High Speed Internet WebMail. Christmas: a difficult time for social workers | Social care network | Guardian Professional. The music is playing, the trees are being decorated and the televisions are filled with adverts showing happy family meals and presents being exchanged. It is a time for family, for celebrations and for parties. I like Christmas. Working in mental health services make it a busy time for me as a social worker and an approved mental health professional (AMHP). For as long as I've worked in social care, which is more years than I'd like to recount, I've worked over Christmas. From end of November onwards, the team, reduced to a skeleton staff over Christmas, begins to feel the lid being released from the pressure cooker and the busy steam of stress escaping in terms of the referrals that come in – though we do have a higher number of emergency referrals.
But these 'marker' times of the year are very difficult for some of the people I work with. There's no way of getting around these expectations without feeling like a grumpy curmudgeon. It isn't guilt I feel, it is sadness. Social Work’s professional space in Scotland. I have to admit that the idea for this blog entry has been around for some time. For various reasons I have avoided writing it but after a brief Twitter discussion on Sunday I though it best to put some thoughts down. The idea of professional space has interested me for some time. Andrew Cooper’s paper, The State of Mind We Are In was the first that I read that made me think about the idea. This blog entry will in no way offer what Cooper’s paper offered but will give some insight into my thinking abut this issue.
So what am I defining “professional space” as? Well for me it is a mixture of the professional identities, the social policies that are around and the prevailing economic or social conditions that people are exposed to. For the purposes of this entry I will use my own experiences of working in Social Work in Scotland for the last twenty years. So there was a large governmental organisation here that seemed opposed to central government. Twenty years on and much has changed. Best Tweets in Mental Health (wk of 12/5/2011) App Review: Meditation Apps by Meditation Oasis for Social Work Practice « Social Work Tech Blog. Registration consultation for social workers - 12/7/2011. The Health Professions Council has today launched a consultation on setting the registration cycle for social workers in England. Social workers are currently expected by the General Social Care Council (GSCC) to renew in three yearly cycles on the anniversary of their initial registration.
However, the Health Professions Council (HPC), which is due to take over responsibility for the social care register in July 2012, expects professionals to renew at a set date every two years. If the GSCC’s register is transferred as planned on 31 July 2012, social workers in England will be required to register with the HPC for the first time between August and 30 November 2012. The HPC is proposing that the end date for the registration cycle for social workers would then be 30 November in even numbered years. Last month it was revealed that the timing of the transfer could result in some social workers having to pay twice to keep their place on the register. What do you think? Related articles. A Day in the Life of a Prison Social Worker.
Have you ever wondered what a typical day would be like for a social worker who works in a prison setting? This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa Kays, a social worker, LGSW, who works with women at a prison in the Northeast region of the United States and will be able to provide us with a view of what her work entails. While Lisa has less than a year of post grad work under her belt, she exhibits the insights and learnings of someone with far more experience...
Lisa - Could you provide a bit of your background? What led you to become a social worker? I have always had an interest in psychology, but pursued a degree in English literature as an undergraduate. Then I served in the Peace Corps as an English teacher. Upon my return, I got a master’s in journalism and decided I was wholly unfit to be a journalist.
One of my professors said, “You’re an advocate. One day, I got to interview Dr. It was sort of an accident. But I also use it more directly. Self-Care Meditations by Dr. Newborn Somerset baby was failed by council - social worker's warnings were ignored. A judge has criticised social services at North Somerset Council A judge has criticised social services at a district council for a “grave failure” which resulted in a newborn baby suffering multiple injuries at the hands of her inadequate parents, a court heard. Social worker Sara Matty warned her bosses that the couple, from Weston-super-Mare, were incapable of caring for their child and urged that the baby be placed in a mother and baby residential unit. Bristol Crown Court heard her concerns fell on deaf ears, the baby stayed with the parents and, after just 23 days of life, she was taken to accident and emergency where diagnosis of a fractured leg was followed by the finding of fractures all over her body.
The mother in her 30s and father in his 20s both pleaded guilty to causing cruelty to a child on the basis of neglect. Judge David Ticehurst ordered they should not be named in order to protect the identity of the child. A critique of the potential for notions of preventative work to reinforce the social control functions of social work. Compassion. Social Work For Health › Allyson Pollock. Social Media and the Future of Higher Education. Social media are not going to enhance higher education- they are going to completely transform the relationship between student and teacher and shift the balance of power in the education system.Social media such as Facebook have already changed many of the aspects of how we relate to other people, who we can form relationships with and the types of things we share with them.
Many businesses are now using social media to interact with their customers in different ways and use them as brand ambassadors or answer their concerns and complaints in a much more direct way. Entertainers and writers are also using social media to interact with their public in more direct ways. The other day I got a direct tweet from an author whose books I read in repsonse to a tweet I made about the work of another author. That type of interaction would have been highly unlikely a few years ago.The education industry ought to be at the forefront of embracing new technologies. CQC board member calls for chief Cynthia Bower to resign - 11/29/2011. A Care Quality Commission board member has called for the resignation of chief executive Cynthia Bower over a failure of leadership at the regulator. Kay Sheldon’s call came in a statement to the public inquiry into the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital scandal. “People who use health and social care services need a strong and effective regulator to support the provision of safe and high quality care,” said Sheldon. ”There are lots of good people working on some some great initiatives in CQC some of which I’ve been directly involved with.
However it is clear that a change of leadership and culture is needed to ensure the organisation is effective and accountable.” As quoted in The Guardian, she said: “I do not see how the organisation can move forward in a robust, coherent or useful way without better leadership. We need a chief executive that can manage the organisation and currently we do not have that.” The CQC will make a full response in evidence to the Mid-Staffordshire inquiry today. Social care inspectors have lost respect. A series of scandals have exposed a lack of understanding of social care in the ranks of both Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. The watchdogs need to learn from the wisdom of those delivering the service How the mighty are fallen! There used to be tremendous respect for bankers. Then they got too greedy. There used to be prestige in being a national politician. Then a surprising number were found to be on the make with their expenses. There are lessons here for public services, and for local authorities, more generally.
In the mid 2000s the then chancellor of the exchequer, Mr Brown, announced with no warning that in the interest of economy and efficiency the Commission for Social Care Inspection was to be abolished. It was not a hit-and-run inspectorate, as was Ofsted with schools, turning up, issuing a report and then galloping away over the horizon unseen until the next inspection. The CSCI was also not like the Healthcare Commission. So what lessons here? Rethinking Personal Budgets in Social Care. Reading Community Care, I saw that NLGN (New Local Government Network) have published a report stating that the ‘rush towards personal budgets’ must be slowed down.
I’ve tried unsuccessfully to find this report on the NLGN website but haven’t been able to do so am reliant on the third party reports from Community Care but I thought it raised a number of issues that are worth pondering. The author of the report, Daria Kutsnetsova says in the article .. in a lot of cases, personal budgets do not mean choice and control for service users because people are not given the choice of direct payments.
Their budgets are handled by a care manager, which can be a choice in the personal budgets system, but in many cases it is not a choice and people are receiving the same care they were always receiving, she said. “It’s just called a ‘personal budget’ to push this government target,” she added. So we have a two tier system of delivery. How did this happen? Community Care states So how did this happen? Probe launched after social worker revelations - Cardiff news - CardiffOnline. A probe has been launched into revelations that Cardiff council social workers fear a child could die because of staff shortages and high caseloads. The five-week inquiry by the Children’s and Young People Scrutiny Committee will hear from frontline social workers, as well as senior managers.
Union leaders and other relevant organisations, such as the Care Council for Wales, will also be invited to give evidence at the private hearings. The committee will report back with its findings and recommendations to the Liberal-Democrat/Plaid Cymru executive body on January 10. As reported last week, social workers in the council’s Intake and Assessment Team fear “unmanageable” caseloads could result in a child’s death. Leaked minutes of a staff meeting showed the I&A Team are suffering “stress”, “very low morale” and feel senior managers haven’t taken onboard their concerns.
The first of five evidence sessions will be on November 24. Lecture discusses connection between animal cruelty and domestic violence | Downtown Devil. By Daniel Zayas, on Friday, November 11th, 2011 Christina Risley-Curtiss, a professor at the School of Social Work spoke at the fourth installment of the Fall 2011 Humanities Lecture Series. (Cydney McFarland/DD) Almost 100 percent of Americans consider their pets to be family members. “This means they can be included in family violence,” said Christina Risley-Curtiss, a professor at the School of Social Work and an expert on childhood animal cruelty.
“The Co-Occurrence of Animal and Human Violence,” a lecture at the Downtown campus Thursday night, was the fourth installment of the Fall 2011 Humanities Lecture Series. Risley-Curtiss used several photos to prove that abuse of animals is prevalent and plays a part in abuse of humans. “I include these pictures because I think it’s important to see,” she said. Risley-Curtiss’ lecture revealed various findings of the link between criminal activity and animal abuse. “It should be considered child abuse to watch a pet being killed,” she said. Reflection. What is a Deprivation of Liberty? – Thoughts on Cheshire West and Chester Council v P. I accept that this post is about something of a niche in the corner of health and social care but it’s an area I have some interest in as I’m a Best Interests Assessor.
This is going to be a long haul of a post so I’ll start this time with a glossary. Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards – particular additions to the Mental Capacity Act which were supposed to fix a ‘gap’ (known as the Bournewood Gap – see below) in UK legislation where people without capacity could be ‘deprived of their liberty’ in a hospital or care home without leave to appeal. Bournewood Gap – while it sounds like the name of a service station, it resulted from the HL v Bournewood case which was taken to the European Court of Human Rights and determined at a man (HL) with learning disabilities had been detained unlawfully in Bournewood Hospital. This case meant the UK needed to change its law to be compatible with the Human Rights Act. So back to the start again and ‘What is a deprivation of liberty?’ You’d be wrong. Safety nets for mentally ill children are full of holes.
Psychotherapists, teachers and social workers visit him every day. He has games, books and a television but no window in the psychiatric ward where he is being kept. An abandoned child is a sign of utter desperation and, often, systemic dysfunction. It’s not just about one broken family or a single, troubled child; it’s about crippling bureaucracy, impotent policy, lack of education and money, money, money. This boy’s situation is a scenario that plays out at hospitals all over the country every day. Hospitals have become dumping grounds for families of children with mental illness and nowhere else to turn for help. “It’s a nationwide problem,” said Paramjit Joshi, director of psychiatry at Children’s National Medical Center, where the 10-year-old has been languishing since Sept. 15. His future has become a hot potato being tossed around among social service agency attorneys, hospital attorneys and his mother, who says she is unable to care for him.
So how about D.C.? After D.C. Social workers failed to monitor elderly man murdered by son - 11/7/2011. Social workers failed to monitor the circumstances of a direct payments user who was murdered by his son, a serious case review has found. Mark Alexander was convicted of his father Samuel’s murder last September, seven months after the latter’s body was found under concrete in his back garden. Samuel Alexander, 70, received little more “than a passive and remote degree of social work oversight” from Buckinghamshire Council and little was known about his circumstances or the amount of care his son was providing, the SCR found.
The SCR found his care plan was subject to a “light-touch” review process “captured via vague and arms-length recording” and that he did not have any sustained person-to-person contact with an experienced and qualified social worker. This was despite him being a “complex” individual with an array of health needs who engaged only intermittently with adult social care and health professionals. What do you think? Related stories Balancing safeguarding and personalisation. Join the discussion. Carlisle university student set to enjoy high life in Central America. By Kelly Eve Published at 11:24, Wednesday, 02 November 2011 A Carlisle student is taking part in a three peaks challenge with a difference – tackling active volcanoes in Guatemala. Abi Clarke Abi Clarke is taking on the charity challenge, aptly named ‘TRIDENT: The Devil’s Pitchfork’, in the central American country while staying there for her University of Cumbria placement.
Second-year BA (Hons) Social Work student Abi, 33, is travelling to Guatemala at the start of January to take part in a 70-day work placement with a charity called Education for the Children Foundation (EFTC). The charity supports learning for poor families. As well as working with the charity in their classrooms, Abi is taking part in the gruelling and dangerous weekend challenge to help raise money to educate some of the country’s poorest children. Abi said: “I’m doing a three peaks challenge, but not as we know it. Abi and her fellow fundraisers will cover the challenge in three days. Private Equity in Social Care.
Empathy and neuroscience: powerful tools for social workers - 10/31/2011. Sensitivity. Is stigma a useful idea? Defend Social Worker Norbert Ferencz. Press release: new SWAN website launched on 25th October 2011. 5 Concerns for Social Workers using Social Media. Best Tweets in Mental Health (wk of 10/17/2011) Personalisation , Personal Budgets and Demos. Troubleshooting Families.