Shadowing in a duty and assessment team

For 3 days I'm shadowing someone in a duty and assessment team.

When I walked into the building it felt so different from the vibe of an ad agency. The crest on the doors somehow make things feel a lot more serious but once I met the team and saw everyone chatting and joking I felt relieved to see that the sense of gravitas wasn’t wholly intimidating.

I was lucky to have an hour to chat all about the work that this team does and what cases are on at the moment. I went to the shift meeting and heard about the cases coming in today; from domestic violence to a young boy at school who'd told his friend he'd been having anal sex with an older man. Cases were allocated and I was given some interesting leaflets to read about CP processes and family assessments.

I spent some time chatting to other SW-ers about their time at Uni, how they found their job and some of my fears. It was great to speak to people who seemed to love their job and reassured me that despite all I've heard, many people do enjoy it!

Listening to phone calls really helped, the tone and manner by which SW-ers were talking - and the patience when repeating to people who couldn't speak English well. Also, I could see how frustrating it could be when so much time seemed to be spent leaving voicemails, endlessly chasing people who didn’t necessarily want to be found. One of the mums under investigation had run with her kids to Kenya and messages were being left to find out about their wellbeing.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to shadow the court hearing for an EPO or school visit to speak to the boy since they already had a large team including an interpreter out to meet but I’ll find out what went on tomorrow.

I then sat in a meeting with a woman talking about her child who she claimed was being bullied at her school for being Muslim. Afterwards I learn that Ofsted have already investigated and found no merit to this claim. She was then talking about the gangs her child is being caught up in and how the child has been beaten and is being more aggressive towards her mum. I saw the Sw-er in her role as expert in support services, recommending advocacy groups to help with some educational advice to help the child be removed from her new rough school and youth services that could provide a mentoring programme to help the child with the aggressive behaviour she picked up since moving to that school.

This is a fantastic insight even in a few hours into some of the challenges the Social Workers are up against. Even just an insight into human behaviour. I hadn’t even considered that some of the people who came in, when making serious allegations about their children being abused at school, might me making it up. I’m not saying this was the case – it’s still being investigated but it sounds like it may amount to that. There’s clearly reasons behind it – and I’m making any profound point here, just that it can be easy to be too trusting I suppose, in the same way it can be easy to be too judgemental. A balance I’m sure I’ll learn, or at least get better at!

Few reflections:
- advertising is almost always involved with white, middle class people aged 25-40. Both in agencies and clients
- You get so used to the luxury of getting cabs everywhere, seeing SW-ers stepping out to make the 15 minute walk to the tube station in the pouring rain is weirdly alien to the ad agency I work in!
- This job feels incredibly intense by comparison to a lot of the work I do, every little task so important.
- But one similarity, I spent a lot of time reading the guide to family assessments and many of the techniques and tasks involve elements I'm quite familiar with from leading focus groups.

Let's see what day 2 brings

Day 2;

I followed up to find out what happened on the two visits yesterday. The boy was apparently making it up - so risk levels are down, just initial assessment needed. Although I considered how you would know whether he was actually making it up, or just said he was due to the situation he’d found himself in. I suppose by entering him onto the “system” after initial assessment will at least make the process faster if his file turns up again in the department.

I have been given some interesting reading on assessment tools and theories associated with interventions. And the really nice SW-er next to me has printed a core assessment he did for me to read. It’s great to see how the theory becomes practice.

He's also invited me to a meeting with a woman who arrived in the UK from Romania 2 weeks ago with her child, who she told the borders agency, she wants to leave in this country. She apparently has mental health issues and has been having increasingly long conversations with the SW-er, refusing to tell him where she is but claiming to have a lot of the UK’s secret services knowledge at her disposal.

I then sat in on a walk-in with a young girl who was the victim of DV. She is living on her own with a young child and was looking to move house. Really this was a case for a range of other services to deal with, mainly housing – for which she is on the list, but the SW-er spent a long time sitting with her, making her an appointment with Victim Support, speaking to the police about putting a panic alarm in her flat, even calling housing to try to hurry along her case. I found it really encouraging that although a lot of these calls could have been made by the girl herself, and there wasn’t a huge amount we could do in this case, it felt like just making a few calls on her behalf was a help, and there were some clear next steps for her to follow. I was also amazed, after hearing quite how confident and proactive this girl was as a single mother facing so many issues, that she was only one year younger than me.

I also spent time looking at genograms - a kind of family tree with an additional layer of detail, i.e showing the strength of relationships between family members/friends, or medical history and ecomaps, which shows the influence of different things on a person's life for example social support systems, or community groups.

Day 3:

The Romanian woman didn’t ever turn up to make her meetings and there was little else we could do for her. The SW-er tried to encourage her to disclose where she was or at least come to us, but she seemed to refuse.

I sat in on another walk-in with a single mother close to break down, dealing with her oldest child with special needs. It was sad, the school he was at was over an hour from her home and she was finding it impossible to take him to and from school each day while dealing with other kids too. The transport that had been put on for him had just refused to take him anymore because he was acting up and she was refusing to take him herself as she said it was all too much and that it was making her suicidal.

I realise this sounds naïve, but having never worked in a setting like this, it was hard to hear these intentions dropped into conversation so easily, and not knowing exactly what we could do to help. I know the case was being referred to a CIN team who would form a team around the child to discuss how different services could be put in place to help the family but I discussed it further with the SW-er after, who explained that there weren’t that many SEN schools and so often the child did have to travel a long way to reach his school. She had suggested different options to the mother, such as trying to find a rota with other parents, to no avail. So, I’m left hoping the CIN team could find a better solution.

Finally I sat in one more walk-in with a girl who said she didn’t want to go back home and had been living with a friend’s family who were moving house and could no longer keep her there. The SW-er discussed her options with her and gave her some further reading to help make her decision.

Before I left I was able to read a few child protection case conference plans to understand how the assessments were used in practice.

It’s been a really fantastic experience, and I learnt a lot more than I really expected to in just three days. Many people have asked me whether it’s made me feel that this is definitely the right job for me. Truthfully I don’t think it did that, nor put me off either – there were times I could see myself fitting right in and imagining my own role within this world, and other times where it felt incredibly overwhelming and made me feel quite daunted at the thought. But that’s three days, pre training.

As my MA start date draws closer, I’m definitely feeling more and more excited.