Our Stand Up Now for Social Work campaign is working to improve media coverage and public perceptions of social work. We have had some successes and are continuing to work on this - but to make a real difference we need social workers to act too.
What will you do? We're collecting pledges from readers and when we have enough will pull pull them together on a map on our website so that you can see what social workers across the country are doing to stand up for the profession - whether its signing Community Care's petition, writing a letter to their local paper or something else.
There are some pledge ideas on this blog. Please share your pledges here to inspire others to act or email us at comcare.campaign@rbi.co.uk.
I pledge to keep plugging away on facebook with my cause, "Support Social Work & Social Workers", for those of you on facebook please feel free to join and spread the positives amongst your friends, you can find it here - http://apps.facebook.com/causes/198052/39029421?m=6d54c0aa - you might need to cut and paste this into your favourite web browser. I do send out a little rant every few weeks which keeps things going and interest up. There are only about 160 members at the moment, but its one small positive amongst a growing number of positives.
I am more than happy to write to my MP, particularly if we drafted a standard letter on here we could all use. A more general vote about social work on the No.10 website might be an idea. I / we could probably be far more positive about our profession within our workplaces and realy push the professional status of socail work to our colleagues.
Posting on here is good because through this forum I certainly feel I have learned a lot more about what colleagues do in other parts of SW, so I now feel I have a slightly broader view. Also, forums like this are good not just for debating issues, but also for developing a sense of togetherness as well, so it would be great to encourage more colleagues to get posting, blogging etc.
I may think of more stuff later.
I will do some serious emailing later to friends who I think would like to sign the petition. My past teacher has asked me to go into a college and speak to a large group of students who are studying related subjects about training to become a social worker which I'll be more than happy to do so. Even if I don't convince anyone to become a social worker I would have still educated a number of people on the profession. I'll have a good think about some more ideas as I'm eating my dinner!
Thanks for these.
I just heard from BASW chief exec Hilton Dawson who says his pledge is to:
"Challenge everyone who works for and represents BASW, including myself, to constantly listen to what social worker's are saying."
As part of that, he is doing a 'roadshow' around the country to gather social workers' views. So far he has been to Derby, Leicestershire,Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Llanelli, Wrexham, Cardiff, Newport. This week he is visiting Derry, Craigavon, Ballymena, Belfast, Newtonards - look out for him, he could soon be in a town near you!
rest and come out fighting
I would like to highlight an article written by the Daily Express (7 June 2009) Exclusive: social workers ‘stole’ my children – is completely unfair and inaccurate view of social work.
Social workers are described as ‘dragging’ and ‘snatching’ children away. While the father claims that he has no idea why his children were taken away, I would urge all social workers to write to the paper asking for a fair and balanced article and to also get a response from the local authority in question. I hope community care will also write to them asking for a fair and balanced approach to journalism. I will be writing a letter of complaint to this newspaper and to Mr. Hemming MP for Birmingham Yardley (lib. dem.). As he makes certain assumptions regarding the case but with no evidence expect that of the father’s account of events. Interestingly the mother is not mentioned and I wonder whether the LA was given a chance to comment?
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/105909/EXCLUSIVE-Social-workers-stole-my-children
Thanks HotBox2009 - I'm going to take a look now. I think your suggestion that Community Care and all our readers should write letters of complaint to the Express is a great idea. I'll post a link to Community Care's letter when it is done.
I hope that by writing my blog regularly covering (among various random things!) what it is like to work as a social worker on a day to day basis I am providing, in a small little corner, some positive images of social work and social workers in general!
I've found the experience very enlightening and have also had various other opportunities present themselves as a direct result. I think that it provides a good way to 'get the word out' and granted, it is to a specific audience but sometimes it is a point-of-call for mainstream media when they are looking for 'a social worker' to represent their point..
I've had a few doubts as to whether to continue in the light of anonymous blogging and the recent court decision which offers no protection to those who do not 'reveal' - but for the moment, I'm still going to continue.
Thanks cb - I've no doubt that your blog makes a difference and I do hope that you feel able to continue writing it.
I also wanted to thank social worker of the year Jacqui Knight, who spoke to journalists at leading 'real-life' magazine Take a Break recently. Today they have done areally positive article - given that the mag is read by well over a million people, that's a real triumph.
It isn't available online so I was going to give yo a few excepts here, but there are so many good ones that I hardly know where to start! Here's a few:
I would certainly urge you to get a copy - it's worth the 78p cover price for that one article!
Most excitingly, they really want to run more articles about social workers and are appealing for social workers to come forward.
I think this is a real opportunity - mainly because their story leads usually come from readers, and as is always the case, those with negative experiences are more likely to come forward than those with positive experiences. This is a chance to redress the balance - paricularly since the magazine really seems to "got" many of the issues. I've blogged about it here.
I'm going to try to keep the momentum going and find some compelling success stories. Any ideas on who to appraoch and how? I know lots of social workers have clauses in their contracts or find it hard to speak out - am I better approaching directors so I get their buy-in first?
We just had a directive this week reminding us all that any press requests need to go via the press office. I think the best thing to do would be to approach directors/press officers in councils and ask for positive stories - then they will put the word out 'officially' through their own channels to find people to speak and it will all be bona fide.. all councils want good publicity - they just want to be able to control it!
Thanks CB. I think you're probably right. So I've contacted all directrors of adult services and directors of children's services in England. Hoping to get through directors in the rest of the UK shortly. I've already had some positive responses from some, so fingers crossed it'll come to comething!
I recorded a short piece (I think it'll only be two or three minutes) for a radio 4 programme that'll be aired next week (9pm Tuesday - I'm told). Not much but the idea is to present what social workers do.. and hopefully it'll be quite positive (I'm not sure how it'll be edited down but I obviously didn't say anything negative and I'm going on holiday so am not going to be able to catch it!). It's anonymous and I think my voice is going to be changed a bit but there isn't anything remotely controversial there in any case!
The take a break articles and their interest in social work is good. But I think generally the way mainstream media writes and frames social work is still rather negative. This will take years and years to correct (if ever) ...
The massive caseload problem, and the way it affects workers practice, is the "Big Issue"
Managers must not distribute the cases until the workers current cases are being effectively dealt with. Having too many cases means that few of them are getting dealt with effectively or properly.
There is too much pressure to just "close the File" irrespective of whether it really has been effectively handled.
Smokey:There is too much pressure to just "close the File" irrespective of whether it really has been effectively handled
how do you know this do you have a secret spy hole onto every social workers caseload throughout the whole country? we do are best and do not close cases unless they have been efectively handled and have come to a satisfactory conclusion.
are you a social care worker smokey? who are you? a question troll? someone with a chip on their shoulder? or too much time on your hands?
I am a person with a disability, who has never been given adequate information about my condition.
That's what google is for.. honestly, it's getting a little tiresome now.
cb ~ can you PM me your blog address please? I'd be keen to follow! :)
Hello everybody. Can I just make a few comments based on my own experiences. I lived in a Children's Home from the start of year 9 at school until I was 18 because of family abuse and neglect. I do try to give a balanced view of what happened. But it is human nature to remember the bad rather than the good. Anyway the bad should not happen!
There is really no excuse for making a promise to a young person then breaking it. It doesn't help the young person to pass the blame onto others either. "I was over-ruled" or "My Manager said no" or my least favourite "You must have misunderstood what I said".
If you say you are coming at a certain day or time then do it. Don't cancel, don't re-arrange, don''t send somebody else who doesn't know the child and don't say "You must have misunderstood what I said".
Don't have a discussion outside the meeting room that can be overheard by the child inside the meeting room. Particularly if you are going to call me "damaged".
Finally don't have a pre-meeting with the child waiting outside. I always felt that what I said didn't count if I was even the first part of the meeting.