By Matt Bee

Frontline’s fast-track programme has stirred up quite a debate in social work. How long should a candidate actually spend in a classroom before entering the field? That’s a big question. But the bigger question is – how long should we, all of us, spend studying after we’ve qualified?

Staying current has always been a challenge, and for just as long has been a key standard for our proficiency to practise. But time and again the importance of staying up-to-date is overlooked in favour of re-evaluating how social workers are first trained.

Almost a decade ago now, if you remember, that was the response in the wake of the Baby P tragedy. Ed Balls was clear. The training of social workers had to be re-evaluated.

Rethink after rethink

This came as a big surprise to me, newly qualified at the time. With the arrival of the all-new undergraduate and master’s degrees, a transformation in the training of social workers had already taken place. I was one of the first to brandish one of these new qualifications. But apparently our training needed another rethink – having just benefited from a rethink. And now, a decade on, Fronline is rethinking it all over again.

Meanwhile, the thorny issue of how to stay current hasn’t gone away. Even the best part of a decade ago, it was drilled into me to read every scrap of every research and government paper I could lay my hands on.

Have I stuck to this? Not even slightly – despite my best efforts. And the reason why is something I’ve brushed upon in Community Care before. Government papers and academic works are, by their very nature, weighty things to wade through. You need to invest time to reap the rewards. The idea of kicking back with one on a lunch break – the idea of even getting a lunch break – is, for many practitioners, absurd.

How many social workers are in this position? Most, I would imagine. Our main contact with latest research is often through managers emailing links with a suggestion that we have a look, when we get chance. But rarely do we get chance.

Extra-curricular activity

And therein is the problem. Although developing knowledge is a key Health and Care Professions Council standard, many of the ways we might do this are seen as extra-curricular. When Harry Ferguson, a professor of social work, recently wrote that the profession couldn’t survive without university social work departments – should the drive towards fast-track schemes sweep them away – I thought he was probably right. But, also, what are we doing with all the good work of these departments, anyway?

If every social work department at every university closed its doors tomorrow, how long before frontline practitioners, swamped by heaps of assessments and referral forms, would actually notice?

In saying this, I’m not having a dig at such departments. What I mean is, do we actually acknowledge their work, make full use of it, and actually apply this to practice? With the need to evidence that we’re maintaining professional development, there is an incentive to read all this output. But when you consider there are over 90,000 registered social workers in England alone, and then compare this with the sales figures for academic books, often in the hundreds, you do wonder if we’re making the most of these efforts.

No time for study

Of course, it comes down to having the time – and in this respect whether you initially train by fast-track scheme or otherwise, the problem, when you hit the workplace, remains the same.

I’ve only ever come across one team that ring-fenced study-time. A quiet office was booked out for half a day each week, and each week you’d find a social worker in there, reading. These days you don’t even need to read. Lectures, talks and discussion groups can be found online. When I wrote in Community Care about using mainstream books to develop practice, Amanda Taylor at the University of Central Lancashire notified me of a book group she’s developed (and which has featured in Community Care before). Several of these are run around the country now, and these are even streamed online so taking part really couldn’t be easier. You can follow on Twitter at @SWBookGroup.

But, given the pressing and immediate demands of the job, it often feels like we need permission to spend time studying. What we really need is encouragement. What we need is time, ring-fenced.

Gulf between research and practice

Meanwhile, there seems to be this gulf between what academics uncover and what actually feeds into practice – and this doesn’t just apply to social workers. Years ago, I came across the work of Stirling University in dementia design. But the care homes I visit today? Many have cream walls, white light switches, doors uniformly the same colour, and residents wandering the corridors, lost. For the sake of a quick reference to the work at Stirling University, their lives could be made so much better.

Good research leads to good practice, but only if the right pathways are forged down which it can develop. More time needs to be spent on how social workers can be supported to stay up to-date, and less on how they enter the role in the first place.

By Shefali Shah, director, solicitor and national trainer, Kingsley Knight Training

Shefali is delivering a free practical session on how social workers can improve their confidence in court at tomorrow’s Community Care Live Birmingham event.

Many social workers feel uncomfortable about going to court. For some the idea is downright frightening, something they would avoid if they possibly could. The reality is that, however challenging, it is part of the social worker’s job and not attending court can have serious consequences.

I was involved in one case where a social worker was directed to attend court in a private law children’s matter. The social worker informed the court that she would not be attending as she was on duty. She felt anxious about it and preferred to avoid court; she didn’t seek advice but thought this course of action would enable her not to attend.

Find out about other mock court sessions and the full programme of learning opportunities for children’s and adults’ social workers here.
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However this did not go down well with the judge who sent a further order for her attendance and attached a penal notice to the order. This meant that if the social worker refused to comply then she could be held in contempt of court, imprisoned or fined.

Anxiety

The social worker did attend court and gave evidence over two days. However, the problems continued because in the judge’s view, the social worker’s evidence failed to assist the case. In fact, it further complicated it.

This resulted in the judge ordering the local authority to give a reason why it should not pay the applicant’s legal costs of £17,000. This was a harsh lesson for both the practitioner and her council in ensuring social workers are clear about what is expected of them.

As this case shows, an understanding of court rules and your duties as a witness is really important.

The anxiety about attending court and giving evidence that caused problems in this case could have been avoided by addressing what the worries were.

Common worries include not knowing how the legal system operates, the court rules, legal language or the purpose of cross-examination. Others may be concerned about what they will be asked and being uncertain about what to say and when to say it.

Social workers may feel nervous if they are unaware of what their duties are or have fears about who else will be at court on that day. Some feel anxious about how to address the judge and court etiquette, formalities or protocol. Others are worried about how they will come across under cross-examination.  It can even be something as seemingly trivial as not knowing what to wear.

Presentation

As with many situations, the main reason for anxiety is the not-knowing.

We get worried about entering unfamiliar environments with rules we don’t necessarily know and that can be daunting.

In court, there is a risk that these feelings of uncertainty can interfere with how a social worker presents themselves. There is sometimes the idea that giving evidence is a performance and the courtroom is like a theatre. I would argue this isn’t actually that useful and can result in social workers adopting an unhelpful presentation style.

You may be trying to present as confident and credible, but could be perceived as defensive, aggressive or even confrontational.

You can gain and demonstrate genuine confidence in this arena where social workers play a vital role by equipping yourself with knowledge and skills. By understanding what is expected of you and how the process works, it will seem less intimidating.

Social workers are experts. The Community Care Live mock court session will arm you with the essential skills you need to become an impressive witness and demonstrate your expertise to the courts.

Shefali Shah is author of ‘Key Changes to Family Justice’, published in 2015 by CoramBAAF

Imagine you receive a phone call from a school, letting you know that one of the children you work with is off sick. Intuitively, you feel that something else is wrong and decide to make a home visit, to see the child and parents and ‘check out’ your feeling.

If the child’s parents or your manager challenged you about why you made an unscheduled visit, how comfortable would you be saying it was a ‘gut instinct’, regardless of what happened during the visit? Would you feel more confident if you could rationalise it afterwards by referring to statistics that link children missing school and child protection concerns?

David Wilkins, senior lecturer at the Tilda Goldberg Centre, University of Bedfordshire and former principal social worker at Enfield has developed Community Care Inform’s new lunchtime CPD session on analysis and decision-making.

He says understanding how intuition affects your process and being confident about this is a key part of developing your skills in this area. Here he explains the importance of instinct, plus more top tips included in the session:

Intuition vs logic

“Emotions will come into decision-making whether social workers want them to or not,” Wilkins points out. The best practitioners are able to comfortably use – and recognise when they are using – both intuition and logical reasoning. Supervision is a good forum to reflect on how decisions were made and what happened as a result.

Take time to hypothesize

When you encounter a practice dilemma, take time to generate as many hypotheses as possible about what is happening. Don’t worry about coming up with the ‘right’ hypothesis or thinking of solutions at this stage; the aim is to improve analysis by expanding thinking around a problem.

For example, if you are working with a family but only ever speak to the mother and are struggling to engage the father, some hypotheses could be:

• The father is actively trying to avoid meeting with you
• He wants to meet you but hasn’t been given the opportunity
• He has met with social workers in the past and had a negative experience – not being listened to, for example
• The family have interpreted something you said to mean you don’t want or need to meet him
• You are more comfortable working with mothers than fathers

You could think of more for this example. Once hypotheses have been generated, you can start to think of what information you need to test them out and what you could do to counter the problem.

Understand confirmation bias

It’s human nature to seek out or place more trust in information that confirms our preferred view. Someone who believes that men are better drivers than women, for example, will tend to remember many examples of seeing female drivers having difficulty parking and forget all the times they have seen male drivers in the same situation. In social work we may also actively seek information to confirm our belief. If you believe a child is being maltreated, you will ask different questions during an assessment than if you believe the child is well cared for.

Simply being aware of confirmation bias is not enough to mitigate against it. You could use supervision to explore how you would approach a case if you started from the position of a completely different viewpoint about the service user and see if this informs your thinking and decision-making.

Find out what happened next

Without getting feedback on this, you may never know whether the decisions you make prove to be helpful or not or whether bias is coming in at a system-wide level.For example, if an assessment is closed with no further action, would you find out if the family is subsequently referred for similar reasons (which may indicate that closure was not the right decision)? Explore whether you obtain a personal re-referral rate and reflect on whether this can inform future assessments and decision-making.

For further details, more aspects of analysis and practice examples to work through, see Community Care Inform’s new lunchtime CPD session and practice guide.

Isabelle Trowler has published the final list of standards that assistant directors and those supervising children’s social workers will need to meet, under plans to accredit the workforce.

It follows a consultation period on the standards, developed by the KPMG-led consortium which won a government contract to build an assessment and accreditation system for child and family social workers at three levels.

Professional and personal support

Key changes that have been made to the draft statements, as a result of the consultation, include a greater focus on knowledge of legislation and case law for both supervisors and leaders and a requirement for leaders to provide sufficient professional and personal support to ensure the wellbeing of practitioners. There is also stronger emphasis on the wellbeing of children in public care.

In addition to the final statements, Trowler also outlined the next steps for accreditation which include:

• Consideration of further knowledge and skills statements for specialist areas of practice such as planning permanent care options.
• Guidance on the assessment and accreditation process will be published early next year for consultation. This will include asking the sector whether the tests should be made mandatory.
• Exploring the idea of accreditation for leaders, as well as supervisors, of adult social work.

The standards for the first level – Approved Child and Family Practitioner status, for those in frontline roles – were published last November and a four stage assessment process is being developed.

Different assessment processes

The Department for Education expects that social workers seeking practice supervisor status, the second level, will need to pass the same four stages – employer endorsement, online tests of knowledge, critical reasoning and decision-making, and observation of practice in a simulated environment.

However, practice leaders, who will usually be assistant directors of children’s social care or directors of family services, are likely to have to go through a continuous assessment process instead.

Implementation guidance

The government said any plans on implementing accreditation would “take into account workforce pressures and other workforce implications”.

As part of the consultation, the social workers, local authorities and other bodies who responded, asked for clarity on how the statuses would relate to existing management structures and roles such as principal social worker and independent reviewing officer. The government said this would also be included in the forthcoming guidance but it would be “mindful of the need not to stifle structural innovation in local authorities”.

In response to queries about how the new statements fit in with other frameworks, the government said it was not its intention to replace the professional capabilities framework.

“A number of general social work standards and guidance documents do exist; these new statements, in contrast, are dedicated to practice supervisors and practice leaders in the child and family social work setting, and so have not been amended to include other frameworks.”

However, the government said the statements complemented the HCPC professional standards and the regulatory body would be taking them into account when it reviews its standards of proficiency.

A review of the professional capabilities framework, published today, was subject to “severe restrictions” in the wake of the closure of the College of Social Work.

In its final act before closing its doors at the end of the month, the college made a set of recommendations including establishing a clearer relationship between the PCF and other pieces of guidance for social workers.

Unforeseen restrictions

However, a final report stated the outcomes of the review should be seen in the context of the “extraordinary circumstances” of the college’s closure.

“[The closure] has imposed unforeseen restrictions on what is achievable at this point,” the report said.

The review, designed to ensure the framework remains fit for use in the future, recommended a coherent relationship should be established between the college’s definition of leadership and that set out in the chief social workers’ knowledge and skills statements for practice leaders and supervisors.

The loss of the college created a “void” in this work, the report said.

The key recommendations were:

1. That PCF level descriptors should be enhanced and made a focal point for signposting and integration;
2. That Domain 9 – Professional Leadership  – is reviewed so that it encompasses a broader and more up to date definition of leadership, and establishes a coherent relationship with the Knowledge and Skills Statements for practice leaders and practice supervisors.
3. That joint statements are developed to explain priorities and relationships between the PCF and other guidance, including the Knowledge and Skills Statement for Child and Family social work, the Knowledge and Skills Statement for social workers in Adults Services and the Health and Care Professions Council Standards of Proficiency for Social Workers in England.
4. That visual presentation of the PCF is improved, and the refreshed version is disseminated widely

Knowledge and skills

The review was led by independent consultant, Helen Keville, and drawn up in consultation with practitioners and other stakeholders.

Chief executive of the college, Annie Hudson said: “What the review process has shown us is that the PCF has many strengths and much value as a framework  for professional standards in social work.

“This period of critical review and reflection offers a solid and strong basis further to strengthen and enhance it.”

British Association of Social Workers  chief executive, Bridget Robb, added BASW was in negotiations with the college about the transfer and will make further statements once those are concluded.

]]> https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/08/26/free-performance-of-drama-that-teaches-social-workers-how-to-prevent-sexual-exploitation/ https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/08/26/free-performance-of-drama-that-teaches-social-workers-how-to-prevent-sexual-exploitation/#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2015 14:48:43 +0000 https://www.communitycare.co.uk/?p=131578 'Chelsea's Choice', a play about the exploitation of a young girl, is going to be performed to social workers who attend Community Care Live in November]]>

A hard-hitting drama that explores how social workers can prevent child sexual exploitation will be performed at Community Care Live.

For the first time, social workers who attend Community Care Live in London will see a play that looks at the ways young people are groomed, manipulated and exploited, and how professionals can prevent it.

‘Chelsea’s Choice’, follows three students who discover the diary of a girl called Chelsea who, having fallen out with friends and family, is approached by a man called Gary.

Community Care Live is free for registered social workers and contributes to your continuing professional development
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The story that follows is examined by the three students and their teacher who attempt to understand what happened to Chelsea, and how it could have been prevented.

Visibly shaken

The 40 minute production is followed by an immersive Q&A. It has been seen by hundreds of professionals working to protect children and more than 300,000 young people across the UK.

Sean McGrath, creative director for Alter Ego productions, who created the play, said it always generates a really strong response.

“It’s a very hard-hitting play without being graphic. When we do it for adults we have people coming up visibly a little shaken because of how upsetting the subject is.”

He insisted the purpose of the play is not to shock, but rather to educate social workers and give them a more in depth understanding of the grooming process by seeing it in action.

“It’s educating them on how to spot the warning signs, and getting them to understand what message is going out to young people,” he said.

“One of the greatest weapons that perpetrators of child sexual exploitation have is both young people and adults’ naivety about the fact it happens and what it looks like,” he added.

The trailer for Chelsea’s Choice can be watched below:

Debate among social workers and sector leaders is currently raging across Twitter, Facebook and in the comments section on Community Care on numerous issues such as what should happen following the closure of The College of Social Work and should the profession be split into children’s and adults social work.

This article is part of Community Care’s Stand up for Social Work campaign. We’re standing up for social work by being honest, offering support and providing inspiration.

But we know those involved in these debates represent less than a tenth of the profession as a whole. So what do you think should happen?

Our survey will take no more than five minutes to fill out and means your views can be part of the debate.

Stand up for social work and have your say – waiting until next month, or when you have more time may be too late! Take the survey now.

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By Tony Stanley, principal social worker, Tower Hamlets 

The government recently set out its proposals for practice supervision and practice leadership. Previously, some had wondered what was meant by ‘practice leader’. But we have probably all worked with or know of one – someone who promotes a practice led-system over managerial dominance or bureaucratic compliance (just as we can all think of senior managers who favour Key Performance Indicator spreadsheets).

Eileen Munro placed a spear in the sand and said we can take back practice from the grip of this managerialism, but to do this, we need brave leaders.

‘Tinkering around the edges’

We need people at the top of organisations who are willing to take risks and make more space for practice-led systems. Post Munro we have only tinkered round the edges, for example with principal social workers. With 75% of local authorities needing to improve, according to Ofsted, the pressure is on. More of the same is not an option.

Practice leadership, as set out in these statements, can guard against managerialism. It allows balance and a new influence within systems dominated by measurement and statistical claims about progress and child safety.

Seeing a child every 10 days does not make them safe but this inflexible approach can take over.

I have had emails from managers reminding me of visits on my caseload recorded outside of timescales. What is the priority here? Is it to do things on time? Or is it to practice with a quality that is focused on change, families empowered to co-collaborate with us, to build resiliency and coping strategies? Is the focus to offer real help to families – practical and emotional – and record it in a way that is helpful to the child and their family to read later, and for the next social worker, for Ofsted and so on?

Why accreditation?

The point of our practice should be ‘doing the right things’, not ‘doing things right.’ This is why we should embrace accreditation. Other professions have long done so. Teaching hospitals are great examples of a culture where research and the latest practice debates are alive and well.

In New Zealand, where I qualified, there is a practice leader in every area office, and they collaborate with the chief social worker to improve the child welfare system. As a newly qualified social worker I accessed the national chief social work office for research and practice updates. I worked a case of denied sexual abuse, involving a violent gang culture and I was supported by the practice leader to take risks for the children, while the chief social work office provided me the latest practice research. I was supported in my decision to leave them within the wider family system, but build safety around them.

Leadership support and backing

If a tragedy happens, we need to know that we have leadership support and backing. Practice leaders need to understand practice methodologically and theoretically if they are to promote it. Let’s not shy away from raising the game as high as we can. Otherwise practice will stay risk averse and defensive.

Who is a practice leader?

Are principal social workers (PSWs) practice leaders? Maybe – perhaps some more than others. Are we a national force to be reckoned with? Not yet. Will we be? Unlikely. Why? Because too many PSWs are no longer in practice. They struggle to comment on how managerialist systems of work dominate.

Practice leaders can learn from the PSW experience to avoid this trap and offer a new vision for social work.

Fresh approaches

Recent radicalisation cases demonstrate why we need leaders who can create new structures. Currently, families in these cases are shoehorned though the traditional child protection system. If they don’t comply, courts grant wardship orders on teenagers, with families left on the sidelines.

This is neither right, nor just and disempowers a family’s right to lead solutions for their child. Perhaps the problem is trust. Do we trust families enough? Do we trust social workers enough? The system is geared towards watching and checking-up. Too many people are paid to watch and professional voices and professional spaces are favoured over those of the family and their networks.

How can family participation be weighted more evenly alongside professional input? Could the family group conference, which I think is better for cases of radicalisation risk, replace the traditional child protection conference system? Only practice leaders could drive such a change.

Leading from the front

Being the principal social worker is the most interesting role I have had, and there are many of us trying to agitate and influence. But we can’t change things. We can only try to influence within the existing structures. Practice leaders, and this should be the head of children’s social care (and adult services, although this hasn’t yet been proposed) need to be the first to be accredited, to truly lead practice from the front. There are many out there already. Some will argue that testing and accreditation is not relevant. I am arguing here that it couldn’t be more relevant for the leadership of a profession at risk.