Ah, the advantages of living close to work: commuting
becomes a thing of the past and you get a feel for your patch. But
then you run into an angry client and then their relatives. Andrew
Mickel looks at the pros and cons of working in your own
backyard
Work-life balance sounds like a good idea: at the end of a busy
day you can leave your job and get on with your personal life. But
that's less easy if you keep bumping into your clients in your
local shops if every visit to the pub ends with clients' relatives
wanting information or if you are really unlucky, you have to run
from clients for fear of what they may do.
This last case may seem extreme, but for Jo, a child protection
worker who lives and previously worked in Nottingham, two close
calls while out with her daughter caused her to move jobs to
Doncaster, despite the hour-long commute each way.
"Nottingham's huge, so as I lived on one side of town and worked
on the other, I thought that would be OK," Jo says. "But, once, I
took my daughter to the fair and I was chased by a service user. I
didn't want them to know who my daughter was, because [my client's]
kids were on the child protection register. So we ran from
Overprotective
Jo's husband often asks whether she is being overprotective, but
she says colleagues have received threats which have convinced her
that she has acted correctly. "It only takes one to carry the
threat out."
The emotionally-charged nature of child protection means that
those on the frontline face the most serious problems associated
with living close to their work. But in other social care fields,
life can be claustrophobic if you can never escape the people with
whom you work.
Pete Bowler lives in Torfaen, where he used to work with adults.
He now works in Blaenau Gwent, having found it difficult to get
away from his clients and their worries when living so close to
them.
Feeling claustrophobic
"I'd go to Sainsbury's and they were there. I'd go to my local
shops and bump into someone so I don't go there either - I'd end up
driving into town just for bread and milk," he says. "Not that
there was a major problem, but you can't just move on. You have to
stop for a chat. If you have had a difficult day you want to
relax."
Simply telling clients to wait until you see them in work time
is more difficult than it sounds. "It's not something I could do,"
says Bowler. "I just wouldn't feel comfortable, although if they
started talking about work specifically when there were lots of
people around then I would generally tell them to wait until the
next day."
Perks
Living and working in the same area does have its perks. There
is no commuting. You can get a better feel for the area and its
people. It need not be the case that bumping into clients outside
work should be difficult. Former BASW chair Ray Jones says being a
social worker need not be any different from being a teacher or a
police officer - you are part of the community.
"Three young lads we were working with from a family nearby
would come to our house at weekends, sometimes going out with me
and my two younger children," he recalls. "It was not an intrusion,
they knew when it was time to go and generally they were
mischievous good fun. The general experience is that people are
mindful not to make too many demands on people they know are a
resource for them."
Setting boundaries
These may seem like two substantially different issues - the
possible annoyance of living near your clients compared with the
potential risks that work can bring to your personal life. But
Robin Weekes, the head of conduct at the General Social Care
Council, says relationships with clients lie on a spectrum, and
keeping clear professional limits with clients can prevent more
serious problems emerging.
Weekes says: "If you're living and working in an area and you
become involved in social activities, you can stop and chat in the
street. But that person could stray into professional territory and
say, 'by the way, I've got no money and my partner came around last
night', then that becomes a professional situation for you.
"You might genuinely need to support or offer guidance to
someone legitimately, but if that happens then you should share
that information with a colleague if there's been advice given then
put a note on the file and discuss it with a manager as well, even
if you think you've got it slightly wrong."
Interaction
The extent to which you can interact with clients is a grey
area. Weekes is keen not to be drawn about specific interventions
in given situations, but largely comes down on the side of waiting
and consulting a manager rather than intervening at the time.
"A trigger for me is, if the social worker feels at all
uncomfortable, there's probably something there to explore. Your
job is assessing and judging people and it's essential you maintain
your impartiality in a case," he says. "You need to be seen as
impartial and objective. It's that fine line."
The strict approach of the GSCC is at odds with Jones's
experiences of interacting with clients. He points out that the
longest lasting workers in a given area are likely to have local
ties, often with the services they work with. He says the bad
experiences are far outweighed by the potential positives, and the
idea of professional distance has been overplayed.
Unprofessional behaviour
"These boys were users of social services, were known to me and
knew me through my work, and their contact with me and my family
arose initially through work but was no more than how many others
in the neighbourhood related to each other. Would it now be seen as
inappropriate or unprofessional behaviour? I hope not."
Living and working in the same area can have serious
ramifications: the GSCC is now drawing up guidelines on
professional boundaries following the issue of proximity being a
cited factor in many social workers' mitigation cases in GSCC
hearings.
Jo, in Nottingham, says she would never work and live in the
same place again. And Lindsey Ford had a bad time in her first job
after qualifying, in child protection in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Although she lived in a different neighbourhood from the one in
which she worked, it was still a small area.
She recalls: "You weren't supposed to work where you live, but
Newcastle isn't that big a city. So when I qualified, a couple down
the road who found out what I did smashed my car up. I wasn't even
working on their case."
Public enemy number one
Ford's problems were compounded by the fact that she had a young
son to worry about. "On a day-to-day basis you had to pick
carefully what you were going to do. I couldn't take my son into
the city centre," she says. "You're talking about taking your child
to school and being shunned. I was public enemy number one, and it
meant my son never had any friends from there."
Ford then discovered that a client had hired a private detective
to find out about her. She has since moved elsewhere.
Cases like Ford's are the rare exception and not the rule. So is
it possible to work in sensitive fields such as child protection
and still live near your job? Weekes - who used to be a child
protection social worker - says it depends on factors such as
whether you have a family. "But I don't think there is an answer,"
he says. "There is an issue about the social worker being a
professional. If you are as good as you can be, abide by the codes
and respect your clients, that reduces aggression towards social
workers."
But Ford says the risk is enough to make her err on the side of
caution. "At the end of the day, it's a job. I don't want anyone
hurting my son because of it."
• Join the
debate over
living in close proximity to service users