Funding for placements
I welcome the three-year degree in social work - we have been waiting a long time for it to be approved. However, I share the concerns of Cris Evans about the increased number of placements that will be required over a three-year period if the expectation is that every student has some kind of placement in each academic year.
There are limited numbers of placements available in the local authority social services departments now that many services are moving into health trusts and education. This is an ideal time to bring back practice learning centres to prepare these new workplaces, and to support the voluntary sector in accommodating social work students. Additional funding will be necessary.
It has been obvious for some time that placement development work is urgently needed, yet I read that the Department of Health is setting up a task force to increase the quality and quantity of practice placements. This includes a full review of the funding of practice learning. Yet the government will announce the outcome early next year!
This is extremely frustrating for all concerned. Practice teaching co-ordinators like me have been involved in numerous consultations about the placements crisis over the last six years. The former social work training council CCETSW was fully aware of the issues, the National Organisation for Practice Teaching has been lobbying, and now we hear that there will be no news about placement funding until next year.
The three-year degree courses are due to have their first intake in September 2003, and I am extremely concerned for these new social work students.
Karen Boutland
Bath
Role of advocates
Paul Jewitt, who is co-ordinating opposition to the Mental Health Bill among approved social workers, is wrong to assert that "ASWs are the only people in the mental health process to take a holistic approach and actively protect the rights of the individual". ASWs may still agree with the medical professionals to detain a person against their will in hospital, as at present.
Greater involvement in and understanding of the role of independent mental health advocates by social workers and medical professionals would ensure that those detained under compulsion are fully supported in voicing their objection to the exercise of such powers.
It is to be hoped that the bill's proposals for access to specialist mental health advocacy remain, despite opposition to proposals for compulsory treatment of a small number of people with severe personality disorder.
Oliver Kent
Mental Health Advocacy Services
Yiewsley, Middlesex
Variations in practice
I agree that health visitors are key professionals in identifying parenting problems, but I was concerned at the impression that your article gave about practices.
Health visitors are a universal service offered to all parents of new babies, but the article implied that there is uniformity in their practices. Home visits, although a valued asset, would rarely be offered to all families on a monthly basis. They are offered according to need, and then on a short-term basis. The early intervention strategy is well established in some but not all areas, as is use of the questionnaire for identification of post-natal depression.
Post-natal classes, parenting education, behaviour management and support groups are increasingly available, but not everywhere. Families and colleagues will encounter variations in practice caused by a number of factors, including staffing and financial constraints, which can cause conflict if they have unrealistic expectations.
Catherine Dixon
Member, CPHVA Parenting and Family Support Special Interest Group
Ipswich
Demoralising conditions
I was astonished to read the Diary column by a deputy head of care at a residential school for deaf children. Astonished that any organisation still thinks that having care staff working 42-hour weeks, split shifts and three sleep-ins in a row will produce anything other than tired, ineffective and ultimately burned-out staff.
This is not to denigrate the staff themselves, who are presumably trying to do positive work with children in what sounds like an institutional, rule-bound setting. Do the children - who are described as being as old as year 11 - have any choice about being in bed by 9.30? Having worked in care homes under similar regimes in the 1970s, I am only too aware of the effect these conditions have on residents and staff, and I am amazed - and disappointed - to read that these conditions still exist.
John Wilkin
Contract development officer
Devon Supporting People Team
Councils are not racist
I was dismayed but not surprised to read Helen Best's Viewpoint. Her claim to be a trainer only reinforced my view that such statements are counterproductive. A trainer, to my knowledge, is a skilled person who by example and rational discussion helps to change the hearts and minds of the trainees, thus enhancing performance and personal values.
Discrimination means refusing to accept that membership of a group does not define the individual members of that group.
Racism and discrimination are based to some measure on some people saying that members of a particular racial, ethnic or social group are all characterised by a particular trait. Clearly this is calculated to create division and to engender critical behaviour or hatred. Best does not refer to "some councils", a "minority of councils" or even the majority of councils. She clearly indicates that she thinks that all councils are institutionalised racists, reinforce bad practice, support pressure to conform to oppressive practices, control and coerce. This is stereotyping and discriminatory.
John Williams
Benfleet, Essex
