https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2024/09/17/social-workers-supported-fathers-readers-take/ Social Work News & Social Care Jobs Fri, 20 Sep 2024 15:47:38 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2024/09/17/social-workers-supported-fathers-readers-take/#comment-348819 Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:33:47 +0000 https://www.communitycare.co.uk/?p=211768#comment-348819 Training and specialist training always to be welcomed but there is a peculiar conundrum in this assertion. I’m a 46 year old white male heterosexual social worker. My only distinctive characteristics from that norm is my physical disability. If social workers are anything they are resourceful professionals able to surmount their lack of expertise in some areas. Does not being confident to work with men as a female social worker have it’s roots in the sexism and misogyny experienced by women routinely or failures in social work training? Clearly both but to deskill female colleagues by claiming they are not equipped to work with men is patronising. Not receiving support and supervision is the key really. Reducing social work to constantly changing narrow definitions is at the very least unhelpful. Can I not work with lesbian parents because of my gender? We can’t just claim it’s easier to work with women because they are “seen” as responsible for children. That lets off male responsibility for parenting and perpetuates sexism. As social workers we work in difficult circumstances and with difficult and at times aggressive service users. We do it if we are lucky because we get good supervision and we have good management support. In absence of that we do it with the encouragement, empathy and critical reflections from our colleagues. Every client group benefits from more resources but we don’t not work with those if resources don’t exist.

]]> https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2024/09/17/social-workers-supported-fathers-readers-take/#comment-348682 Tue, 17 Sep 2024 15:44:40 +0000 https://www.communitycare.co.uk/?p=211768#comment-348682 None. Focus is on completing paperwork

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