The 5th Annual Social Work Conference will be held on Monday 4th July 2011

At the heart of social work lies the task of safeguarding and promoting the well-being of vulnerable children and adults. The Government’s vision for adult social care recognises the important role of social workers in supporting and protecting adults while empowering them to make their own decisions about shaping and buying services tailored to their needs. The Government has also commissioned reviews of a number of services affecting children and families which will have implications for social work reform, including the Munro Review of Child Protection.

In the current economic and political climate, the challenges and opportunities these developments pose for social work are immense and are reflected in the struggle for social work to define, enhance and promote itself as a profession. With rival bodies vying for leadership of a social work college, how can we come together to ensure that the safeguarding of vulnerable children and adults remains our clear and urgent focus? These conflicts and opportunities are explored in this annual social work conference, which brings together the best in research and practice today.

Call for workshop papers and posters - Abstracts must be submitted by email to martin.webber@kcl.ac.uk by Friday 6th May

Keynote Speakers

Prof Eileen Munro, London School of Economics, on the Munro Review of Child Protection

Prof Stephen Scott, King’s College London, on how social workers can reduce child abuse

Prof Jill Manthorpe, King’s College London, on safeguarding older adults

Dr Jim Campbell, Queen’s University Belfast, on coercion in mental health services 

Book your place here

Booking Information

Early Bird rates before 16th May 2011

£80 – delegate fee (£120 after 16th May)
£40 – social work student (£80 after 16th May)
Free – service users, carers and unwaged (limited places only)
Free – Making Research Count members (bookings only accepted through training managers and sent to janet.noble@kcl.ac.uk

Tags: advanced social work practice, institute of psychiatry, Safeguarding Vulnerable Children and Adults, social work cpd

Social workers are at the cutting edge of personalisation – both its successes and its failures. At best they are discovering that it can be a liberating force, an opportunity to help people create new, flexible and community-focused support solutions. At its worst it is becoming more work, more forms to fill in, more complicated rules and – although its hard to credit it – more panels to try and get through. It is perhaps not surprising, given the thoughtless way in which government has gone about promoting personalisation, that we should be in this situation, and there is nothing inevitable about it. Local leaders can still protect people and staff from the encroaching madness.

One key lesson is to be entirely honest about the resources we have. If personalisation means giving people the chance to build more creative solutions with limited resources then the same principles should also apply within our systems. We can begin by being honest about how much time and energy social workers actually have and help them focus that time on things that really add values. Our estimates show that there is probably an average of £700 of care management time available for each individual served. This is a significant but very modest amount of time and it won’t be used well if it is spent largely on filling in forms to feed the system itself.

The only way of making better use of this limited time is to follow the principle of trust. We need to trust people more:

1. Trust people and families more. Give people information, contacts, simple systems and let them get on with it. Letting people make mistakes, solve problems and control things themselves is the key to good social work.

2. Trust community more. Encourage services to connect to people to design services with them directly. Make sure people are connected to community organizations and peer support groups.

3. Trust social workers more. Let people focus on those who need most help. In particular let social workers use their judgement. If they know of a good service, let them refer people to it. If they can see a quick solution to a problem then let them set it up.

Everyone fears that others cannot be trusted. Experience even teaches us that sometimes trust will be abused – people will lie, cheat or just make human mistakes. But a system that doesn’t encourage trust is expensive, stupid and disabling – by trying to put in systems that stop people making mistakes we delude ourselves that processes and rules will do what humans can’t do for themselves or if we shift power and control away from people then we shift it away from the point at which it can do most good. When we expect solutions to come from ‘on high’ then we are really expecting solutions from those who are least able to understand what really needs to be done and who are already trying to do far too many things for far too many people.

Trust, delegation and empowerment are efficient and effective – make them central to all your strategies and your work.

Simon Duffy is Director of The Centre for Welfare Reform www.centreforwelfarereform.org whose recent publications include The Architecture for Personalisation, Personalised Support, Personalised Transition and Personalisation in Mental Health

Tags: empowerment, integrated working, personalisation, simon duffy, Social Work

The 4th National Continuing Professional Development Conference for Social Workers on the theme of ‘Integrated   Practice’ will be held at the Institute of Psychiatry on 14th September 2010.

 The conference features prominent keynote speakers, engaging workshops and a unique opportunity to network with professional colleagues from across the country.

Camila Batmanghelidjh from Kids Company http://www.kidsco.org.uk will be talking about the need for new paradigms of care.

Keynote papers will be given by:

Professor Peter Huxley ( Swansea University ) – Integration of health and social care in mental health services

Professor Nick Frost ( Leeds Metropolitan University ) – Integrated working in frontline children’s services: research, policy and practice

Professor Marian Barnes ( University of Brighton ) – Ethics of care in promoting effective dialogue between workers, service users and carers.

The conference will also feature an interactive plenary session on the theme: “Are families becoming more dangerous?”

Professor Colin Pritchard ( Bournemouth University ) will address the issue of ‘Who kills children?’, based on data presented in his recent British Journal of Social Work paper that hit the headlines.

Attendance at the conference will count towards your GSCC post registration training and learning requirements.

Further information and the online booking form can be found at www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/annualsocialworkconference. Early bird bookings are available until 31^st July. All Making Research Count bookings should be made by Learning and Development Managers to janet.noble@kcl.ac.uk.

Abstracts for parallel workshops throughout the day are still being received . If you or a colleague are interested in leading a workshop of relevance to the conference theme, please submit your abstract by 25^th June. Full information and an online abstract submission form are available from: www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/annualsocialworkconference.

Any questions? Contact Julie Smith, the conference organiser julie.smith@iop.kcl.ac.uk

Tags: advanced social work practice, be inspired, institute of psychiatry, integrated working, professional practice, Social Work

Social workers and people who use social work services are today being encouraged to shape The College of Social Work by taking part in a UK-wide consultation. You can join the online consultation on the College website. Events are also being organised in several regions in England. A total of 22 consultation sessions will be held; twelve events for social work practitioners and managers and ten for users of social work services and carers.

The College of Social Work will start functioning in the coming months; at present the College Development Group is ensuring that those vital contributions are being captured and given to the Interim Board of the College once it is established. The Development Group is overseeing the consultation, which starts today and runs until October.

The College Development Group Chair, Allan Bowman, stated that

“We’ve been looking forward to today because it’s when The College’s work can really begin. We need the input of social workers, people who use social work services and their carers. Their views will shape the way the College is run. We encourage everyone with views to come forward, either at the large number of events organised so that people can discuss their views, or they can go online and help shape their College.”

Some of the issues that can be discussed in the consultation include:

• Membership
• Purpose,  functions and activities
• Working with employers, regulators, and unions
• Continuing professional development

Through these consultation activities it is hoped that a shared understanding of the purpose and key objectives of the College will be developed, built on the direct contribution of social workers and the people who use social work services. The consultation process will also ensure that the design and plans for the College will meet needs of the profession now and in the future.

Welcoming the College Moira Gibb, Chair of the Social Work Reform Board said:

“A College of Social Work is an opportunity for social work to gain the authoritative and influential professional voice it deserves. It is important that from the outset the College speaks for the breadth of the profession and represents the views of all social workers. This consultation is a major opportunity for the whole sector to set the direction and control the future of the College. I urge all social workers, and those engaged with social work, to take this chance to help shape the future of our profession.”

The College is clear that it wants to have the input of everyone involved from across the UK and that it will cover all aspects of social work.

The College of Social Work website

Tags: advanced social work practice, college of social work, Leadership and Management, professional practice, research, scie, Social Work, social work is complex and challenging

It is really refreshing to read about the contribution made by practitioners to the very challenging area of workload allocation and caseload management. Biri Yaya and Carolyn Cousins are qualified social workers, managers and published authors who take a keen interest in what really makes a difference to supporting front line social workers and practitioners.

This article shares the essence of two case allocation tools developed by the authors and implemented in a local authority. One of the most difficult aspects of front line management is knowing there is yet more work that has to be allocated to an over stretched team. The temptation can be to allocate to those who are willing, or will offer the least resistance. As all managers know, some staff will over commit and agree to take on more, while others will resist work – and these can sometimes be the very staff who the manager suspects are the least busy.

Many social work offices still rely either on a team meeting forum for allocation – where the overworked but committed social worker puts their hand up to take on more, much to the relief of the manager, while others rarely offer to take on anything new, or the alternative system usually relies on the individual manager allocating work based on their own judgment of capacity, gained from the self report of the social workers. Neither of these systems openly or transparently determines capacity.

The Weighted Case Limit sets a standard across all staff in a team or service, it requires a set case load limit and that case weighting be pre-determined. It allows for better informed judgment of worker capacity for allocation. It also helps define and distil the kind of caseload that can assist the worker’s professional development.

The Individual Capacity Planner is tailored to each worker and aims to assess spare capacity. Here work load capacity is determined using a quick case by case analysis, and rather than use case number ceilings the tool examines the amount of time required for each case. This model has been used both in safeguarding and family support contexts. This model relies on social worker report, but it does introduce some analysis and accountability, beyond a simple, ‘I’m too busy’ or ‘I can take another case’.

A systematic approach that takes optimum capacity in the notionally available time and impacting factors have proved to be effective methods of case allocation. Download the full report including an exemplar of caseload weighting here. Tried and Tested Workload Management Allocation Tools

The authors welcome feedback on these approaches and thoughts from practitioners who use them in different contexts.

About the authors

Carolyn Cousins (MSW, MEd (Adult), Dip. Mgt) is a social worker and adult educator who has worked across the statutory, voluntary and health sectors both in the UK and Australia. She is currently the Assistant Director of Education and Training at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Fountain Trust. ccousins@tavi-port.org

Biri Yaya, (PhD, M.S.W) is an experienced qualified social worker and team manager . He has published a number of peer-reviewed articles. biriy@aol.com

Tags: advanced social work practice, caseload management, encouraging innovation, professional leadership in social work, professional practice, Social Work, social work reform board

The Department of Health revealed yesterday that the regulator for the profession in England is set to be renamed the General Social Work Council, losing responsibility for the wider social care workforce and itself becoming regulated by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence.

The plans, outlined in the social care white paper, Building the National Care Service, stated: ‘As with the health regulatory bodies, over time the GSWC will move to financial independence and become independent of government’.

Responding to the news, BASW’s chief executive Hilton Dawson said the ‘clarification and reforms of the GSCC’s role are a positive step’ but cautioned that the move would ultimately mean hit social workers in their pockets. “This move towards greater independence for the GSCC will mean that social workers will have to bear the full cost of funding the GSCC, or General Social Work Council as it will become, in the future. We regard this as inevitable, particularly given the parlous state of public finances.” Read the full BASW article http://ow.ly/1t8cH

Tags: basw, funding, gscc, regulation, Social Work, workforce engagement

Since anger is not considered a pathological (DSM) condition, it should not be subjected to psychiatric interventions. Rather, the types of practical skill enhancement interventions that are common to the Social Work profession are more effective.

The four domains of emotional intelligence are: self-awareness, self-control, social awareness and relationship management. These are the topics which form the basis of the skills that are taught in anger management classes as well as coaching programs.

Programs using these Emotional Intelligence based curricula are being used in prisons, jails, schools, businesses as well as municipal governments. The latest trends are in the areas of civility training for attorneys who are mandated by state bar associations as well as “disruptive physicians” who are mandated by their hospital administrators. Finally, executive coaching/anger management programs are rapidly becoming the intervention of choice for skill enhancement in leadership.

An excellent summary of U.S. based anger management programs can be viewed in a BBC documentary entitled Losing It 2. The link to this documentary can be found at headroom . This two hour documentary was produced for the BBC by actor and comedian, Griff Rhys Jones.

About the author

George Anderson is a Harvard University trained Psychotherapist with a specialization in executive coaching/anger management. He is a graduate of Smith College School for Social Work and former Faculty of UCLA School of Social Work.

Anderson & Anderson is the largest provider of Certified Anger Management Facilitator training in the world. http://www.andersonservices.com

Tags: anger management, emotional intelligence, human relationships, mental health, motivation to change, Social Work, social work is complex and challenging

This best practice guide highlights initiatives by local authorities and the independent sector to support their employees, or potential employees, to qualify as social workers.  For the first time it brings together the experience and knowledge of people who have run or participated in GYO schemes over many years. Topics covered include: the Learning Organisation, addressing diversity, types of GYO, supporting students and working whilst studying. The Appendices include examples of a workforce development strategy and a GYO Student Contract.

The Toolkit has been jointly produced by the GSCC and the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London (KCL). 

I have advised a number of organisations about developing their workforce and I am happy to recommend this publication. A really useful toolkit which should inform the workforce strategy of all organisations who employ social workers. The Social Work Task Force Final Report highlighted the problems of recruitment and retention of social workers. This publication provides examples and evidence about the benefits of making a strategic investment. 

The Barnet Graduate Social Care Trainee Scheme which has been running for several years is an excellent example of strategic thinking and making an investment which promotes best practice in social care.

I would suggest that a further research project is required to compare the expenditure, benefits and opportunity costs of overseas recruitment campaigns and grow your own social worker schemes.   

The toolkit is available for download here A hardcopy of the toolkit can be obtained by emailing: GYOtoolkit@gscc.org.uk

Tags: Grow Your Own, gscc, Kings College London, toolkit, trainee social workers, workforce development, workforce engagement, workforce strategy

The course will be of special interest to employers, especially those in small & medium enterprises as a tool to assist in meeting health and safely obligations in the workplace. ALISON provides free group management functionality that allows any trainer, tutor or teacher to create a learning group to which they can invite learners. The benefit is that all tracked learning by the learners of the group can then be easily documented, in terms of lessons covered, grades achieved and time spent.

Enrol on this free course today at ALISON

Welcome to ALISON  which enables anyone, anywhere, to educate themselves for free via interactive self-paced multimedia.

Related Posts: The Internet Social Worker, Could SCIE be part of the eLearning revolution?

Tags: alison, elearning, ergonomics, free on line learning, health and well being, internet social worker, scie, Stress busters

A group of leaders from the voluntary and public sectors have called for the creation of a powerful new Cabinet Office unit to oversee the personalisation of public services.

The Government has proposed giving people individual budgets to spend on their care as part of a reform of public services. The move could have huge implications for all service-providing organisations, including charities.

Chief executives body Acevo convened a Commission on Personalisation to consider the way forward. Its interim report, published this week, includes a series of recommendations that it says would lead to a “revolution in public service delivery”………………. http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/Channels/Finance/Article/967171/Sector-prepared-individual-care-budgets-says-report/

Tags: Direct Payments, empowerment, individual budgets, not for profit sector, personalisation, Social Work