Social Worker Sharing

  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...

Values and Ethics are vital in Social Work practice and something that you not only complete modules about when studying but they also run through your practice every day. I know that there are a lot of situations where people's personal lives change dramatically through completing their Social Work degree and a lot of this comes down to values. The easiest way I can describe what completing your Social Work degree does is breaks you down and then builds you up piece by piece. It brings your values to the forefront of your mind and you reflect A LOT on how this looks to you. It also impacts your relationships because you find yourself noticing where your values do not line up. You find yourself speaking up more and people who know you best don't necessarily know how to take it. You would presume that the majority of people who come into Social Work hold similar beliefs on the major issues. Which on the whole in my experience they do, however there are so many other situat...

  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 ...