After 5 weeks in my new job in a fostering team, and no longer being a social worker-to-be, I’ve changed the name of my blog. After much thought about the new name, the last week in work crystallised my thinking very clearly and made the choice quite easy. The week truly did feel like I was trying to keep numerous different plates spinning on sticks without dropping any!
5 weeks in, my caseload is rapidly increasing. I have a full quota of foster carers requiring supervision and support, and am acquiring new assessments on an almost daily basis. My diary is full and time for reflection, thinking and planning, abundant and so valuable as a student, is now almost non-existent.
In addition to that, the service is due an Ofsted inspection soon. The last one, in 2009, highlighted several points which reduced our rating, such as some case files not having vital information in them such as records of the foster carer’s contracts, children not having had routine dental check-ups and foster carers not being up to date with essential training. In an attempt to improve this situation, the service is now preparing for a planned ‘pre-inspection inspection’ in which an external inspector will come in and look at all the areas covered by the official inspection to give us an idea of areas in which we may be lacking and which may reduce our rating.
This is causing a while load of extra work and extra plates to spin in addition to those I all ready have.
As several of the cases on my caseload have been transferred from a member of staff who has been on long-term sick leave, many of the files are hopelessly out of date in terms of vital information, as the carers have not had a regular worker or visits for over a year. Regardless, it is now my job to pick up the pieces and get them perfect in case an inspector should randomly choose to view them. In addition I am phoning each carer sometimes several times in week to obtain lots of odd bits of information. It seems like almost every hour of the day we are asked to ‘ just find out this from all your carers’.
Now I know this is important for several reasons, one of which is our job security. Rumours are being heard that should the rating not be of a sufficient level, then the authority may contract out the fostering service to an external agency, which may also cost less.
On another level it is important to reveal which areas of service provision may be in need of improvement. However there is a counter argument to this- the inspection is purely based upon paperwork and documentation. It does not measure the quality of the actual service provided- simply statistics about recording. Quality cannot be measured in numbers and paper- it is more elusive than that, defined by people’s experiences and needs.
That said, for me especially this process has been quite revealing. For instance, it has revealed exactly how lacking our IT systems are. It would be so easy for the ICS computer system to send an automated alert to the social worker when a vital check or training course is due for renewal, yet this does not happen. Arguably however, ensuring these administrative functions occur should be a job for the team’s business support section- they are not a good use of social workers’ time and skills. This is not the case though. I spend a lot of time typing and entering on computer systems information that I have all ready handwritten when with the client, effectively doubling a lot of my workload and a poor use of my skills and training.
Thankfully I will be on holiday during the three days of the ‘pre-inspection inspection’. I will probably be working when Ofsted land however, and have been warned in advance that they often like to speak to the newest member of the team- ie. me. I’m all ready weighing the competing demands of corporate loyalty and honesty.
Ah well, Sunday and the weekend will be coming to an end shortly.
Time to start limbering up in preparation for the juggling act that is Monday morning and social work again…
Hi there.I am a fellow social worker.I qualified many moons ago but I have been away for almost as many moons so I am currently attending a Return To Social Work course at uni.I have just read your post about how overwhelmed you are to find yourself in post and I therefore beg you to read “The Surivival Guide for Newly Qualified Child and Family Social Workers – Hitting the Ground Running by Helen Donellan and Gordon Jack available at Waterstones, it is an essential read so please read it asap and…enjoy!Ruthie.X
I bought (and read) this book as soon as I knew I was entering a children’s social work team (my final placement was in adults) and found it very useful in helping to bridge the gap between being a student and qualified worker. I too would highly recommend it to any new social workers.
I think largely though that nothing can fully prepare you- it just takes time to get over the ‘rabbit in the headlights’ stage. I’ve been in post for almost 3 months now and generally feel far less overwhelmed than at first.
SO glad you have that lifebelt of a book under your belt.The book itself says that nothing can fully prepare you for the “thud” it describes but it is nonetheless extremely helpful.Brava to you for feeling the fear and doing it anyway – living outside of our comfort zone is as fulfilling as it is uncomfortable and it’s the only position from which to live a full life(I’m a devotee of the author Susan Jeffers of Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway fame, does it show, ha ha?).Oh and…brava me for taking steps to returning to social work after 14 regrettable years of living within the confines of my comfort zone!Enjoying the Spring sunshine?
Thing is, our outsourced assessments are of a poor quality but it’s a moneysaver so they do it anyway. Apparently spending £20k on externals produces more assessments than using internal staff!
We’re already going through redundancies. We’ve been told that by April 17th we WILL lose 10 social workers and five managers. We’re currently in the consultation process and we’ll all be re-interviewed for our jobs in the coming weeks. Unions are involved and it’s all generally very low in the office right now.
I think we’ll end up privatised within 3 years. We have to save half a million from our fostering & adoption budget over the next year so… yeah.
Dire times…
I think I’m employed in probably the safest local authority in the area at the moment in terms of job security. The authority needs to lose 600 jobs and has requested applications for voluntary severence with quite attractive packages. I’m told they have received 1300 applications and know of several staff who have all ready left or will be leaving within the next few weeks. However, no applications have been approved from social workers- they have all been from other sectors. This does however mean that there shouldn’t be any enforced redundancies as is happening in other local authorities in the area. I know of social workers having been made redundant in three of the other councils locally, two of which I actually went for interviews at- I’m so glad I was unsuccessful!
I do hope your job remains safe- how ironic that only two years I was arguing that there would always be a need for social workers in my interview for my MA. It seems the powers that be no longer agree.
I have huge respect for social workers and what you all have to deal with. We have been very fortunate in the ones we have had.
Good luck with the juggling
Hi Casdok, thanks for your comment. It’s so good to hear that your experiences with social workers have been generally positive, as so often we get very poor press! We do try our best although sometimes we do get it wrong and it’s good to be appreciated now and then.
[...] Social Worker to Be, being a fully fledged social worker has changed the name of her blog to ‘Spinning Plates’. I know the feeling and she explains about her process of settling down to work. [...]
This is exactly what has happened in my department! I am a new (well, been there 8 months now) worker in the fostering team of my local authority.
It was announced we would have an OFSTED inspection in April. It hasn’t happened… they didn’t give us the actual notification in time. Needless, we were suddenly asked to provide numerous different bits of information about carers. I was constantly phoning them for x, y, z. I also had/have cases on transfer from other social workers who were/are on long term sick leave. These cases were in a right mess.
Our ICS system is also massively lacking. We were demo’ed a new one called CHARM’s which a lot of agencies use. My LA wouldn’t stump up the £20k to pay for it. It would have changed everything.
As it stands our OFSTED has been cancelled and all my files are way up to date. So up to date I’m getting bored! How do you occupy yourself? All of our assessments have been outsourced so I have really nothing to do …
Hi, getting bored is certainly not an issue in my team!
We do all our assessments- there were some that were outsourced to an agency while the team was understaffed recently, but since three new social workers have been recruited over the last three months, there is no need for this.
It has been suggested however that a less than excellent rating from OFSTED may result in this happening across the board, and some jobs being threatened. However, as the fostering panel frequently commented that the previously outsourced assessments were generally of a very poor quality, I don’t know whether this is really likely.