Several times I have heard people say that they wouldn't do care management as it isn't "social work" or that they wouldn't do care management as it isn't what they trained and qualified to do.
What are your thoughts on this?
I wrote a post on my blog last summer with exactly this title! It's mostly still relevant..
Care Management is sometimes part of what social workers do. It diminishes and undervalues social work to suggest this is all it is - and it's about time social work senior managers started saying this!!!!
Depends what you mean by care management of course. I would say that good care management includes a full (holistic) assessment in partnership with the service user and family members as appropriate, taking account of their abilities and strengths as well as their difficulties and lookinig too at their life history and what has brought them to this point. It is gathering information and looking together at how any needs could best be met and then enabling the servie user to access services and facilities required. It is monitoring to ensure the care provided and other servies being accessed are continuing to meet the need. It involves developing a professional, constructive relationship with the service user and others involved, liaising and negotiating with other professionals and giving and receiving information. All this should be underpinned by a non-judgmental, empowering attitude. Non social workers can work in this way of course, but this is very much what social workers have been trained to do. If on the other hand care management means ticking boxes on a form with an inch for 'social history,' focussing on what the service user cannot do, then prescribing a care package in 10 minute chunks against such pre-printed tasks as 'get up,' 'get dressed,' 'go to the toilet,' then you are probably not using many social work skills (and I have recently seen a form which channels the worker into just such an approach). However the latter model is totally against the ethos of personalisation, so organisations who are working in this way have some problems. Social Workers who work in care management may find it difficult to use their social work skills also because of the speed and targets around assessments, especially in hospital settings, but they are still social workers, they have spent two or three years qualifying as such, and they should be able to use the social work job title, not just be called care manager with nothing to distinguish them from other care managers who do not have this particular qualification and skill set. If members of my family or I were having asn assessment carried out, I would be asking for a social worker to do it.
carer1: If members of my family or I were having asn assessment carried out, I would be asking for a social worker to do it.
If members of my family or I were having asn assessment carried out, I would be asking for a social worker to do it.
I'd ask for an OT.
I have had a flavour of what I consider to be both Social Work and Care Management - in one post I was involved in long term working and what i would consider to be utilising a much fuller range of my skills and knowledge - and in then there is care management - the conveyer belt 'social work' approach of tick boxes, in/out asap which anyone can do - and YES there are some very good unqualiifed practitioners but in one team some people had previously worked in unrelated/admin type posts! In this particular team we were all titled Care Managers and even if you were qualified and registered you were not allowed to use the title Social Worker!
Typically over time I have heard many qualified workers comment that they feel disenfranchised from the profession they trained to enter and the box ticking and admin processes were eroding skills and knowledge base.
There is a place for both aspects - perhaps for unqualified workers to be carrying out the straight forward in/out and put in care and for the qualified Social Worker to be allowed to get more involved in complex/long term work. But whilst councils are busy trying to generate their PI's to satisfy Govt and acruing STARS - the more people that can be seen in the quickest time the better!
Social Work can be fulfilling when we are allowed to get on with it - but then these days a lot of Managers and Senior's come from non Social Work backgrounds so probably don't understand the difference - as I recall this very question being asked of me by a very controlling Locality Manager who had come in from a health management background.
I have recently moved to Care Management and I have had good experiences of an OTand a SW working together to produce really good assessments, so I would ask for both!
I started out in care management as a newly qualified social worker, working alongside some experienced social workers, who had 'succumbed' to the tick box attitude and treated most clients as just another name on the caseload list - assessing and putting in the typical social care services as quick as possible in order to move on to the next.
It's the attitude of the social worker that makes all the difference - I didn't spend three years having values and ethics reminded to me from all directions to chuck them down the tick box pan at the earliest opportunity. I also include all other professions in this of course that carry out the care management function - i've worked with some fantastic nurses/therapists to enable people to function how they choose.