Work experience with children in care

After a week’s work experience at a mental health day centre, I’ve this week moved onto work experience with children in the care system – mainly observing and contributing to some meetings with YP, about the current changes to Ofsted inspections within children’s services. And today also observing part of a children in care council meeting. I was supposed to be attending a session tomorrow run by the YP for myself and another soon to be SW student, telling us what a SW-er should know, from the YP’s POV. Unfortunately I’ve had to pull out after a friend of mine lost her father earlier in the week, so I’ll be attending the funeral but I know it will also be a great session.

I’m always amazed by quite much can be learnt even from one day’s work experience. The typical workie reference is from when we were 16, where work experience meant filing and getting people coffee but this couldn’t be more different.
For a start I’ve just learnt so much from talking to the professionals, not only about their roles but other roles within SW and opportunities that I didn’t even know about , as well as understanding in more depth some of the merits and pitfalls of different SW departments. And then of course there’s meeting the YP – which I’ve loved.

I’ve heard from them some of the things that make a good or bad foster placement – some of the details being things you wouldn’t necessarily think about (don’t gossip on the phone to your friends about the latest kid in your care…) heard about their hopes for the future, today I heard more about the role of an IRO (independent reviewing officer) as the YP told a LA IRO what their team could be doing better.
Oh and meeting an IRO who after decades in social work still seemed incredibly passionate and inspiring – that in itself is incredibly helpful as the course gets closer.

I don’t think it’s possible to come out of some of these sessions with YP and not feel inspired by their resilience. That may seem patronising but it’s certainly not intended to. The concept of living at 16 independently , or having been moved around from placement to placement with no stability and then dealing with SW-ers disappearing without saying goodbye, or IRO’s asking them who they’re having sex with in a huge review meeting infront of a million strangers…and then turning up at these meetings chirpy – is frankly amazing.

And boy does it make me excited to start.

It also reminds me constantly quite how smart and astute they are. It’s so easy to talk to a YP like a child, forgetting quite how much they know. But they have opinions on everything and informed ones at that – whether it be their views on politics (“ Cameron, his role is to make rich people richer” - there were others, I just quite liked that one!) and views about the riots, to understanding in detail the laws around living in care, what they’re entitled to, and how they should be treated – rightly so. So many of them have just grown up so much faster than I’ve ever had to – they’re used to having to chase this company and that person to get the free computer they’re entitled to – or people coming and going from their life – in ways that fortunately many of us don’t need to worry about, at least until later on.

The YP help to make this change in my life feel real. They bring up a lot of the concerns that I’ve had and have – “SW-ers are all about the paperwork”, “they’re so stressed all the time”, “ you’re going to be a SW-er, start praying now” – “Sw-ers can’t change anything, that’s why we don’t like them, they just tell you what their managers tell them”…. But they also tell you firsthand what the difference between a good and bad social worker is, and I feel lucky to be having these conversations – both with people in the mental health day centre last week and with the YP this week…
Now I just need to be one of the SW-ers they rave about!