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50 shades of social work? Meet the (fictional) director of social services obsessed with sex

At Community Care we’re sent a fair amount of review copies of books but when David Sindall’s novel ‘After Alyson’ hit my desk it stood out. There aren’t too many novels about a sex-obsessed director of social services after all. Are there?  Intrigued, I asked Sindall a bit about where his inspiration came from… What, in [...]

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Are social workers in ‘impossible position’ to resist cuts?

This morning my train journey to work involved an interesting Twitter debate over a piece we published yesterday headlined – ‘Social workers who don’t resist are complicit in cuts that harm clients’. The article, by Simon Duffy, director of the centre for welfare reform, was published alongside his new report on the impact of cuts for the [...]

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Top 10 social work and social care stories of 2012

Here it is – the top 10 most-read stories on Community Care in 2012. Click on the numbers to read the stories and the ‘video play’ buttons at the top of boxes to listen to/watch linked video and audio. Hope everyone has a good festive break and happy new year from all at Team Comcare!

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Cartoon: The best social work ‘reform’ idea ever?

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How a mental health arts festival is shaping social work practice

A mental health arts festival is breaking down barriers between social workers and communities in one of Scotland’s most deprived areas, writes Neil Quinn*. The north east of Glasgow, where I now work in health improvement building on my background in social work, has one of the UK’s areas of highest concentrated deprivation. It also [...]

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We fail as social workers if we don’t speak out about injustice

Social work needs to reconnect with its political roots and challenge the ‘politics of oppression’, writes social worker ermintrude2… Social work is political, there is no escape from that. As we work, day to day, it may not always feel it but everything about the job and the role itself is political. The International Federation [...]

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What social services ‘can do’ to improve mental health

The government has published its “implementation framework” for the national mental health strategy. Essentially it outlines a roadmap for how local authorities, the NHS, employers and central govenrment can deliver the strategy’s goals. I’ll be covering social worker reaction to the framework later this morning. The general consensus from those I’ve spoken to so far is that the [...]

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Gay social workers “forced back into closet”

Homophobia is something that surely lies at odds with the values of social work? So why are some gay social workers being “forced back into the closet” by supervisors and told to “deny” their sexuality if asked? According to one user of our CareSpace forum, that’s exactly what happened to him recently. Alien King, a [...]

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Three reasons why adult social work is vital in the current climate

Social work’s roots in social justice and human rights makes the profession vital in the current climate of Government cutbacks and health service shake-ups, writes social worker B.Edwards*… I’m proud to be a social worker. Why? In a large part it’s because our profession is one whose value base is rooted in human rights and [...]

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Tax, reading and aerobic exercise

People living in countries with a more progressive tax system are generally happier than those in countries with a flatter tax system, a study suggests. Someone should tell UK chancellor George Osborne, who has been urged by certain economists to remove the 50p rate. Unfortunately, he seems far more interested in punishing public sector workers and [...]

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