Critical Career Review_ the training and experiences of a Social Worker working with children.

by emmajad (student)

Emma Latham

Portfolio item 6 Critical Career Review

Introduction

On leaving school, my chosen career was to be Nursery Nursing and I remember I wanted to work in a school environment; just the thought of all those long school holidays energized me.

I began my training at the age of seventeen, still very unsure if this was the career move I wanted, but just thinking well I need to do something to keep my parents happy, whilst I was staying out late and not really showing much maturity.

I did not really take the course very seriously, however seemed to have good reports from the placements as I really connected with the children and got average marks in the assignments, but it was not until I attended my last placement at a Social Services Day Centre that really seemed to stick, I can remember I loved everything about it, up until now things had been quite boring but this made me go home and want to know more.

I felt that I had got the base line in child development but now this was giving me the tools to use it, Child Protection, Behaviour Management, children’s routines, working in partnership with parents and the biggest one of all, empowerment.

So that was it, forget the long school holidays! I have found my career, I qualified in 1995 and worked in a Private Day Nursery for a few months until a post became available in a Social Services Day Nursery.

During my time at the nursery I was given the opportunity to do outreach which involved going into the community and working with the parents and children within the home environment on support packages that looked at routines with in the Home, Food and Nutrition, Health and Safety.

So I began to work as a family aide in July 1997 which meant I could continue with my outreach work on a permanent basis, as the nursery had a rota system giving each staff member an equal opportunity to undertake the service.

During both these jobs I had worked closely with the social work teams and in January 1999 I was offered a secondment as a Social Work Assistant, as they were then!, at one of the teams, during this time my personal life had also changed as I was now living with my partner and expecting our first baby in that September.

By doing the secondment made me realise I wanted to develop to a Social Worker and the only way to progress was to do my diploma in social work so after missing the intake in November 2000, I went back to my original post as a family aide.

So I began my training October 2001 this was not easy, as I had to continue to work part time, along side the course, due to financial reasons and then I had a beautiful little girl, who was only two years old and still needed a lot of mom’s time. However I had a very supportive partner and it worked.

My Social Work training

My social work training was no way easy, the course was not one that you could just attend and complete the work it made you reflect on your own life and how you approach things, but I managed to get accustomed to this and began making progress on my assignments.

In December 2001 just two months into the course my partner was admitted into hospital and was diagnosed with leukaemia.

It felt as though my whole world had dropped out lots of life changing experiences began to happen, but although I was making regular trips to the hospital and looking after my little girl, my partner and I decided that I should continue with the course and so I did and found that it was a focus and helped me cope with the illness a lot better by being made to function, with having to attend university which was my escape.

I attended my first placement within the voluntary sector at a local support and information centre where their main aim was to offer support and advice to the local community on welfare rights and debt management.

Due to the high number of asylum seekers I found myself working very closely with NASS (national Asylum Support Services) and the Asylum and Immigration Act 1999. Once NASS had terminated their support it was the role of the support and information centre to help them become state independent and then move on to be available for work.

There were over 42 different nationalities so it was here that I gained my experience and expanded my knowledge of working with interpreters, interviewing skills. Multi agency working and advocacy.

My second placement was that of a statutory one within Wolverhampton Social Services called the Family Advice and support Team, as part of this team you were required to undertake planned intervention, highlighted in an Initial Assessment, which is a report with a series of questions set out in the

( Framework of Assessment Of Children In Need And Their Families) which is underpinned in the Children’s Act 1989.

Another aspect of the team was the duty system that would than be responding to families in crisis or where a child/ young person may be at risk of being accommodated.

This placement really got me linking theory to practice as all their planned work was linked to theories such as brief intervention, solution focused and crisis intervention.

Coulshed and Orme 1998 bring to our attention that “Theory ultimately provides guidance towards more effective practice, giving measures of confidence so that workers do not feel totally at mercy to their working environment” (P.13)

Both these placements added to my learning, with the support from my personal tutor being my link between the lectures and relating them to practice.

One of my final assignments was Personal and Professional Development and I can honestly say this was the one that made me understand and make use of reflective practice.

“Reflection is an important human activity which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it” (Boud, D Keogh and D Walker 1985 (P19)

Before undertaking my diploma in social work, I had not given much thought to ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Both these placements added to my learning, with the support from my personal tutor being my link between the lectures and relating them to practice.

One of my final assignments was Personal and Professional Development and I can honestly say this was the one that made me understand and make use of reflective practice.

“Reflection is an important human activity which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it” (Boud, D Keogh and D Walker 1985 (P19)

Before undertaking my diploma in social work, I had not given much thought to reflective praise or learning. I tended to just test things out fit them accordingly but when completing my first placement I was required to reflect on both my personnel and professional practice at this stage, I did explore in depth and discovered that Kolbs four stage learning cycle was a very effective tool.

“ Kolds research found that people learn in four ways, with the likelihood of developing one mode of learning more than another these are:

Through concrete experience
Through observation and reflection
Through abstract conceptualision
Through activist experimentation

( taken from J Brookes 1995)

My second placement then gave me the opportunity to expand on this and I discovered a method that Person and Smith (1985) describe as “Debriefing” and they talk about experience alone not being enough. Often we are so wrapped up in the experience itself, we are unable to step back from the situation to reflect in any critical way.

By using any planned activity for learning debriefing provides the opportunity to engage in reflective practice.

This being the main tool I took away and try to use in practice today as I feel that you find yourself contently having a variety of experiences but in order to gain knowledge and understanding of what went well or not so well you need to have the debriefing process, ie through supervision, training sessions and co working which includes workshops lead by other organisations or departments.

(Person and Smith go on to summarise debriefing as “reflection which takes place between a facilitator and an individual learner or group of learner”

De briefing usually follows an initial “briefing” session where the facilitator outlines the purpose of the activity and the experience to be undertaken with the learner. The debriefing stage begins at the end of the experience based learning with planned purposeful discussion and reflection upon action.

I qualified as a Social Worker in July 2004 and having done the course over three years rather than the planned two I think I undertook a large achievement because during this time I had gone through a nine month illness where my partner had undergone a bone marrow transplant which, to add to the turmoil failed, and resulted in him dying in September 2002, as I reflect back this was a life changing experience and I went through lots of feelings and processes, however the course itself gave me something to focus on and I went on to complete it, but it was not until the completion of the course that the loss I had been suppressing hit me, so at this point I began to attend weekly counselling sessions.

Being a qualified social worker

So I had an eight week break before I began my new post as a Social Worker for a Children and Families Locality Team, this was my first job application and interview since being qualified and I was lucky to get the post as it fitted the type of work I wanted to go into and was local to were I lived and where my child went to school.

The first two weeks (the induction) consisted on reading polices and shadowing the other Social Workers. I remember feeling quite bored and wanting to have some cases of my own, I was given my first few cases one of which required a Residence Order on a child. So my very first assessment was a Section 7 report which I found quite easy as I was able to utilise my skills in direct work with families and had only just completed some work with parents and their children that had just experienced a divorce and was able to adapt this work which consisted of exploring the family dynamics and their relationships with each other through interviewing skills,

O’Hagen 1996 explains “that in order to be competent in practice, a Social Worker must acquire knowledge about families and children, methods and techniques of intervention, and sufficient understanding of what is happening and why.”(P.187)

So I set a number of questions which the answers would assist me to complete the report and then did some direct work sessions with the child to gain her wishes and feelings.

So that case was quite straight forward, however with the other cases I remember thinking to myself I don’t know how to do this and what form goes with what, to the point I got quite stressed out and thought I cant do this work in the past all my work had been planned intervention and there were steps to follow but in this post it was different people asking me questions I did not know the answers to.

I used my supervision sessions and came to understand that you never know the answers and a big part of this work was networking with other agencies and researching in order to progress and even colleagues that had been in the post for several years, they all had to follow this process due to polices and procedures constantly being updated and changed.

I began to understand the importance of supervision more and began to approach team members for their views or options if they had more experience in a particular field.

Something that I have noticed now is that colleges often approach me because I have now had a variety of cases and I am able to offer advice on how to approach different types of work.

Some examples of case and skills I have developed

Case 1

Introduction

This piece of work illustrates how I undertook an intervention with a mother who had been a victim of domestic violence. The referral came from an initial assessment that had been carried out by a Social Worker at the enquiry and referral team and had been allocated to the locality team, as further support was needed.

Purpose of the intervention

The purpose of the intervention was to assist the mother in order for her to remain stable and to maintain the care and safety of her children, the fact that she had moved out of the family home meant that she was now within a safer environment, but she was then very isolated as she had also lost her support networks as she had moved out of the area.

Issues to address

Monitoring the safety of the children, and the father’s contact with the children and mother’s ability to protect.

Assisting the mother in gaining control of the children and giving them a structured routine as the mother was at breaking point and felt that she could not cope, this was done through behaviour management with one of the social services family centres. (Hester Person and Harwin 2000) describes “for some women the physical and emotional: effects of domestic violence can have a detrimental impact on their mothering and relationships with their children. Mothers may therefore appear to professionals as inadequate or as unable to cope. It has been recognised however, that this is likely to be a help to be safe, mothers can resume parenting of their children.”

Getting the children registered with the GP so that counselling could be arranged for the children and their mother as they had been witness to the domestic violence. “There may be some resistance from adults to the notion of asking directly about domestic violence issues, this might be linked to concerns that addressing issues with children will evoke painful memories and make matters worse. Evidence suggests however, that children’s recovery and well being can be aided by greater openness about their experiences.” (Herter, Person,Harwin 2000) P137.

Getting the mother involved in local support groups to rebuild her self esteem and local networks.

Liaise with father in having contact with the children, and to identify the level of risk by networking with his CPN.

Legal framework

The legal framework that I used was the Children Act 1989 and the National Assessment framework. However I was also aware of some other Acts that may have been needed or of assistance:

Divorce an New Family Law Act 1996
The Protection from Harassment Act 1997
Criminal Justice Act 1967

Theory approached that was used

The approached that I used was task centred as Coulshed and Orme 1998 (P.115) describe that “it is focused work which take into account the needs of individuals to bring about change in their situations, and the requirements of the agencies that work is targeted and effective.”

Hypothesis is mothers low self esteem and the fact that the domestic violence still be very fresh in her mind meant it was hard for her to cope with a long list of things so there fore by setting her small tasks meant that it was easy for her to manage.

The skills I employed

The skills I employed to carry out this intervention were counselling, this was broken up into listening skills observation skills and being able to give positive responses. I than was able to assist the mother in problem solving and form an action plan in order to move on remembering the sensitivity of this subject and therefore showing her empathy and understanding along with my full respect at all times.

Power and anti oppressive practice

I am aware that power has been a big issue for those families and that I used my power in a positive way, as it has been a tool used to exploit the mother and children in the past. So my aim was to give the mother and the children the power back, making them aware that they may have had some of their power taken away and giving them support through strategies, skills and information to overcome future problems.

“The first stage of empowerment, means spreading the word: convincing the oppressed that they are indeed oppressed and that their disadvantages are foisted upon them” ( Walmsley, Reynolds, Shakespeare,Woolfe, 1997) P 137

What went well what would I do differently

This case went well the family co operated fully and all the tasks were met and following the piece of work provided to the mother by the family centre I was able to close the case. However I am aware that things may have had to have been different if mother had reformed her relationship with the father the children may then have been at risk and if mother failed to protect the children then a child protection conference may have needed to be convened to have a structure plan and monitor the children.

Case 2

Introduction

This case study is evidence how I engaged with a service user and other agencies, when a incident happened with a service user whom receives treatment for her mental health (who I will refer to as D )

Back ground information

D is a mother and she has four children, but only two currently reside with her, A is a female age 14 years and H is a male and he is 7 years. D suffers from a long term depressive disorder which when not on her medication or receiving the correct support her ability to care for her children is affected. The children are currently on the child protection register under the category Emotional abuse.

Issues to address

The issues to address came from the case conference recommendation but the two that are most relevant to this incident are:

To liase with mental health services regarding the level of support D is getting for her mental health
To provide services with in the home to enable D to provide a
Structured routines for the children and to recognise their needs.

The critical incident

Part of D’s mental health was paranoia and so she often did not find talking to people ie neighbours very easily and the fact that often there was very little control in the home the domestic routines and noise levels would often be a source of problems were she lived, however things were going well all services were able to engage with D and she was taking her medication and receiving regular support for her mental health so the risks around the children were lower and the relationship between them and the mother was improving, until A being a teenage girl started to play her music loudly and this resulted in D receiving a letter of compliant from the housing department.

D mental health meant that she would take this as a threat and felt she was being victimised by her neighbours that got to the point were she became very angry but we were managing the situation up until two of the workers went out from the social services family centres where D was receiving outreach, when they arrived D was very angry and began to off load the problems she had been having with the neighbours and said that she felt like “killing” them that she like to “stab them” during this conversation one of the workers noticed a large Kitchen knife on the table and made an excuse and left.

The following day I received a telephone call explaining what had happened and their Manager felt it unsafe for the workers to go back into the home.

This would than have a knock on effect and D would not be receiving support probably at a time when she needed it, but there were clearly risks involved for any workers that went out.

So the following day I arranged to do a visit with D mental heath social worker to get some clarity on the incident and for the mental health social worker to assess D’s state of mind.

On the visit D explained that she was angry to staff and did make the threats against the neighbours, however explained that she had been using the kitchen knife to fix the television Ariel and if she was going to use a knife it would not be the kitchen one she cuts her sandwiches with.

It was quite clear that there were no problems and she gave a clear explanation of the reason for the knife on the kitchen table.

The mental health social had no concerns and explained that you can never guarantee that anyone won’t react in a certain way but as far as D’s mental health was it was not of a risk to workers.

This was then put in writing and circulated to all the agencies refusing to entire the property and the outreach service started again having very little impact on D coping with the children.

The approach used and the skills I have learnt

If I reflect back on this incident I can identify why the outreach service had pulled out having done a risk assessment they felt that it was not safe for their workers to go in, however I do question why D was not asked what the knife was for and feel the fact that she had the label of someone with mental health meant that she was going to act irrationally.

“ the context in which someone assesses risk may influence the perceived likelihood of risk. For example, the publicity surrounding cases where people with schizophrenia have attacked or killed members of the public may lead people to overestimate the risk to the public from those with this diagnosis.(messer and Jones 1999 P87)

also given the information I had to do my own risk assessment and if I chose as a social worker not to go in how would this impact on the children, I feel I took the correct step to involve the mental health social worker and if I felt there was a higher risk may have asked the police for assistance.

Theories I used

The approach was crisis intervention and could see only an activist approach, but I also related back to the Victoria Climbie assessment I did when studying and although am no hero felt that it was the children safety and their well being that this would impact on and therefore would not have took the view and made assumptions that D was going to be a risk to me, just she had mental health the matter of the fact was anyone stating that they felt like stabbing someone would pose a risk.

“Petty and Cacioppo(1986 P127) define attitudes as a persons general evolutions about themselves, other persons, objects or issues. Attitudes are beliefs and evaluations held toward various attitudes ‘objects’. Social psychologists have examined whether our attitudes influences our behaviour, for example, whether holding negative attitudes towards minorities is likely to lead to racist behaviour in professional practice.” (Cited in Messer and Jones 1999 p85.)

Legal framework

The legal framework that I used was the Children Act 1989 and the National Assessment framework. However I was also aware of some other Acts that may have been needed or of assistance:

The Mental Heath Act 1983 (the mental health Patients in the community Act 1995)
The Housing Act 1996
Human Right Act 1988

Reflection on my experience and what I have leant

I have completed assessments of children in need, and their families and provided them with appropriate services. Through this I have respected and valued people’s uniqueness and diversity and recognised their strengths and built on them.

I have undertaken child protection assessments, presented the reports to case conferences and monitored plans in line with the ACPC polices and producers. Also liaising with other agencies which involved police, health,

education and the voluntary sector to comply with the legal framework around the Children Act 1989 and the departmental polices.

To mange a case load which includes complex care proceedings, I now have a sound knowledge of the legal framework and threshold criteria, together with recent protocol requirements from the court system ,

I have to maintain records in accordance with the principles of ethical and effective recording in line with accesses to files legislation.

I understand the importance for regular supervision and reflection

To take responsibility for incorporating anti discriminatory practice and be aware of the equality opportunity polices. “supervision in social work continues to sever several purposes at once. Theses may be listed as managerial, educational and supportive (or enabling).” (Coulshed and millender 2001) P.162

I have seen the importance for regular supervision and take responsibility for my own training needs and to undertake appropriate training as required.

How policy has impacted on my work

I have recently had a few cases where accommodation has been no other option in a situation and I not sure if there is a change in policies or threshholds but were as before you would just do your assessment research all other options consult your line manger and than you were able to proceed, it seems now that you have to be prepared to justify your decision a number of times to higher management before authorisation is given.

Anti oppressive practice

Oppression can be seen three things personal, structural and culture. I am therefore aware that as a social worker I may be committed to anti oppressive practice but with day to day social work will continue to challenge elements of both my early socialisation, values and altitudes.

(Daylmple and Burke 1995) P.15 recognise that “ Anti oppressive practice, then, means recognising power imbalances and working towards the promotion of change to redeness the balance of power.”

As a social worker I am aware of the sensitive to different family patterns, lifestyles, experiences and child rearing practices. I recognise the differences in power which exist and work hard to minimize their effects. I have extended my knowledge whilst in this post and have learnt that by recognising and acknowledging the importance of family traditions and by recognising and building strengths; I am able to gain a level of co operation during intervention. In even the most difficult situations I prefer to keep services users fully informed of my role and procedures I am working within whilst doing this in an anti oppressive manner therefore by them having this degree of knowledge means that the power imbalances become more equal.

Evaluation

I have been a qualified social worker for three years and have worked for Wolverhampton social services for nearly twelve years during this time I have attended a lot of in house training courses to enhance my skills as a social worker along side this I try and keep up to date on any current findings or reading to build on my knowledge, and consider myself a committed team member and also value the quality and structure of supervision I receive from my line manger.

I feel that I am flexible in my work and have motivation this is reflected in me meeting deadlines on cases, I have been described in my supervision sessions as well organised and can communicate effectively with services users being flexible in my approach and able to evaluate and reflect on situations effectively.

I feel as a social worker I will continue to develop what skills I have and learn new skills as legislation and polices are always being reviewed and changed, I recognise the importance of anti oppressive working and will continue to working in an anti discriminatory manor, I would like to look at further training in the mental health service and would also like training in child sexual abuse and court skills, and aim to complete PQ 2 if successful in this program of study.