As part of our Stand Up Now for social work campaign we're putting together a myth-busting guide to social work and we need your help. We're really keen to hear about the reactions you get when you tell people you are a social worker. Are there common assumptions or strange ideas about what you do and what your job involves? Let us know about all those misconceptions - your help is much appreciated!
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baby stealer has to be the classic one.
That we sort out benefits for people or give them money.
(to clarify, we refer to welfare benefits teams but are not experts in benefits advice that sometimes people are expecting and I have been chased from someone's home for not having any cash to give them!)
that we are lawyers and health professionals and benefits advisors and housing providers and money lenders and we have a magic wand
Certainly that we have a magic wand, that we can solve all problems and that we have an unlimited supply ot time and money.
That we know what we are doing!
Someone told me that social workers just take away children from their families and that is all they do! They also said they had heard that for each child we remove from their family we are paid a £500 bonus! I couldn't help laughing when they said this to me, I would be in the Caribbean now on holiday or living there if this was the truth, makes you laugh!
Yes it is funny but some people who I spoke to thought we could just walk into a house and if its not acceptable take the child, yes no court order, no police required, just in the car and off to be looked after!! Tink
i work child protection and on the whole most people are really interested and ask questions, such as how we go about removing a child. they are usually shocked at the difficulty surrounding the court process and the problems with funding etc.
if anyone i know is so ignorant as to think i'm a child snatcher or believes what they read in the sun i tend not to be seek out their company again. in fact i can't think of anyone i know that reads the sun.
When my 11 year old daughter asked me not to let any children die, that said it all for me. I personally would have prefered it if shed asked me to stop wearing my jesus sandles.
Debs comment disproves the myth that we are all po faced and lacking in humour.
Only a significant minority of us are po faced and lacking in humour.
what do u mean?
You comment made me laugh. It was supposed to be funny, wasn't it?
A huge myth is that all social workers work in child protection. Many people don't have a clue that social workers also work in many other areas.
Most definately has to be we can and should 'solve' everything for everyone. And that we know exactly what to do in any given situation (no matter how far removed it is from our own area) and we have some magic power to solve it all.
i agree with the magic wand idea, since starting at my current placement a few service users have expressed how some workers are rubbish and when i get to the bottom of this with them it is all about the worker not having an instant cure for their ills but i have to say this is not all service users, i guess as compassionate people we also want to be able to have that miracle too.
That we can sort out their messed up children in a week and we have to do it now when they've had 14 years (or so) to screw them up.
From families:
That I am qualified to counsel them...that I can get them a house...that I can take their child on a whim...that I am so gullible I will listen to the lies and not see right through them...that I am a threat, there to make their child/ren behave or else 'go onto care'...that I have an abundance of foster placements and can find their child/ren somewhere to go now, without any further planning or agreements, just because they want me to...that I am there to vent their frustrations, because when everything goes wrong, the social worker is there to blame...that i have only one family on my caseload and have all day to listen to them...the list is endless.
As for my friends, they wonder why I do it, how I do it and think it is an awesome task.
a teacher i know suggested i should apply to be a senco at her school as, 'that's like what you do isnt it?' - anyone else worried?
loonie left wing socialist child snatcher.... it is the socialist bit that upsets me
I have also been told i am there to get people houses.
and of couse, we are 'the social' ie DSS, so we have endless pockets of money to give people.
I feel like amongst my friends Social Work has a bit of kudos at the moment, as though they hadnt realised what i did until the tragic death of baby p. Now they ask questions and are generally fascinated what i talk about my job.
Ahhh the good old myths that other professionals hold about us-yes it worries me too!
Yes "Oooh the 'social' are coming, she will buy us some stuff for the kids"
Twitchell: From families: That I am qualified to counsel them...that I can get them a house...that I can take their child on a whim...that I am so gullible I will listen to the lies and not see right through them...that I am a threat, there to make their child/ren behave or else 'go onto care'...that I have an abundance of foster placements and can find their child/ren somewhere to go now, without any further planning or agreements, just because they want me to...that I am there to vent their frustrations, because when everything goes wrong, the social worker is there to blame...that i have only one family on my caseload and have all day to listen to them...the list is endless. As for my friends, they wonder why I do it, how I do it and think it is an awesome task.
how very true for all of the above
espcially the last point that they think we have only them on our caseload and have to take their calls 3 times a day 5days a week to talk about the same issues
General public poften think that social workers only work with children, when I say I work with adults, there are often bemused at what I may do.
There is much confusion about the powers of social workers in child protection and their powers in adult protection. The issue of capacity, self determination and the right to take risks is poorly understood in relation to both client groups.
"We speak, and the word goes out beyond us, to consequences and ends which we had not conceived of." - Gadamer
being referred to as "the Welfare" as if we deal out benefits and clothing or something
Finlay52: General public poften think that social workers only work with children, when I say I work with adults, there are often bemused at what I may do.
I think what may have happened is that over the years, when Social Work teams began to employ unqualified 'Care Managers' who along with the rest of us filled in tick box forms and processed people through the sausage machine to satisfy PI's - we weren't viewed as being at the 'cut and thrust' of Social Work - we "just help nice old people have a wash in the mornings and have their commodes emptied" However, things have improved? ? we do have Adult Protection/Mental Capacity Assessements and we may yet gain some professional presence in the mind of the greater public.
I just had a message from my friend saying she'd watched Panorma last night, and she has the upmost respect for my job and hopes I don't have to clear up after the other care workers who "don't care." My mind is slightly reeling - I'm a social worker for an adults team, not a care worker. The majority of people who I tell I'm an Adults Social Worker seem to think my job involves emptying commodes. I spent yesterday on duty starting to arrange a funeral for a guy with an alcohol dependency, and tracking down a group of adults with learning disabilities who asked a taxi firm to invoice the department. Maybe emptying commodes would be simpler.
I work in child protection and people in general think we break families up and take children away.
One of the most annoying myths is that we don't have any qualifications and fall into this straight from school. Every time a job is advertised our team has countless applications from people who hold no qualifications. I've spoke to people who think that I may have done this job straight from school and my colleague was in a meeting where a teacher said in reference to a pupil that she wasn't very bright so could maybe think about social work.
With the constant publicity about the need for more/better training for social workers people don't realise that a lot of us have 1 or 2 degrees as well as all the post qualifying training that is required to keep your GSCC registration!
Amongst professionals the biggest myth is that Social Workers make all the decisions and that other agencies and professionals are not required to make decisions in order to preserve the relationship they have with parents or they are too afraid to be seen as pushing for more stringent action ... how often are social workers challenged at conference?
you don't need to seek out their company...they tend to find you and call themselves service users!!
cb: That we sort out benefits for people or give them money. (to clarify, we refer to welfare benefits teams but are not experts in benefits advice that sometimes people are expecting and I have been chased from someone's home for not having any cash to give them!)
lol, that's what people think Probation Officers do too....we also get people jobs aparently. I wish I could find myself another job n'er mind about any other bugger
I think it would be fair to say that most social workers have big bottoms and wear long skirts. This is an absolute true fact in my area
I think this is a good point. The lack of understanding about what the job involves from the general public really gets to me. I suppose it's not their fault but there should be a better understanding of what the job actually involves.
How about the idea that social workers have a persecution complex and feel the world is out to get them, and that as a profession they lack the political understanding to see that the lack of respect for their profession is a manifestation of the lack of respect which society has for certain groups of people. The myth would stem from this that they let their client groups down by focussing on their own feelings of being under valued, and failing to recognise that this is an inevitable consequence of working with sections of society that many people would prefer to pretend did not exist. That perhaps they have lost sight of the valid reasons there may be for going into the profession?
I make this observation not to be critical of my fellow social workers, but because I think there is a need as a profession to see that self esteem is not on the whole something which stems from external validation. There is such a thing as internalised oppression, I think that articulate and proud social workers who tackle the received wisdom will always be of interest to some people. When the main stream media reports social work in a consistently fair and positive way it will either indicate we are doing something wrong, or that we have become a far fairer and more tolerant society in which there is far less need for social workers. (I'm not convinced that the direction of travel is towards a fairer more tolerant society).
The common myths I hear are:
Social workers only work with children. If you say "no, actually I want to work with adults" and people say "oh so you want to be a social care worker". NO I DON'T WANT TO BE A CARE WORKER BUT A SOCIAL WORKER! (That one really gets to me)
Social workers snatch children away from their families.
A visit from the social worker immediately means that your children are going to be taken away.
That social workers want to take children away and don't want to work with the family holistically.
I get a wee bit fed up of people thinking I am a carer. Not to denegrate social care, but I used to do that before spending three long hard years to become a social worker - it's different but perception lumps us together.
Biggest myth: there is a recruitment crisis
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Pip: How about the idea that social workers have a persecution complex and feel the world is out to get them, and that as a profession they lack the political understanding to see that the lack of respect for their profession is a manifestation of the lack of respect which society has for certain groups of people. The myth would stem from this that they let their client groups down by focussing on their own feelings of being under valued, and failing to recognise that this is an inevitable consequence of working with sections of society that many people would prefer to pretend did not exist. That perhaps they have lost sight of the valid reasons there may be for going into the profession? I make this observation not to be critical of my fellow social workers, but because I think there is a need as a profession to see that self esteem is not on the whole something which stems from external validation. There is such a thing as internalised oppression, I think that articulate and proud social workers who tackle the received wisdom will always be of interest to some people. When the main stream media reports social work in a consistently fair and positive way it will either indicate we are doing something wrong, or that we have become a far fairer and more tolerant society in which there is far less need for social workers. (I'm not convinced that the direction of travel is towards a fairer more tolerant society).
The point you make is a view I have long held. I have often been confronted with the misconceptions people hold about the work we do and how we go about it and have had to (sometimes wearily if I'm out socially!) put them right and educate them in some small way to have a clearer understanding of the way things are. I will always stand up for the job we do and the troubled people we work with and for. I have often heard it said e.g. that a parent with a longstanding drug habit has 'chosen drugs over her children' - and I just cannot let it go and have to explain how there is very little 'choice' in it for someone battling this severe form of self-harm. There is also the impact on the involved children's feelings of self-worth if this type of uninformed and shallow view is perpetuated - particularly when later trying to make sense of their situation.
Picking up on some of the other posts - which also link in to your views, I too have experienced the elitism which appears to exist within the service. I worked with older people for many years - which I loved, but decided I would like to try working with children and young people on qualifying - after seeing the continuing impact of childhood problems on some of the clients I worked with, who were by then in their 80's and 90's. It was notable that when sharing my previous experience with students on the course who had been working with children I often found that both my work and - by default, the needs of my clients (I hate the term service users!) were both devalued and undervalued. One person remarked that he used to work with 'old people' but had tired of doing 'the doughnut and cup of tea thing'; and I remembered being told by a tutor on the course that child protection was the 'bees knees' of social work. Many did not believe I would have gained any transferrable skills to take into my work with children - despite the fact that many of the issues in these two vulnerable groups were the same - albeit with very little legal clout to protect the elderly.
We should be proud of the work we all do and value the diversity of the knowledge and experience we have gained from our different client groups. It is blatantly obvious that those who are unable to value and encompass the work done with vulnerable groups then neither will they be able to promote their acceptance and inclusion in society.
Another myth I am encountering more and more recently is that all our service users are poor people, living on benefits and on rough housing estates. There is a certain image of the typical "Social Services family" and whenever I deal with a better off family they reject the idea that Children's Services need to act to protect their children as they are not like "those lot". The cases that have been recently in the media did not help, as they only strengthened this stereotype.