THE SOCIAL WORKER. PART 3

Before you make your visit, carefully consider the whys, whos, and hows of your visit. Why am I visiting, who will I want see and how am I going to obtain what what information I need to have. Prepare an agenda and use it.

Once the social worker has been allocated his/her cases, I would have expected there to have been some discussion with his/her team or practice manager, and/or with their team members. This discussion can take place between the social worker and the team or practice manager, in their office, if they have one, or at a team meeting, where the case will be presented and the key issues discussed. For example, in Britain, it might be a case of a child who is in the local authority’s care and is placed with foster carers or in a children’ home, with the child being subjected to an Interim Care Order, or Full Care Order (Section of 38 or S.31) or S.20 of the Children’s Act 1989.

The difference between S.20 and Section 38 and 31, being that the local authority is conferred with shared parental responsibility for the children, in the first two instances, but, in the case of S.20, has no parental responsibility for the child and must obtain the consent of the child’s parents before making any major decisions regarding the child, which would be in the remit of a person with parental responsibility.

Or it might be a case where a number of children have recently be removed from the local authority’s Child Protection Register, because they had suffered significant harm or were at risk of suffering such harm, due to the care being given to them not being what would have been expected of a reasonable parent/s. And now, with the local authority and other involved agencies having worked with the parents and family to reduce or remove the perceived risk, the children have been removed from the List of Children subject to child protection plans, but require on-going input from the local authority and the partnership agencies, to further consolidate the protective work which had been done with the family.

If the team has a policy of technically allocating all cases to all the members of the team, each case which is being allocated to the newly qualified social worker, as, let us say, the primary caseworker, will be presented and discussed at a team’s regular team meeting. During this process, the social worker and any family support workers having significant prior involvement with the case will outline the key issues in the case and the outstanding tasks which need to be actioned. Some social workers, in taking on a new case, might consider making contact with the service-users and other key or significant persons in the case, before reading the relevant files and forming some initial views about the case. The danger of doing this is that you risk antagonising the service-users, their families and key people involved in it, if you approach them without have a quite detailed appraisal of the case. 

The social worker is an agent of state power endeavouring to bring the best outcome for the most vulnerable of his clients/service-users.

In this way, when you make contact with the service-user, they will appreciate you having this knowledge of the case and be more ready to engage with you, or less reluctant to do so. When you approach some or most service-users and their families, without having sufficient details about their cases, it can result in them becoming hostile and antagonistic towards you, which, of course, start of what needs to be a constructive and empowering relationship on a bad footing, with you having to try harder to get their trust and confidence in your ability to help them. 

Having good preparation prior to meeting the service-user, in the case of older children, and their parents, in the case of both younger children and teenagers, will also mean that service-user, were they inclined to do so, would be less likely to ‘pull the wool over your eyes’ about their case, as you, by having read the files, will be more likely to have the relevant information to confirm or refuse some of their assertions.

It is therefore essential that the new social worker prepares him/herself carefully before visiting the service-user, their family members, and/or any of the other professionals - such as teachers, health workers, juvenile justice workers, voluntary organisation staff, et al - before visiting them. This preparation should include making yourself au fait with the service-users' case and case files, the key agencies and professionals involved in the case, the key issues and concerns, the details of the plan of work being done with the service-users and their families, and having a clear and pointed agenda covering the work you plan to accomplish on your visit.

Careful casework planning increases the likelihood of the social worker arriving at 'the place' where he/she intended to.