Front line views

Should social workers for looked afterchildren get their own GP-style practices, as proposed in last week’s green paper?

Rebecca Crawley, Student social worker:
Social workers running their own practices could lose sight of why they went into social work in the first place, as they will be operating like private companies.

Michelle Wills, Student social worker:
Such practices would threaten the success of multi-agency working. If I set up my own practice, I would also be daunted about having to commission services.

Lisa Antao, Residential therapeutic care worker:
Social workers would have more freedom around the time and care they devote to children. They currently have to go through layers of bureaucracy in local authorities.

What would make your job easier?

Martina Clarke,  Young people service officer, substance misuse:
More online information on rehabilitation for when young people need to access it. To have more examples of how local area agreements are working.

Michael Dolphin, Counsellor:
Better communication, accessibility and resources. Social workers are overworked and are not willing to give as much as they could. They are sceptical of counsellors and think I am deskilling them.

Brian Klins, Senior local authority social worker:
There needs to be more money. It’s a struggle to get the best resources and this affects our services users. We need more staff because everybody has a heavy caseload.

Paula Selfe, Training and development co-ordinator:
More shared information between everyone involved in achild’s life. Health, police, and foster carers are too busy working separately to share.

More from Community Care

Comments are closed.