Russell House have recently published a book on children's services that is very critical of managerialism and its insidious effect on quality of practice and morale of staff (see the Book News section on the home page of this site). This adds to the critique of managerialism in my Practising Social Work: Meeting the Professional Challenge book (http://astore.amazon.co.uk/neilthomp-21/). Managerialism has clearly had a devastating effect not just on social work, but also on public services more broadly. There are signs that the new UK Government is moving away from managerialism (albeit with small, slow steps) and moving towards a 'big society' model of less regualtion. What impact this will have on standards of practice, professional morale and so on remains to be seen. We can but hope for a more positive approach to professionalism.

In recent years I have noticed that many social work colleagues seem to be narrowing their horizons. Their focus seems to be increasingly on their own area of practice without seeeing it as part of the broader picture of social work as a diverse profession. From my experience of running training courses with social work staff from various specialisms I get the impression that there is far less interest in our prfession as a whole. So many people want to look at, and talk about, their particular branch of the social work tree and seem to have relatively little interest in looking at the tree as a whole (let alone the social policy wood it forms part of). Thankfully, there are also many people who do want to see the big picture and maintain an identity for social work across the various specialisms. I just hope that we are not seeing a trend towards 'silo thinking' - that is, people seeing the significance of only their part of the social work world and losing sight of how it fits into the broader whole. 

I was running a training course on leadership recently and it reminded me how important leadership is for social work. For me leadership isn't just about management. I would like to think that managers see leaderhsip skills as part of their repertoire, but I think that practitioners have a leaderhip role too - indivdiually and collectively. Leadership involves having a clear idea of where we want to get to and how we are going to get there, and I would like to think that practitioners are not waiting for managers to decide that for our profession. I would like to think that we can all play a part in deciding our direction and pursuing it. For me that is one of the things that makes social work a profession - the fact that the direction we move in will owe much to our values and our own sense of why what we do is important and valuable.

I began my career in residential child care a long time ago. I had the official title of 'residential child care officer' (RCCO), but was also often referred to as a 'residential social worker'. These days in the UK we have protection of title, so only people who are registered with the appropriate care council can legally refer to themselves as such. This has been a very positive move as previously anyone who did anything vaguely charitable could call themselves a social worker: 'I'm a social worker; I do fundraising for my church group'. However, it raises the question of whether residential child care is part of social work, when the vast majority of such workers are not registered (except in Wales where the picture is significantly different from the rest of the UK).

I have always thought of residential child care as not only part of social work, but also a very important part of social work. However, I am aware that there are many people, both within the sector and outside it, who would disagree with me. How do we judge what is social work and what is not?

In my Practising Social Work book I  talk about the importance  of 'setting out our stall'. By this I mean that we are likely to have difficulties over role definition if we do not make it clear to the people we are working with (clients and other professionals) what we can and cannot do, what we should and should not do. Unfortunately there is a tendency for many people to assume that the social worker is responsible for anything that does not fit neatly into the duties of other professionals. Clearly such an assumption simply sets us upto fail as we could not realistically succeed with such a broad and nebulous set of duties. Consequently we need to be clear about what our role is in each case (as defined within the parameters of law, policy  and professional values) and communicate this to those concerned - rather than allowing a situation to develop that is characterised by vagueness and a lack of focus.

Reference

Thompson, N. (2009) Practising Social Work: Meeting the Professional Challenge, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. http://astore.amazon.co.uk/neilthomp-21/ 

One of the things that has fascinated me for decades now is the relationship between theory and practice. It has been sad over the years to encounter so many people who seem content to drive a wedge between the two of them - whether (a small but significant minority of) academics who are happy to explore theory without any consideration for its relevance to practice or the breed of practitioner who largely dismisses theory and prefers to just 'get on with the job' (totally oblivious to the fact that our practice is necesssarily premised on a knowledge base - a mixture of formal and informal theory). Perhaps one day our profession will have a much firmer grip on the idea that theory and practice are two sides of the same coin and that it is counterproductive to drive them apart. For me the key is to 'theorise practice' - that is, to start with practice and then draw on our theoretical understandings to make sense of the complex situations we need to wrestle with in social work, hence my latest book: Theorizing Social Work Practice http://astore.amazon.co.uk/neilthomp-21/.

The announcement that Birmingham City Council have sacked six social workers will no doubt cause considerable consternation among the social work practitioner populace. I would agree that people who do not achieve an acceptable level of practice and do not show any interest in doing so have no place in professional social work. However, the anxieties that are in abundance in modern-day social work (in the UK at least) will presumably be even greater now for many people if they come to fear that sacking social workers is to become the order of the day. This situation also raises the question of how much support social workers can expect in carrying out their duties, how much their well-being is an issue for their employers (see www.well-beingzone.com).

In an earlier post on this blog I argued that it is dangerous for overloaded social workers to try to do the impossible. Work overload needs to be raised as a situation that has the potential to lead to professionally dangerous practice. If it is not, then there will continue to be the very worrying risk that social workers who allow themselves to be overloaded without trying to do something about it (personally and collectively) could face paying the price for this with their jobs, and ultimately with their careers.

I have had an interest in conflict since the early days of my career in social work when it struck me just how much conflict there was around. Conflict between social workers and clients; between clients and other family members; between workers and managers; and conflict across the multidisciplinary network. Despite this significant presence of conflict in social work and social care, in my experience only a small proportion of practitioners have had the benefit of trainning in the subject. It seems to feature on few degree courses or other professional qualification programmes and is not widespread as a feature of in-service training provision. Is this apparent neglect of the need to learn how to manage conflict just the way things have developed - a historical accident? Or are there specific reasons why conflict - such a central feature of practice - seems to have received so little attention? I welcome your thoughts.

The US-based free online magazine, the New Social Worker is available at:

http://www.socialworker.com/home/index.php 

The Journal of Social Work Ethics and Values is available free of charge from

http://www.socialworker.com/jswve/

Social and Public Policy Review is available at http://www.socialworker.com/jswve/

And, of course, there is a growing number of articles and reviews available here on Social Work Focus.

Do you know of any other free resources? Please let us know. Thank you.

I have had several conversations in the past couple of months about workload pressures. It seems that a significant proportion of people feel overloaded. Of course a high workload is not necessarily a problem. It can be stimulating, motivating and rewarding. You can go home feeling tired but happy and satisfied. However, when it gets to the point that the workload is too high, then the result is different. You are more likley to go home feeling tired, worn out, perhaps anxious about how you are going to cope and not at all satisfied or contented. This can be the begining of health-affecting stress and possibly the beginning too of a slippery slope that can lead to a vicious circle of stress and distress.

So, when we find ourselves in a situation of work overload - that is, when we have crossed that line between a high but manageable workload to one that is too high and therefore unmanageable, we need to be very careful. Rather than allow ourselves to get deeper and deeper into difficulties, we need to ask ourselves two key (sets of) questions:

1. What steps can I take to change the situation? What problem-solving strategies are available to me? Beware of a defeatism here (a common reaction when we are under stress) that tells us there are no solutions before we have really explored all the options.

2. What support is available to me to get me through this difficult patch? What formal systems of support can I draw on through my workplace? What informal support can I obtain from colleagues, friends, relatives and so on? Make sure you do not make the mistake of assuming that asking for help is a sign of weakness - it is not: it a sign of strength and wisdom.

Persisting with trying to do the impossible, to do more than is realistic with the time, energy and resources available is likley to prove to be not only an ineffective way forward, but also potentially a very dangerous one.

For more information about stress see www.humansolutions.org.uk