Recently in students Category

Photo: Flickr Stew Dean

Last night I attended Confidence and competence - an event organised by recently qualified social worker Zoe Betts (check out her recent ComCare blog) for her fellow NQSWs and social work students. The night saw some great talks from Victoria Hart, a mental health social worker, and Sherry Malik, deputy chief executive of the General Social Care Council (GSCC), as well as a DVD presentation from Dr Neil Thompson.

I'll write more about it in coming days, but being new to the world of covering social work, I thought I'd jot down five things that leapt out at me from last night.

1.    Social work needs (more) champions

In a message of support for last night's event Peter Beresford, professor of social work at Brunel University and chair of user network Shaping Our Lives, said that 'social work is an easy job to do badly and really hard to do well.' It seemed to me that social workers need to highlight that publicly more often - they are good at this job but it is incredibly, incredibly, hard and high risk.

Victoria Hart, herself an example of someone who champions social work and is not afraid at highlighting its difficulties, nailed it when she said that social workers are excellent advocates for clients but, all too often, not for themselves. Frontline champions are needed to highlight how complex social work is and fight to be given the support and resources to do it well, but also communicate the passion for the job that filled the room last night.

A lot of the time the public only hear about social work when it goes badly wrong - they need to hear more from social workers on the day-to-day highs, lows and struggles.

2.     BASW and the College should take a leaf out of the frontline's book

Last night I spoke to NQSWs and students from all corners of social work - adults' services, children and families work, substance  misuse and work with older people. Their jobs differed markedly, and they had contrasting experiences a lot of the time, but they shared a lot of the same concerns over the challenges of social work and supported each other with them. It struck me that this is a profession that deserves a united front at the highest level. Frontline social workers need strong professional representation from their 'leaders' - not a turf war.

3.      Supervision is about more than an hour a week

Zoe described supervision as the 'most important hour of my week'. But the event also showed that formal supervision time is only a starting point. Victoria spoke about the value of informal supervision. She said social workers are always learning in practice and should reflect with colleagues. Peer networks can provide invaluable informal supervision and said she still keeps her own reflective diaries to keep learning from what she handles day-to-day. 

4.    Social workers should cry (and regulators can inspire)

I have to admit I didn't think I'd be inspired by a presentation by a regulator, but last night Sherry Malik from the GSCC gave an excellent talk. Discussing her career in social work, Sherry said 'it is a privilege to be let into someone's life.' But I was most struck by the way she embraced the emotional toll that cases can take on social workers when they get home. Far from being a weakness, she said that the 'day I stop crying' about certain cases would be the day she should get out of social work.

5.    I want to be a social worker

On a rainy Tuesday evening, I  don't know of may people that would be keen on giving up 3 hours of their nights to talk about the very thing that had consumed them from 9 till 5 (and beyond). But last night social workers packed the room, some coming from Essex and beyond to meet up and share each other's experiences.

One social worker I spoke to at the end said she'd wanted to work in mental health but had ended up with a placement in a youth offending team. She admitted being incredibly nervous about going into youth offending work but said one case had given her the 'fire in her belly' and she quickly realised this was her calling.

The whole night, and the passion and support on show, made me want to be a social worker. Writing about them isn't a bad second best.

Thousands of social workers, social care staff and students gathered at the Business Design Centre in London for Community Care Live Children and Families yesterday.

There were lots of highlights and some incredibly popular sessions. Delegates queued almost round the building to hear Professor Eileen Munro speak about raising the standards in child protection. About 700 people were eventually packed into the auditorium.

The regular Risk Factor Live session, in which Perdeep Gill walked the audience through the timeline of a recent serious case review also prompted lots of audience interaction.

We also had our first Tweet Up - a real life meeting of Twitter users - with a small but select group!

We covered the conference as it happened using Twitter and on our live coverage page but lots of people also got involved via Twitter. Here are some of my highlights:

@ComCareWork: When social workers avoid talking to media about bad news it can make the story worse says College of Social Work's Mark Ivory

@McMagnusson: Interesting workshop on social work and the media. Definitely a long way to go in terms of our public image. The only way is up!

@ComCareRuth: can't get into hostile parents and #socialwork session at #cclive Standing room only and queue at door

@actingasawave: Keynote starting soon in the auditorium. It's really starting to fill up! Get your seats people, should be a full house

@judithcoops: jeanette pugh dfe: we will strip down Working Together to bare minimum which means no practice guidance

@actingasawave: Few people would disagree with stripping down of Working Together. Even if just to save trees

@ComCareRuth: John Hemming: my criticism is not of #socialwork but family court system re adoption/ permanency orders

@Jenna_Lou102: Munro talk is uber busy - am sat on floor at front. Feel like I'm in a school assembly!

@judithcoops: munro: any attempt to reform adoption without also reforming the rest of the system will always be limited

@jonbolton: Prof Munro is a hugely entertaining speaker! Wish she'd been one of my professors when I was at uni!

@ListerNick:  Munro tells us that chopping and changing teams is madness for families

@actingasawave: good presentation from Tower Hamlets / Essex on adapted assessment frameworks. Good ideas to take back to my LA

@ComCareWork: Laughter and sucking of air greets the news that HPC annual registration fee is £76 compared to GSCC's £30

@FullCareOrder: @ComCareWork HPC annual registration fee is £76 is nothing compared to €300 to register with Irish equivalent Coru

@NickBerbiers: @ComCareWork Well it will be very good to see HPC offer double+ the level of service to social workers.

@lizslinn: learning about compassion fatigue risks to social workers and foster carers

@HPC_Mark: Good day at #CClive, more than 300 visits to joint @HPC_news & @TheGSCC stand. Our presentation was well attended, lots of q's about the fee

An article on our Student Zone about using social media has prompted folk on Twitter to start thinking about what advice they would give social workers or students planning to use the micro blogging site.

A new hashtag #twittertips4sw is being used to compile the various pieces of advice. It's a great idea and if you go into Twitter and do a search using that hashtag you will be a able to see a list of all the advice offered so far.

Here is a sample:

So, get involved and add your tips to the list on Twitter. If you have a longer piece of advice you'd like to impart the please drop me an email. 

More than two-thirds of the people who voted in our online poll believe the social work degree is out of touch with practice (see below).

Ok, so it wasn't a particularly scientific survey and respondents were self selecting but it's an interesting finding nonetheless and squares with the guest post on this blog suggesting the social work degree was not practical enough.

Of course looking back at my blog over the past week or so, I am struck by its rather contradictory nature. First we have a guest post suggesting the degree needs to dump some of those theories in favour of more practical skills and then a post by me asking whether social work should have more of a grounding in philosophy.

I must say that both arguments appeal to me and this must be the difficulty facing social work educators. Newly qualified social workers need the practical skills to do the job but they also need to understand why they are doing what they are doing. But is the balance right? There are clearly a few people out there who think it isn't.