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Rachel Doidge is much happier now she is back on home ground in the Midlands. "I wanted to come back and work in the areas and estates where I grew up," she says. "It is nice to put something back into the community where you grew up."

An aftercare social worker at children's charity NCH, she spent 10 years in Wales, first training as a social worker and then in various related jobs. After working as a drug and alcohol counsellor and doing supported tenancy work with offenders, she got her first paid job as an aftercare social worker three years ago in Newport, south Wales.


Aftercare entails working with young people who have been in the looked-after system, providing support, advice and financial assistance. Young people are referred from the age of 15 and a half and can use the service until they are 21 - 24 for those who go into further education.

When Doidge got her current job at NCH, she was keen not only to move back to Worcestershire, but also to move out of the statutory sector.

"I didn't really like working as an aftercare worker in the statutory sector because I felt it stigmatised the young people I worked with. The ethos was very much about local government objectives and the young people who have been in care are sick to death of social workers by the time they are 16. They see you as just another social worker and it makes it hard to build relationships."

Now that she is working in the voluntary sector, Doidge finds referrals come with a much more positive attitude. She thinks this is because they know NCH operates independently of social services, and because the looked-after provision in her local patch - Kidderminster and Stourport - is so good.

"In Newport they still used children's homes, even though it is well documented that children who have gone into children's homes have had a much worse experience and more behavioural problems than those who didn't," she says. "Where I am now, the looked-after system tends to use softer placements like long-term foster care." And while in Newport it could take her more than six months to place a homeless person, she managed to find accommodation for her latest referral within eight weeks. "What we've got here isn't brilliant, but it's easier to place people."


Doidge finds that service level agreements with housing bodies are a lot tighter and more stringently adhered to. Because of this, she is able to cope with an increased caseload She has 30-plus cases, compared with 20 in Newport, and is still less stressed.

In Newport, her office was town-based and the amount of paperwork meant she was mostly desk-bound. At NCH, she has a lot less paperwork and the office is out of town, so she often travels to see users.

Not that she regrets having worked for a local authority. "I have been able to bring many ideas from my old job into my new one, such as how to set up a consultation group for young people and rewriting the pathway plans that we use."

As she has her own patch, Doidge is finding that there is a lot of scope for her to develop links with various agencies and take the initiative on projects. That in itself makes her job interesting and rewarding.