Social Work, Cats and Rocket ScienceA few years ago, when I was a Team Manager, I chaired a meeting about a man who the Local Authority had recently placed in a care home. During the meeting I noticed that the man’s mother Sheila was becoming increasingly frustrated by the meeting, in particular she became fidgety as the Social Worker insisted […]
In 2015, social workers supported people to participate in the General Election. To find out more, the first 50 people to click on this link will be able to download the paper for free – https://www.emeraldinsight.com/eprint/5A9ESHWF4FBNZ6S2AH9G/full If you still need any persuading that #promotetheldvote matters – take 5 minutes to watch this: https://btmprojects.com/2018/04/11/2274/
First blog ever! Inspired by an email I received today. I’ve often thought about whether I’d be any good at writing a blog but I guess you’ll be the judge of that now. So anyway, today I was copied into this email at work, from our Principal Social Worker asking for contributions towards an e-book […]
My favourite mornings start with a coffee. I’m a member of the coffee club at work. Gossiping with others over that first cup is a ritual that grounds the day. There’s something about the feeling of belonging that being part of the coffee club brings. I can’t imagine how it would feel to have that […]
There’s a song by a band called the Wedding Present which like so many other songs is about falling in love. It’s called A Million Miles. It’s about that moment when you meet someone for the first time. The moment when your stomach spins. You can’t eat, you can’t sleep and yet despite this, as the […]
Sheila had a secret. She had a lover. She had kept this secret for over 20 years following the death of her husband so that she wouldn’t upset her daughters. They knew, of course, about her gentleman friend, but they had strongly disapproved. And when they had arranged for her to move into a care […]
A few months ago, I was talking to a social worker. She was telling me about a man called Peter that she had worked with. She told me that Peters relationship with balloons (as in the ones you see at a birthday party etc) is a critical feature of his life. She went on to […]
On the 13th March 2017, the law commission published their long overdue report on Mental Capacity and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS). The report finally arrived a week after news broke of the death of Rusi Stanev, aged 61. The ruling on Stanev v Bulgaria by the European Court of Human Rights in 2012 was a catalyst for change […]
The purpose of this blog post is to encourage social workers to consider how their use of language when writing about or referring to people can impact on practice. It explores some challenging ideas which reference the disability studies literature. A Guest Social Worker Blog When I first qualified as a social worker I had […]
In the main, people working in care choose to do because they want to be caring. But sometimes they don’t support people to live the lives they want to lead. Perhaps it’s the surprisingly ordinary, possibly even dull nature of an ordinary life which leads to workers talking up worries. Leading to a reframing of […]
Social Work, Cats and Rocket Science 