![]() Normally they will turn up, introduce themselves and tell you what they are there for, they may ask you questions that you feel are personal or even strange, i know that even after i called them to help out they still wanted to check that my children all had beds to sleep in, and they ask if they have enough clothes etc, do they visit the dentists and opticians reguarly.Īll the questions they ask, just do your best to answer calmly and honestly. Join the social care network to receive regular emails and exclusive offers.I have had dealings with social services on a few occasions after calling them myself to ask for help.īut i know of other people who have had them turn up for a home visit after the family being reported through police or doctors. This article is published by Guardian Professional. The author of this story wishes to remain anonymous, and is from Ireland Confidence and judgment comes with experience, and reflection on your practice allows you to wring the most experience and learning from any situation. Afterwards use supervision or the coffee break to reflect on what happened and how you can do it better. If you're using an assessment framework remind yourself of the main elements. ![]() Talk over your plans briefly before you leave the office to make sure there is nothing you have left out. Use your team, use your team leader or supervisor, they should be there to support you (if they aren't you've got bigger problems). Put together a mental checklist in your head of the information you need. ![]() Use this time to imagine what questions you might ask. What was in the referral, what do you know, what do you need to find out, what signs should you be looking for? Spend a few minutes before tuning in to the case. So what can you do to make this whole process easier? Focus on why you are there as a social worker you have a job do to so concentrate on that. The second thing is that the door could open, and the social worker lifts the lid on a Pandora's box to have a look inside. What is on the other side of that door, is it a baby at immediate risk? Is it a child home alone? Is it a mother too wasted to answer the door? You can't know until that door opens, and until it opens anything is possible. However, this is when the anxiety steps up. Sure you can get the hell out of there, you have a one-line case note: "Home visit – no answer at door" and you leave it for the next duty worker. Depending on your confidence in your own skills, standing there on the doorstep is when you most question yourself as a practitioner and your ability to get the job done.Īs you ring that door bell, one of two things can happen. Some are so used to working in this mix that it becomes normal, others become an anxious wreck every home visit. Will they be strung out, or aggressive, or violent? Will there be a child at immediate risk and in need of emergency care? On top of all this weighs your statutory responsibility, and the defensive practice that goes with it will this be the family you will be talking about in front of some future inquiry into social work failures? The uncertainty of what you're going to find on the other side of the door. There are enough other things to fuel your anxiety though. Try looking for other areas of social work that might be more suitable. The majority of our clients are poor, socially excluded and emotionally scarred: if you want to work with clean, healthy, sober people you will be hard pushed to find them in child protection social work. Some social workers deal with this better than others some handle it so badly you wonder how the hell they can continue to be a social worker if they are that disgusted by the reality of their clients' lives. Out in the community you come face to face with the grim physical reality of deprivation and social exclusion. This is not a criticism, it's just a fact. You stand there, a fish out of water, because while the client list is dominated by the lower end of the socio-economic scale, the staff list is very much from the middle. Not every house in the neighbourhood will be like this but the house you have received concerns about probably will be. Often the house will be unkempt, with what passes for a garden overgrown with weeds and strewn with rubbish, discarded bags, cans, washing machines, even broken-down cars, littering the front. This is the real presence of poverty and social exclusion. ![]() The street will be well known to the office, half the residents will have been referred in at one point or another – usually more neglect, drugs, and alcohol cases. Invariably, as the social worker, you will find yourself standing outside a house or a flat owned by the local council, in a rundown deprived area. Social work predominantly involves working with families at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, dealing with neglect, alcohol abuse and drug use.
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