April 2008 Archives

by Simon Stevens

There are lots of sides to my identity, but as disability turns mainstream I feel the need to reassert my impairment.

Who am I? I often joke during presentations that this is what I ask myself each morning. As someone born with cerebral palsy, understanding my identity has been challenging and ever changing. I would like to argue that my disability identity and my impairment identity are two very different elements to my total identity.

By Dr Steve Rogowski

Form-obsessed, keyboard-chained, over-worked, hard-pressed, mega-stressed, resource-stretched, sorely-tested...social workers.

I may be getting a bit long in the tooth, but apart from the occasional piece from an academic and the odd letter to the social care press (note the word care rather than work), nobody seems to be concerned about what is happening to social work. The silence of the British Association of Social Workers in particular is baffling.

By Richard Lewin

The generous earnings of those who run social care bodies should be reflected in the lower ranks too

by Ray Jones

The recent blog by researchers from the influential Demos think-thank was frightening. It argued that “the switch to personal budgets is a chance for social workers to use their core professional skills”.

by Allan Norman

Barely had I finished writing my commentary on the Casewell case, when last week the courts were at it again, commenting on the interface between allowances for caring and benefits.

by Allan Norman

I had more sympathy for the arguments of Mr Casewell than I expected to. His wife had a disability and received direct payments. She paid them to him as her carer. They were on benefits. He argued that as direct payments were disregarded as income, he should effectively be entitled to keep the direct payments on top of their benefits. His case went to the Court of Appeal .

  by Simon Heng

Now that we service users are using individual budgets and direct payments do we have to become resposible adults?

by Helen Bonnick

Post offices provide important services but there may be more cost effective and imaginative ways of delivering the same

by Bob Holman

 Peter Townsend has fought his whole life to reduce poverty in the UK. It's  time to celebrate his achievements - and his 80th

by Steve Sadler

Telecare was once seen as science fiction. But today, its use has helped adults to live safer, more independent lives

by Nigel Leaney

Uncontrolled anger is both dangerous to others and to oneself, causing mental health problems. It is also a necessary emotion

by Simon Stevens

Giving disabled people more control and choice is great, but what happens when we want something dangerous or illegal?

by Allan Norman

It’s a common enough scenario. Someone approaches the local authority for help. The authority has lots of different departments, and can easily play table tennis, as each decides that another is responsible and sends the customer off. Quite apart from how frustrating the experience can be, traumatic even if departments manage to secure between them that none of them are responsible, there yet remains the question, who takes the consequences if the wrong department was approached?

  by Simon Heng

Why is there money to bail out banks and build battleships but no cash to pay informal carers well and fund adult care properly?

 by Elisabeth Hoodless

Volunteers help bring positive changes to public services but the government should fund their training to release this resource

  by Peter Corser

 The arrival of a new team member is usually welcome, but not if they are employed by an agency that has its  own agenda

by Allan Norman

Travelling to work recently, I was listening to the radio as a story broke about the unexpected extent of forced marriages. Some of the social work student cohort to whom I have been teaching ‘Law for Professional Practice’ may also have heard the story on their way in to their exam that day. I smiled as I wondered what they would think of my prescience, for the exam they were about to sit was centred on a case study of forced marriage.

Social workers need to add to their skills to carry out their role in supporting people with autism, writes Anna Kennedy

by Peter Beresford

Social care is about to change fundamentally, but the launch of Social Work Roles and Tasks has lacked a certain pizzazz

by Jennifer Harvey

There was no longer a choice: after years of memory loss, mood swings, aggression and verbal abuse, mum had to be sectioned

by Andrew Holman

Listening to the BBC news over the weekend I was left wondering what our care services Minister Ivan Lewis was up to. And more importantly whether he would be moving on from his job.

by Allan Norman

A recent comment in response to a blog on the Nottingham baby case was critical of solicitors and made me wonder: are social workers not in partnership with the solicitors?