THE SOCIAL WORKER. PART 7

Adequate recording will help the social worker and others to see the trees for the wood and make sense of what is being done.

Making and maintaining adequate and upto date case recording on each case, is of vital importance for the social worker, their service-users or clients, and the social worker's employing agency. Part of the importance of this is that, in the eventuality of something going seriously wrong in the case, such as a complaint from the service user, or a child suffering serious harm, the service user's case files will become crucial to the resultant investigation. The social worker should also find that, in formulating and recording his/her case records, they will have the opportunity to reflect on what had taken place, and help them to analyse and improve how they carry out their work.

Because of the usually high and competing demands on their time, it is therefore quite easy for social workers to have some cases which are not being given any consistent input, and might even have been forgotten by the worker. There is also a danger of social workers not doing case recording or adequate and upto date case recording, which means that other workers, should they have to respond to any queries on those cases, in the absence of the case worker, will not be able to be of much assistance, as the written record of what has or has not been taking place on the case, is absent.  It is at these times, when they have to respond to a query about the, that a team manager might have a look at a given case and find it in a woeful state.

It is probably not surprising that case recording should be so important a task for social services department, since, however good a social worker might think he/she is, if there is no record of the work they are doing and trying to do with the families and other agencies they are working with, then, as far as their employer is concerned, they are not doing any work. Work has to be evidenced by adequate case recording. If the recording is not adequately done, then there is really no way of anybody using the case recording evaluate, analyse what have been done, what has been achieved, evidenced the social worker's actions on the case.


The social worker must endeavour to avoid 'being at sea' and not in a boat.

Because of how quickly social workers can find their plans going out of the window, figuratively speaking, some might think that there is little point in planning. However, the opposite is true; it makes it more important for you to plan, organise and endeavour to manage your time as efficiently as you can. Not to do so could quickly result in you losing sight of things and attempting to manage your work reactively, instead of proactively.

I have found that it is always helpful for me to plan, diary and give service-users appointments for at least one or more visits in advance of making them. Accordingly, before I finishing seeing a family, I would make sure that they know when I would be visiting again. The number of visits and their frequency should be influenced by the amount and complexity of the work you plan to carry out with the family and others, in achieving the service, child protection or care plan objectives. Visits, of themselves, do not result in the positive transformation of families and their circumstances. Instead, it is the work the social worker and other involved agencies and professionals do with these families, which helps to effect positive changes. 

Regularly visiting a family helps to the social worker to establish and develop the required working relationship with them, which will, in turn, develop the mutual trust and understanding both of them require to communicate efficiently and effectively about the work they have to do, in order to achieve the objectives of the plan they are implementing. It also promotes consistence of input by the social worker, regular contact with the children involved, and more reassurance for the parents and carers.

Recording it in stone for future use

Some social workers and their agencies consider it important to visit families on their caseload without notifying them in advance. This is done in order to try to ascertain whether and how much difference their is in what takes place in the family home and their interaction, when visits are planned and when they are planned. This can have some merit, for example, in cases where the parents and/or carers are known or believed to be unreliable and untruthful in the information they are giving the worker and other agencies about what is happening. 

It can, however, be used inappropriately, with some workers over-relying on it, resulting in the parents or carers not being at home when the worker calls, or having visitors, which then raises questions about confidentiality and the need to either not do any work with the family on that occasion or having to ask non-household members to leave; which can antagonise the family. 

If focused work is to be done with a family, it is important that both the social worker and the family are properly prepared for and engage in it in an atmosphere which is conducive towards it being successful. This is not likely to be the case with visits made 'unspect' or without notifying the family, or only giving them very little notice of the visit, before making it.

Keeping it in balance