Social Worker Sharing

So as you may or may not have noticed it's been a while. There is a good reason for this though, I became a mum. It has been an incredible journey and also the hardest thing I have done in my life. What I am interested in professionally is how it is going to impact me as a Social Worker. Am I going to struggle with certain aspects of the job more than I did before? I wonder if I will find it more difficult to focus because I would rather be with my child or am I going to be more focused because I want the time I am spending away from her to mean something. Work life balance is a tricky thing for everyone regardless of their role but I think when you are in a profession such as Social Work that is so emotive this can bring its own set of challenges. Prior to being a mum I could finish for the day and decompress especially when I'd had a tricky one or something happened that stayed in my head whereas now I finish work and immediately put on my mum hat. I don't have the ...

  I attended a seminar this week which was provided as a space for practitioners to discuss Social Work in a pandemic. It was an interesting session to attend and allowed me to link up with people who work all over the country and hear their perspectives. I always forget how different my experience of Social Work education and starting my career has been because of the pandemic. I think because it is all I have known it doesn't feel strange to me. It was not until I mentioned that I have been in my team in various capacities for approximately 14 months but have never been in my office and saw the reactions that I was reminded. People in the session who have been practising for many years were so shocked and this led to an interesting discussion about the amount of information you can learn from being in the office and overhearing it. They talked about working somewhere for a while and only knowing about certain paperwork because a colleague mentioned it in passing. I explaine...

  We work with people in a lot of different situations and although we may have previous experience of working with people with the same diagnosis or similar difficulties this does not mean that we know the best way to approach the situation. I was linked to a very useful website this week via some training I attended about tips from people living with Dementia. It is a website full of ideas about different aspects of life and how to use small fairly inexpensive fixes to make day to day life easier for someone with Dementia. I found this really helpful because although I have worked with people with this diagnosis the people who experience this as part of their daily life have much more knowledge than I do about what works. Working in a community team we look at what is available in the community first before looking into other options and then paid for services. Some of the simple tips that are offered could save a lot of money but also could allow someone to remain in their...

When training to be a Social Worker we do talk about the importance of the language we use and focus on not using jargon because we don’t want to confuse people, but I don’t think this is a topic that is discussed or delved into as much as it should be. We know that we should speak professionally, not swear and be respectful. These are a given but the finer nuances of interactions with people can make a big difference to how the relationship develops and how involved that person feels in working with you. When we first visit someone, it is important to know how they wish to be addressed. Are they happy for you to use their first name, do they go by a middle or different name or do they prefer Mrs X. This demonstrates from the beginning of your interaction with them not only that you care about their preferences but also it can do a lot in terms of respect. I had a conversation not long after starting my final placement with my practice educator about a specific case. I am White...

  How often do we have conversations with carers talking about how they don’t need to feel guilty for needing a break? How they are only human and can only give so much to others because they need something left for themselves. Now how often do we take our own advice? I imagine a lot less than we should. We seem to find it easier to explain to others how what they are doing is what they need to do for their own mental health, but we don’t do the same for ourselves. The rate of burnout in Social Work is high and the average length of a Social Work career is approximately 8 years. There are a lot of reasons for this such as high caseloads and low resources, but I do think that some of it comes from Social Workers who want to make sure they do the best for the people they support and put themselves on the back burner to achieve it. I follow a lot of Social Workers on twitter and see regular conversations about how people are having to work weekends and late into the evening ...

  Social Work is one of those jobs where people will say no two days are the same. This is definitely the case because we work with people, and everyone is an individual, but I do find that we see the same types of things quite often. There will always be outliers that are like nothing you have ever seen before but more often than not we see the same types of referrals coming through. For the team I work in we see: ·          Capital drops (where someone who was self-funding previously is now below the threshold and can receive some financial support from the Local Authority), ·          Carer Strain (the carer is struggling and needs a break), ·          Assessment Bed (someone has either left hospital or has been put into an assessment bed from the community to establish their needs before working out a long-term plan), ·     ...

  As many of us are aware Social Work is not the easiest job. There are many reasons for this ranging from the bureaucratic ones relating to case load and resources but there are also the day to day we are involved in people’s lives in usually tough situations ones also. When first starting in the journey of Social Work a lot of people talk about the want to help people and I am not saying that we don’t but that’s not what it is all about in the practical sense. We spend a lot of our time behind the scenes finding information or putting together referrals to the appropriate people. I try and explain processes and how things work as best as I can but there will also be occasions where I have to refer them elsewhere or signpost to the appropriate team to deal with the particular query. We have cases come to our team often due to carer strain and to look into options to alleviate this. There are a few reasons why I think this happens. There is the obvious so we can provide sup...