THE SOCIAL WORKER. PART 4

Social work; a challenging but potentially very rewarding profession

Probably one of the most exciting thing about field social work, is that of being allocated your own cases, and being able to meet, engage with and begin the process of working with a service-user and their family and relevant others, to try to effect identified changes in their living. The process of planning this intervention and executing it, is something which requires a lot of though from the social worker.

I have found that it can be very helpful for the new social worker to carry out a chronological appraisal of the relevant files. This date ordered summary of basic case details and significant events occurring on the case and in the service-user’s life can be very useful in helping a social worker to have a manageable mental image of the case, including the key issues involved in it, the key tasks which are to be carried out and the objectives being worked towards. These significant events will include changes of address, changes in household composition, in schools, different professionals becoming involved with the family, injuries sustained by the child and/or other family members, episodes of hospitalisation, employment status, the child or siblings being made the subject of safeguarding or care plans, et al.

Many cases might have a case chronology, but, with the best intentions in the world, social workers do struggle to keep abreast of the 1001 things they ‘must do’, according to their employers’ policies and procedures. Consequently, the reality is that some very important things do get left behind or are not done within the required time-scale. This is why you, as a social worker, should always examine the files and not wholly rely on the chronology, since the chances are that it will not be upto date and is likely to have left some useful events out.

Having made your evaluation of the case files, you can now make contact with the service-user and significant family members, to arrange to meet them and carry out your introductory visits and begin to make your own assessment of them. At the same time you might also be making contact with key agencies involved in the case, in order to introduce yourself and have discussions with them. In some instances you will have already met some of these key professionals, e.g., if you have attended a child protection meeting or a statutory review meeting, while ‘shadowing’ another worker in order to learn the ropes.

You might chose to make contact with the service-user by the telephone or by letter, and arrange a convenient time to meet them. If it is, e.g., a young child and his/her parent, you might decide that it is best to see the parents on their own first, in which case you will see how they are without the anxiety of seeing a social worker while contending with, say , a demanding child, knowing that they are being observed. Your next meeting with them might be to see them with their child, so that you can observe the dynamics, interaction and relationship between them.

You will need to be mindful of the fact that different venues and situations will present the parents and the child with different anxieties and challenges, all of which could have an impact on how they respond to them. One of the things you will be looking for, is to find out what is the ‘normal’ routine, way of dealing and coping with living for this family, including whether there are predictable situations which causes increased stresses and threats for them and what risks those could pose for the child’s safety and welfare.


To be continued

The social worker sometimes have to take calculated risks to effect and test out the validity of actual or perceived positive changes in people's lives.