After being in social Work over 6 years I have recently been informed that we now have to conduct reviews over the phone. Iam quite concerned about this as the government drive and best practice guideance would have us believe that we need to be person centred. Please could anyone tell me what is person centred about doing reviews over the telephone? Especially when the service User is not present and or not able to verbally communicate their needs due to difficulties with speech etc? (By the way, forgot to say I work within adult learning disabilty services). Surely this practice is against GSCC code of conduct?
Surely it depends upon the client situation and what you are reviewing.
Do you have a resource allocation tool or case load weighting.
If the client is happy with this situation and it is safe then why not? Why cant the client review themselves and then let you know what they think?
I do agree that not every review can be carried out by telephone.
I agree that it does depend very much on the individual that you are reviewing and their circumstances. However, I do feel that if a person cannot communicate well on the phone or you have any concerns, you should be doing a face to face review. However, that said I know that there is a lot of pressure for workers to carry out telephone reviews in order to meet performance indicators etc - or to carry out more assessments and leave reviews waiting in the wings.