who has been in post for 3 months. she has 29 cases
then they wonder why we have trouble with retention of staff
scary!....but not unusual...
in fact I think I had something in the region of 40 children on my caseload within a few months of being qualified..though that was a while ago now!
it isnt safe to practice with those conditions, and with the thresholds for acceptance into Social Services getting higher and higher, the complexities of cases are that much higher...does make you despair of the state childrens services is in (I know there have been several posts on this!) I know I have colleagues who talk about thier time in front line teams being made much more manageable by good supervision, good manager etc... but there are many others, myself included who got out from conditions where practice just felt horribly unsafe due to these kinds of numbers- which of course doesnt help as it needs workers, and experienced workers at that to be there and doing this work!
I have to agree with you Rozella -Im a Local Authority trainee SW and am due to qualify shortly -I have found that I have managed caseloads far in excess of the numbers I will be expected to hold as a NQSW. The levels of supervision have been more or less hit and miss and on the whole I have been expected to hit the ground running!!!! Istill havent stopped!.
simple answer to that one. "Absolutely not".
And that is why as a NQSW I accepted a job with a LA that is committed to keeping case loads to 15. I just do not want to work in that kind of environment where 30 is the norm.
The cases you mention are better compared to what I had when I was a new Social Worker. I had 134 cases.I guess that happens in South Africa only.
doschy: The cases you mention are better compared to what I had when I was a new Social Worker. I had 134 cases.I guess that happens in South Africa only.
how on earth can you manage 134 cases??
Is that 15 cases or 15 children Squirrel? Because if its 15 cases you could easily see your numbers scaling into the 20 or 30s, sibling groups of 4 and 5 are very common in our work, 6+ is less common but does happen.
If its 15 children then hang on to that job with both hands!!
This is not acceptable. The NQSW must go to her Manager, and if that Manager is aware and has actually been allocating that number of cases, she must go to a seionr manager as soon as possible. She could take a colleague or a Union or BASW rep with her. She should not really have to explain why this is too many cases but should have information with her to show the work she is doing and that it is of a good quality. She should remind the manager that she is newly qulaified and should have a protected caseload and additional support. She should make a clear statement, warning of the potential dangers of this situation, and making sure that a way forward is agreed wherby she can run this caseload down or give some to another worker or cases can go unallocated (genuinely unallocated, not lurking on someone's caseload waiting to explode just to satisfy the statistics.) This could help the manager make the case for more staff. We must not let ourselves support the unsupportable - going the extra mile and showing some goodwill is one thing, but this is how tragedies happen and how social workers get pilloried.