Social Work Policy Panel newsletter September 2023
This month
- Notes from September’s meeting – on social work identity
- About the Social Work Policy Panel and: give your feedback!
- Dates for your diary: November meeting
Notes from September’s meeting: Social Work Identity
We met on 19th September to hear from Bath-based PhD researcher Harry Bark on his thematic literature review on the experience of being a social worker in mental health multi-disciplinary teams. If you missed it, Harry’s presentation is attached to this email.
Discussion points included
Prior to the session we asked attendees to describe what it is that ‘social work’ means to them. The predominant words were human rights and social.
Harry’s paper highlighted three key area: social work’s distinct contribution to multi-disciplinary teams (holistic perspective, rights protecting, highlighting key, hidden, relational data) organisational challenges to the profession (opportunities for collaboration vs adversarial experience), and professional negotiations (being seen as legal experts in defined areas).
Social worker can be trapped by roles and knowledge defined by statute (‘locked into statutory frameworks’) and lose access to their wider skills.
Medical hierarchy dominates in MDTs and can be difficult to challenge (and social workers can be the only challengers), although this is changing as a new generation of consultants enters the workforce. The meeting explored the benefits of sharing knowledge and experiences between the professions at the earliest stage of training to enable this change to be maintained.
Social workers find they need to be more assertive than other professions when challenging medical model approaches, such as using social work to monitor medications, especially when they are often outnumbered in MDTs.
The profession’s holistic base means it can be alone in bridging to organisations external to MDTs for innovation and personalisation of services.
Reflective supervision is best done with other social workers, often sought out by social workers when it is not available in team structures. Other professions as managers tend to be much more procedural.
The social model and a qualitative approach to socio-relational issues clashes with the dominant quantitative ‘RCT’ dominated culture, which sees qualitative data as subservient rather than complimentary and exploratory. The meeting was particularly keen to ensure this message was transmitted to civil servants who value outcomes over the process that leads to them and perhaps to formally recognise the importance of social work in effective social systems.
Professional capital in social work is important, sometimes defined as a combination of ‘the acquisition of knowledge and skills (human capital), participation in networks of collaborative learning communities (social capital), and the ability to exercise professional agency (decisional capital)[1]’. The policy to enable effective social work often overlooks the key skills that are required to deliver it.
In order to protect the profession and to ensure it thrives, and future National Social Work Agency must be led by social workers.
If you’re interested in finding out more about his research, and its implementation, you can contact Harry directly at heb60@bath.ac.uk or email socialworkpolicypanel@basw.org.uk
[1] Nolan, A., & Molla, T. (2017). Teacher confidence and professional capital. Teaching and teacher education, 62, 10-18.
Date for your diary: November meeting
31st October, 12 – 1.00pm; The future for social work: planning for a strong workforce identity
We look forward to talking with you soon.
About the Social Work Policy Panel
The panel exists to build bridges between frontline social workers, and the organisations and projects which develop and implement policy and practice for the profession.
It’s jointly run by the Scottish Association of Social Work, the Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser, and Social Work Scotland.
Any social worker including, student or newly qualified social worker is welcome to join as a one-off on a particular topic of interest, or as a regular – it’s a space for you to ask questions, share your experience and views, talk to colleagues across Scotland, learn about how policy affects day-to-day practice, and develop closer links between the work you do and the future of social work.
As a social worker, we know you’re busy and facing lots of competing pressures, so you taking time out to engage with the wider issues facing social work means a lot, and you might not always find the time. That’s why we want to make the panel as meaningful to you as possible.
What you told us
We asked you what we should be covering in our future sessions and you told us:
- Workforce
- Disparities in role focus (ie Adults vs Childrens) and rural vs urban
- Self-Directed Support implementation
You also told us that it was really important to ensure that the impact of policy on social work identity is explored in these sessions. We will ensure that we do this in all future sessions.
If there are any topics that you wish to nominate for future session please let us know through the panel mailbox: SWPP@basw.co.uk
You also told us that a facilitated conversation after a presentation is your preferred format for the sessions but that there are session where breakout rooms are more effective for you. We will ensure that future sessions are designed with these preferences in mind.
Free coaching service for all social workers and social work students in Scotland
What is the Social Work Professional Support Service (SWPSS)?
- A FREE and independent peer coaching service by and for social workers
- Has an ambition to have an impact on the culture of practice enabling social workers to be able take care of yourselves
- Facilitated by experienced and trained social work coaches who volunteer their time
- Provides you with a safe and empathetic space to think through any professional and/or personal challenges you may be facing
- Offers a confidential peer to peer listening space
- Supports self-care, wellbeing and empowerment
- Funded by the Scottish Government
The service is geared to provide coaching support whether you are a student, social work practitioner or manager. We have coaches from different fields and the whole range of experiences - choose your own coach and set up a session at a time that suits you.
Social workers have used the service to talk through their career planning and development needs, the impact of the work role on their personal life/health, placements, to gain confidence, to process the experience of being bullied/racially targeted or to manage change/turbulences in the organisations they work for.
