Death Threats and Dogs: Life on the Social Work Frontline
Genre: Kindle Edition
Brand: Community Care
Author: Sally Donovan
Price: £0.00
Social work is no ordinary career. How many other jobs see you thrust daily into the centre of a storm featuring any combination of child neglect, sexual exploitation, suicide, death threats, domestic violence, dementia, drink and drug addiction, prostitution, learning disabilities and much, much more?
Yet the realities of day-to-day practice for the UK’s tens of thousands of social workers is often hidden from view. The public’s only glimpse of social work is often when high-profile scandal hits and a media witch-hunt pursuing a profession cast as ‘child snatchers’ ensues.
In this collection of articles written by frontline professionals you’ll find out what daily life for UK social workers is really like – from the baffling bureaucratic hurdles and the funny incidents to the sad, dark corners of society that social workers confront daily, but many people remain only dimly aware of.
You’ll hear shocking tales of the family who tied their children to a garden fence “for a bit of fun”, the asylum seekers found hiding in wheelie bins behind a Chinese takeaway, the helicopter search for a boy with chronic disabilities who had no sense of danger, and the care workers struggling to protect teenage girls from sexual exploitation.
You’ll read about the frustrations of working in a profession that is drowning in red tape. Where staff feel that box-ticking and targets are too often prioritised above care, social workers are forced to ‘hot desk’ as dated council offices creak under the pressure of accommodating teams, and the threat of redundancies looms each time the government announces a new round of spending cuts.
You’ll also see the toll this work takes on an overstretched and under-resourced workforce, from the stress and sleepless nights that follow 12-hour shifts and traumatic cases, to the social worker who had a severe mental breakdown and found himself on the receiving end of support he was used to providing for others.
But, as one, social worker says in her diary: “this job is not all form filling and human misery”. Throughout these tales there are plenty of moments, however fleeting, that remind us of how rewarding a career in social work can be and the amazing achievements of the people who use social care services each day.
Yet the realities of day-to-day practice for the UK’s tens of thousands of social workers is often hidden from view. The public’s only glimpse of social work is often when high-profile scandal hits and a media witch-hunt pursuing a profession cast as ‘child snatchers’ ensues.
In this collection of articles written by frontline professionals you’ll find out what daily life for UK social workers is really like – from the baffling bureaucratic hurdles and the funny incidents to the sad, dark corners of society that social workers confront daily, but many people remain only dimly aware of.
You’ll hear shocking tales of the family who tied their children to a garden fence “for a bit of fun”, the asylum seekers found hiding in wheelie bins behind a Chinese takeaway, the helicopter search for a boy with chronic disabilities who had no sense of danger, and the care workers struggling to protect teenage girls from sexual exploitation.
You’ll read about the frustrations of working in a profession that is drowning in red tape. Where staff feel that box-ticking and targets are too often prioritised above care, social workers are forced to ‘hot desk’ as dated council offices creak under the pressure of accommodating teams, and the threat of redundancies looms each time the government announces a new round of spending cuts.
You’ll also see the toll this work takes on an overstretched and under-resourced workforce, from the stress and sleepless nights that follow 12-hour shifts and traumatic cases, to the social worker who had a severe mental breakdown and found himself on the receiving end of support he was used to providing for others.
But, as one, social worker says in her diary: “this job is not all form filling and human misery”. Throughout these tales there are plenty of moments, however fleeting, that remind us of how rewarding a career in social work can be and the amazing achievements of the people who use social care services each day.
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