Last week the Social Work Task Force announced it is going to consult over the summer on a new description of social work because current ones are difficult for the public, other professionals and even social workers themselves to understand.
This seems to be a criticism of the March 2008 statement about the roles and tasks of social work produced by the GSCC, Skills for Care, the Children's Workforce Development Council, and Scie. Their roles and tasks statement was supposed to have provided a clear definition. Although commissioned by the government, no minister edorsed it when it was published. Read CC's newsstory here.
So what do you think 'social work' is? What do social workers do? Can you explain it clearly and succintly? Or do you struggle to pin down the many tasks a socail worker has?
I'd really like to hear your views, thanks.
Senior writer, Community Care
Here is an abstract of something I wrote as part of an essay, which I thought relates to your enquiry:
Social Workers may work for various types of organisations, where they are the glue between environments or the interface for the social fabric of society and they provide links to services offered to clients. The clients that use these services are often known as Services Users. They could be of any age, ethnic background and have different ranges of abilities, some of which might be unseen. Service Users may require the support of a social worker because they have either been disadvantaged or marginalised in some fashion and Social Workers endeavours to be the conduit for accessing support or funding, while acting in a professionally empowering manner. The knowledge base of a social worker is backed up with university based study in the United Kingdom, as well as 200 days of practice experience. It encapsulates over 100 years of knowledge from various feedback of practice development, theory and from various settings or from various people who have utilised services. Furthermore, the idea of this educational process is to provide a toolkit, which can be used in the field and a social worker may have to make various choices, while balancing various legislative powers and duties, each with there own dilemmas.
Social Workers may work for various types of organisations, where they are the glue between environments or the interface for the social fabric of society and they provide links to services offered to clients. The clients that use these services are often known as Services Users. They could be of any age, ethnic background and have different ranges of abilities, some of which might be unseen. Service Users may require the support of a social worker because they have either been disadvantaged or marginalised in some fashion and Social Workers endeavours to be the conduit for accessing support or funding, while acting in a professionally empowering manner.
The knowledge base of a social worker is backed up with university based study in the United Kingdom, as well as 200 days of practice experience. It encapsulates over 100 years of knowledge from various feedback of practice development, theory and from various settings or from various people who have utilised services. Furthermore, the idea of this educational process is to provide a toolkit, which can be used in the field and a social worker may have to make various choices, while balancing various legislative powers and duties, each with there own dilemmas.
I am glad to see they are not wasting their time then.
Definition of Social Work: A group of people who are p***ed of with quango’s costing fortunes who spend all of their time contemplating their navels. We are in a crisis; we cannot cope with the bureaucy that has been imposed upon us. People are being promoted to quickly and we are being robbed of vital skills at the front line, we have no national voice, we have databases that have increased out work loads by 500% the resultant work produced is an embarrassment thus robbing us of whatever small amount of job satisfaction we one had. We would like the social work task force of academics and agony aunts to pull their fingers out of their collected rears and do something about the above immediately if they can’t we would like them to go away and stop robbing us of the tiny piece of sanity that we are only just clinging on to.
I think that there is a great difference between defining social work as it is now and defining social work as I would actually like it to be done. Social work now is a series of procedural tasks, with 80% of your time taken up doing administration work. Social work as I would like it to be, is working with individuals and their family to promote positive changes in their lives and having the time to get to know these individuals properly.
The way it is done now in adults services, particularly the area of older peoples services, because there is such a high workload, is that you visit them once for about an hour, put the services in, review over the phone or very occasionally face to face and close. Then on to the next. It is almost akin to working on a factory line at times.
Bambam01:I am glad to see they are not wasting their time then. Definition of Social Work: A group of people who are p***ed of with quango’s costing fortunes who spend all of their time contemplating their navels. We are in a crisis; we cannot cope with the bureaucy that has been imposed upon us. People are being promoted to quickly and we are being robbed of vital skills at the front line, we have no national voice, we have databases that have increased out work loads by 500% the resultant work produced is an embarrassment thus robbing us of whatever small amount of job satisfaction we one had. We would like the social work task force of academics and agony aunts to pull their fingers out of their collected rears and do something about the above immediately if they can’t we would like them to go away and stop robbing us of the tiny piece of sanity that we are only just clinging on to.
Well Said
The interim report of the Social Work TaskFirce indicates very clearly that they have grasped a number of important issues and we need to support them in trying to achieve what the vast majority of us hope for. Let's be positively / constructively critical where required but not to rubbish them lock, stock and barrel - that doesn't help and does nothing to enhance our professionalism and general standing.
Passionate response and I love it........
Social work, as I understand it, is an activity which a social practitioner
undertakes in order to help a service user live better within their community.
To succeed, the social must not work with the client alone but also with his family,
friends as well as others from other agencies such as the police, carers, housing officers, health workers,…
For any statement to be generaly acceptable it must attempt to be inclusive. I would suggest for debate 'Social work is about supporting and advising the government as to the delivery of health and social care policy, while supporting the disadvantaged and ensuring their voice is heard within any agenda for change'.
My understanding of social work is that it ought to enable and assist the disempowered, the impoverished, the marginalised, the downtrodden, the persecuted, the lonely, the ones least able to cope with and resist the power of the more 'advantaged' and seek to work towards a far more just and equal society where no longer children and families have to live in poverty (and I include financial poverty and fuel and water poverty) and to create communities and societies based on care and respect.
I believe that the above can not be achieved without a radical shift in how we deliver services and that those at the 'top' must lead by example and cease to see social work more as a profession but as a vocation.
Well said Bambam01!!! My absolute sentiments with all you say. After 13 yrs in Adult Social Services I am fed up with all the beaurocracy and chasing PI's which get on the way of what we trained to do. Will this Taskforce really consider all of that or is it as usual lip service and lo and behold, more beaurocracy!
I could not have said it better myself. ICS, so time consuming and the documents it produces are an embarrassment, when sharing with clients, well our's are anyway............