions with colleagues. In this blog I want to think a bit more about racism but in terms of how embedded it is into society and what can we do to advocate for or be an ally to people who experience it as well as further observations on information I have learnt since I wrote the previous blog. Since I wrote the last blog I attended a session with Dr Prospera Tedam which focused on how we can build anti-racist practice cultures in Social Work. Some of the points she made were extremely interesting but also made me think deeper about my own practice and approaches that I have seen within Social Work. You would think as a profession who are so focused on Human Rights, Equality, Values and Ethics that racism or discrimination would not be a problem within teams whereas some of the statistics discussed in this session highlight th...

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...

Following on from my last blog I wanted to continue the conversation about language but explore another aspect of it. It can be easy to speak in jargon and have to correct yourself to explain what you are talking about. I have noticed this more recently because I am a workplace supervisor for a student and I find myself talking about something then realise that the acronyms and terminology are such second nature that I do not realise that I am not explaining things correctly and end up starting again. It reminded me of when I first started my placement and I did not know what most of these terms meant. I created a document of acronyms so that I could refer to it when I did not understand what had been documented in notes or told to me in an email. I had got to the point where I thought I knew most of the terms but then recently I have had emails containing terms that I still don't know. I think sometimes when people work in different fields such as medical based they can forge...

  As I am sure you are aware it is pride month and I was having an interesting conversation the other day about how we bring up topics such as sexual orientation, pronouns, gender identity and sexuality with the people we support. As I have mentioned in previous blogs the cases I work on in my team are predominantly older people and I think some people feel uncomfortable asking the people we support these types of questions. As part of our work we update the system with equality monitoring information and one of the questions asked is about sexual orientation. I have seen people complete this part of the questionnaire without actually checking that the information they are inputting is correct. I believe that what happens on a lot of occasions are people get a history from the person who talks about their marriage and an assumption is made about their sexual orientation. Just because someone ends up married to someone of the opposite sex this does not necessarily mean that the...

  Age does not automatically equal inability or mean that someone doesn't know what they are doing/thinking.  A specific diagnosis does not cause a blanket inability. Someone can have a dementia diagnosis and still be able to make their own decisions and choices. They can still know where they want to live or what they do and do not want with their care.  I have a lot of conversations with family members telling me what the person needs and sometimes actually what they are telling me is what they need to make it easier. For their worry to decrease. I understand this from their perspective but also I am there to do the best thing for the person. I am there to advocate on their behalf. If they don't want to be in care and I can do something to support this then I will.  We work to a home first model in my area and i got into a conversation with someone at a care home about this. They asked me whether that's the best thing for everyone and my response was tha...

  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 ...

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...

  I attended a really interesting session about unconscious bias this week. It really got me thinking about the way I view the world and how a lot of our perceptions come down to availability of information.  We did an activity where we were asked to picture someone in a specific job role. Most people had the same image even though none of us know someone who works in that role. It has come from what we have seen in the media. Films, TV programs etc. It's so interesting the impact the world has on us when we don't even realise it.  There are so many assumptions, prejudices and stereotypes that we are all aware of that seem to have just been accepted. Jokes are made about them, conversations are steered in a specific direction because of something that people "think" is true information.  One term that was mentioned in this session that I'd not heard before was benevolent discrimination. It was explained to us as the person saying it not realising it is...

  Everyone says that they are not judgemental and that they do not make assumptions. That’s just not true. Don’t get me wrong most of us do this in our heads and never use the judgment for any reason but we still do it. There are so many assumptions that are made either through stereotyping or just expectations. We perceive certain people to be a specific way or enjoy something specific and are shocked when that is not the case. One example that I come across often in my role is people telling me that the person has Dementia, so they lack capacity. I have explained in a previous post why this statement is problematic in terms of the Mental Capacity Act, so I won’t explain it again. However, that is the same as saying that everyone who has epilepsy or diabetes is the same and that is ridiculous. Just as much as if someone said it about Dementia. First and foremost, there are over 400 types of Dementia that are caused by different things and have different side effects so making s...

  I find that when people have had no personal experience of Social Work that they don’t really have any understanding of what it is other than what the media has portrayed it to be. The issue with that I think is that the media does not give a realistic picture of what Social Work is. It focuses on one specific area of Social Work and only when something negative has happened. I find that the only positive information you hear about Social Work is in Social Work circles such as webinars or the awards which someone who is not in the field is unlikely to attend. I think this is due to the nature of Social Work. It’s split into adults and children’s and within that there are many different teams working with specific demographics so it would be impossible to be able to explain them all to someone but the fact that they exist would be nice. I find that having a Social Worker is seen by people in one of two ways it is in a child protection sense, so nobody wants to talk about it...