To what extent does the stigma surrounding care-experienced people originate within the care system itself?
- To a large extent (56%, 297 Votes)
- Somewhat (28%, 147 Votes)
- Not very much (11%, 58 Votes)
- Not at all (5%, 28 Votes)
Total Voters: 530
Loading ...A recent survey by Social Work England found that, of 2,120 respondents, 75% disagreed that social workers were valued by society.
This is despite previous research for the regulator finding that 74% of around 3,000 adults in England believed social workers wanted the best for people. Of those, 62% felt social workers also made a big difference in people’s lives.
So how accurate is the profession’s view of its public image?
A Community Care poll with close to 800 responses found that most practitioners believed that the majority social work opinion was accurate and the profession really was unvalued by society.
Only 4% said this was not true.
Media portrayals ‘biggest contributor to profession’s image’
This section on Social Work England’s survey also attracted the most free-text responses – 1,462 – the overwhelming majority (88%) of which were negative.
Most respondents also said that the main reason behind society’s low opinion of social work was media portrayals of the profession.
“I think that people grossly misunderstand what social workers do,” said one respondent.
“Social work definitely has an image problem, which makes our already difficult job much harder. I do blame media representations for this. I have never seen a remotely accurate portrayal of social workers in the media.”
Last year, Social Work England launched a campaign urging TV and film producers to ‘change the script’ on how they depict the profession on the screen.
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I really think looking to be valued by “the public” is futile. We rarely if ever seek validation from strangers in our own lives so why the desperation to pine for this from the populace most of whom have next to no contact with a social worker? We should be valuing what people we work with, users of our services and colleagues, think of us. That’s the litmus test. Real life isn’t TikTok is it?
Echoes what I have thought for a long time. Why is social work as a ‘profession’ and social workers as practitioners so unconfident in what we do that they need to find succour and validation in public opinion? I’ve never met a doctor who constantly bemoans being unloved and misunderstood, I’ve never had a conversation with a nurse like this either. You don’t hear plumbers ask media companies for a more “realistic” depiction nor corner shop owners, not farmers, nor warehouse workers. People get on with their jobs and cope with their stress in the warmth and support of family and friends. If one yearns for the fawning of the public being an actor is perhaps what they really should be. We do a job most don’t understand and most will have a brief opinion about before deciding which chocolate bar to buy. Social work indeed isn’t a TikTok craze. Real life is hard and contradictory and upsetting and exhilarating, it’s love and friendship and bills and holiday planning and laughter and tears. Real life isn’t vicarious platitudes from total strangers. And that I’m afraid is the reason why social work isn’t a real profession.
I slightly disagree with the two comments above. While accepting that one shouldn’t be constantly seeking validation in a needy way, it is important that the public has some idea of what we do and how we do it and does see this in a positive light, as we work with individuals, families and groups who are part of the public. If they have misunderstandings of what we are seeking to achieve as we work with them and/or are starting from an attitude of ‘they’re just going to take our kids away’, it’s not helpful to developing that positive working relationship. I think Baby P was a bit of a turning point – the media coverage was dreadful and very anti-social work, certainly initially, but it did lead to some interest in what the profession was all about and some understanding of the difficulties and constraints there are upon us, and that education, the Police, the courts, etc all have a role to play in child protection. It is encouraging that the picture is not as bad as many social workers feel it is, and that there is understanding and even sympathy out there as we seek to do our varied jobs with the whole range of people across society.
The only public that matters are the people we directly work with not the general public whose ideas about groups are shaped by legacy or social media. People are told to be disgusted by Stop Oil activists, Train drivers and such. Social workers are in that line and always will be because a lot of our work and relationships are transgressive, we work with people most don’t want to think about or wished they didn’t exist. So that’s why I agree with Sebastian Holgate and Patrick. It’s our job to win people over through working with them to improve their experiences and personal and interpersonal relationships. No media image is a substitute for skill, boundary setting, empathy, insight and tact with clarity of purpose in those relationships. The days when the police or courts or medics or teachers and the like were respected above social workers is long over. Social workers just need to realise this and wean themselves off the dependency they have with despondency. Public might hate us, they actually don’t, but they hate all authority in the spaces invaded by social media. What the public rage against is obvious failures, whether that’s in child protection or arbitrary ‘needs’ assessments. If we want to be taken seriously we need to just get on with doing what we do well and stop fretting about wanting to be loved. Even puppies forget the distress they experience when their owners leave them alone in the house
on they return.
Every family we work with was the ‘general public’ before we entered their lives. We need them to be open to working with us, to trust us to support them appropriately. This is more difficult when they have seen social workers on the soaps removing children without due process. We know how ridiculous and inaccurate the screen portrayals are, but they don’t. When soaps are doing a particular storyline whey speak about working closely with whatever the charity, such is their need to offer accuracy and information. Why not with social work. I don’t need to be liked or valued in order to do my job effectively, however, to have a little bit of a head start would be nice.
People who don’t choose to have social workers in their lives will of course always “misunderstand” what social workers are seeking to achieve. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to social workers. Aren’t we meant to have the skills and the apptitude to gain trust and communicate clearly to overcome this? Aren’t we supposedly better at resilience and tenacity than other professionals? All I know is that if my colleagues spent more time actually validating what they do and have confidence in their effectiveness rather than stressing about what the ‘public’ think of them they would be happier, more professionally fulfilled and certainly more effective in their interventions. Working with colleagues feels like being an extra in a not very enlightening soap opera sometimes. Supposedly Sir Laurence Olivier after yet another pointless angst ridden rumination by Dustin Hoffman about the motivation of his character said “why don’t you try acting’. Humbly I suggest social workers should just try being social workers. The rest belongs in a therapists session.
Being valued by your employers could be a good start.
Your value to an employer is your labour nothing more. Your productivity is what they value not your sensitive nature. The more social workers come to accept that they are no more than any other worker dependent on their employer paying them happier they will be. Give up the professionalism obsession and settle for the realities of being just a product whose labour is exchanged for cash not love.
That’ll upset BASW Simeon. Where have the speaking my truth to power within the social work family of equals goggles gone Tom?
I understand that sarcasm is a necessary antidote to the often extremely irritating pretentions of social work but I also think there is a line not to be crossed. Yes some social workers are needy and others constantly feel put upon but in the end we are all colleagues. Public should respects us and we should strive to earn that respect but nothing is gained by publicly ribbing each other. I understand the politics but I also validate the feelings we all experience when we are being maligned unfairly in the media. Frankly I find it offensive to be compared to a plumber, however elitist that might come across to some.
Yeah I am sure a plumber or many other professions don’t receive death threats while working in their own homes, or drive former gang members round town visibly in their own car, or drive across country for no extra pay out of hours, or use their own money to feed a starving teenager, or remove a newborn from a distressed parent on their own, or have to beg for resources, or feel the frustration when your managers don’t believe that it’s not your fault when parents continue to neglect their child. I could go on. Not even my employers know these realities let alone the public. With the threat of naming and shaming about to be reality it should be known his awfully bad this job cam be and why we can’t save everyone though as wish we could.
I try to read and digest what colleagues post and have so far refrained from commenting my self to this point. However if nobody ever understands what a social worker does but themselves then that is not a healthy psychological place. Claims of “saving” are problematic particularly as our track record recently isn’t great. We need to be humble, we need to acknowledge our weakness too. Otherwise we know best and the rest of you don’t becomes the comfort crutch. Anyway that’s what I think.
Well done social workers for feeding the hungry, transporting gang members in your own cars at great danger of being ignored while you are driving, for saving a baby from harm single handedly and all the other virtuous actions which in a just world would earn you at the very least sainthood not a miserable MBE. As it happens I know a plumber, my brother in law, who chooses to not charge full price or no price for those who can’t afford plumbers rates, who coaches youth football, some of said youth being
former gang members and some who in all likelihood are engaged in criminality still every third Saturday when he could earn exorbitant amounts, who notifies child protection teams when he comes across a neglected baby. And unlike us social workers he does all that for free. In my humble opinion social workers on the whole have nothing much to crow about and much to feel ashamed about safeguarding people. Many a volunteer has a much better understanding of how people live their lives than most social workers. Self affirmation of personal superiority rarely translates to actuality. So yes I too am tired. I’m tired of the whining, of the self flagulation, of the no one understands me indulgence. I’ve been a social worker for 28 years and that past 5 have been unbearable. Yes we have a difficult job, yes we have useless managers and invisible supervisors, yes SWE is an embarrassment, yes we will never get paid nor claim back time for overtime. But why the barely concealed addiction to misery? None of that is worse than a 5 year old Bolivian child making bricks or the miners digging up cobalt and the like so social workers can tap away on their iPhones about how badly we are treated. The world isn’t social work. The world is indentured labourers, abused women and girls denied education, gay men living in fear of being lynched, babies dying of diarrhoea. Get a perspective and learn humility. You have not earned the privilege to judge plumbers or refuse collectors or delivery drivers or Uber drivers nor the men and women who wash your cars while permanently anxious that they might be arrested or deported. You will find serenity only when you see yourselves as a small part in the mass of workers. And stop fretting about first world problems while you are at it. The air fryer you couldn’t bag on Black Friday isn’t a tragedy. It’s not even an inconvenience. There I’ve given the game away about where I work. But actually I don’t care anymore.
Wow. This just shows nothing will change then if health and social care workers can’t even stand up for themselves and are made to feel guilty when we do. How dare we.
Stand up for yourself in solidarity with other workers and you might have a chance of improving your lot. Keep on believing that you’re somehow more valuable than other workers and carry on being ignored. Social workers can’t even win a pay rise on their own, good luck with being whatever you think your employer should value as. That’s all.
I’m interested in knowing when health and social care workers have actually stood up for themselves together? Most social workers haven’t ever attended a union meeting, rarely vote on union motions, can’t even bother to vote on pay award ballots. If that is standing up I’d like to know what apathy looks like. Nurses and doctors went on strike, all I heard was social workers moaning about them getting paid more.
What a rational person might regard as apathy social workers reframe as we are exhausted and don’t have time for union meetings and opening ballot papers. Social work is a different universe which ofcourse includes me in it so I cannot be too smug.
Ruth Cartwright, Tom, Sisyphus, Tahin, Simeon, Sebastian Holgate and Patrick are colleagues I wished I worked with. TiredSocialWorker, Robyn and Callum and Wes I would love to have respectful conversations with. And as others have said previously thank you Community Care for providing a platform for us to share agreements, disagreements and sometimes hostility in a well moderated way. I know I couldn’t have a fraction of these debates in the self censorship ‘debates’ with my fellow BASW members.
Sounds like my workplace. Only those shut up and put up and stick to the false narratives rise to the management positions. Meanwhile we cannot retain staff. Anyone who stands up for either their own rights or the rights of service users are shut down. Respectful conversation? I have loads of those, they are very patronising, and they go nowhere. Overwork? No that’s me not being organised. No pay rise? No I do this for the children I don’t need the money. Burnout? No I’m just not resilient enough. Sad about the children? No that’s lack of self care and inability to switch off. Think a child should be in care? No I haven’t done enough yet to change the family, i haven’t worked hard enough. If anyone has read a serious case review, time and time again it highlights how burned out social workers who are not listened to are part of the problem. But hey let’s just carry on ticking the boxes and pretending we are creating social justice.
Well if a social worker regards themself as a lone and a virtuous individual rather than part of a team then they will be patronised, ignored and perhaps even laughed at. The alleged incompetents ruse to become managers because they understand how organisations work and more pertinently identify where power is within and use it to join the pack. The hyper individual social worker in a permanent state of angst, often cooked and stoked in their own imaginations, on the other hand cannot decide if choosing to isolate themself by working from home is another consequence of how horrid their employer is or secretly rejoices in not being held to account by the compromises necessary for effective ream working. 20% of any social workers dailt thinking, this one included, is woe is me. Some though recognise it for what it is and rarely allow the despondency to linger long. For some every late report, every court humiliation, every rejected assessment, every incomplete case note, every intended or inadvertent slight is a confirmation of how awful being a social worker is. Never ever remetely anything to do with how they do their job. Burn out has real consequences but never is just about a single tangible employer specific source. Some of us are disorganised and work to less than optimum standards because of it, we do let families down when we are late for or don’t keep appointments, some are fragile souls who can only function by endless and daily affirmation of their exceptionality or head nodding to how awful they are treated. When was the last time social workers had a discussion that didn’t demand unquestioning acceptane of how dreadful being a social worker is these days? Given that permanent state of acute hyper sensitivity and anxiety there hardly likely to be respectful conversations between the competing whose worse off attention seekers is there. Personally I’ve long given up on rationality and settled to close my ears and eyes to this. A good laugh with the guy who makes me an Earl Grey tea, shoukd I caveat that by riffing on if I can squeeze it in to my very very busy day for appearances sake?, is the best antidote actually. I love being a social worker inspite of most of the self indulgences tolerated by being reframed as ‘professional pressures’. As for listening to social workers, where would you stop is the real question. The ingenuity that we have honed to almost become magicians to justify when and what we get wrong is patience sapping. That’s my social work and on the whole that is what tires me out. Realism and Imagined Monsters would be a social work book I’d spend pennies from my meagre wages I was too lazy to vote in the pay claim ballot on for a rise.
Yesterday in our office: 9.20 first coffee round then 15 minutes of tedious but earnest conversations about Traitors. 10.00: Team meeting, as ever unresolved discussion about case loads, then cursory description of cases needing allocation, no volunteers, briefing about upcoming protection procedures training, on line naturally. 11.15 post meeting coffees, most feeling can’t take on anymore cases, nothing new there. 11.45: back to desks or going on visits. 13:30: big show of having lunch in front of computers while doing notes. 14.00-15.00: admin fielding calls we don’t want or can’t take. Some tension with admin manager complaining to team manager that it’s become unbearable to field off calls post lunch everyday. Moans all round.15.00-16.30: write ups, vaping, return from visits, pointless computer inputs, some tears, cancelled supervisions, again. 16.45: coffees and chats with lots of peer affirmations, baffled looks when someone mentions Slow Horses. As ever no one mentions a book they might be reading, don’t have the time I suppose. 17.00-infinity much harrumphing in front of computers and post phone calls. Whose going to be the last to leave the office tug of war starts. None notices the cleaner. And in my humble opinion that is what constitutes social workers standing up for themselves. Not exactly to the Finland Station but there we are.
Wow. You have an office. You have admin. You have admin that field calls even. You have meetings. I have a laptop, a mobile and a notebook. And my kitchen table and Microsoft teams. Maybe this is why such a divide in opinions.
We didn’t then we worked to rule which meant we returned our laptops at 5.00. Apart from the usual suspects who can never take any action in their own interests because they are so “committed” to their ‘families” we stuck with it for 3 months. We were bullied and threatened and guilt tripped but our bosses eventually abandoned ‘hot desking” and “standing work stations”.Nobody gave us anything we took it for ourselves. Perhaps that explains the divide in opinion better.Now I could be facetious and say ” you have the privilege of home working” but I’ll just let it hang there. We support our admin staff, we don’t belittle them. We also value team working and Microsoft Teams is something we resist. There’s nothing mysterious about wanting and securing good working conditions with proper support. It just requires a bit of effort and some discomfort and none of the martyr complex beloved of the “over worked and under appreciated” self indulgers. We can have a nuanced and considered and respectful conversation about this but that requires not starting it with “wow”.
If you choose to work from home why would an employer provide you with office space and admin support?
I’m greatly enjoying this thread for professional reasons as well as for sheer fingers over the eyes pleasure. Everyday seems to be Love Island in the social work universe. Egos we have, insufferable attention seeking we have, imagined slights galore, hollow intellectualism rife. Mystery is how any social worker ever gets out of bed.
This is an uninformed the comment. Anybody who knows anything about social workers realises that we don’t get out of bed because we are too busy sacrificing our wellbeing to go to bed, ever. Facts matter.
It may be that although we social workers make a positive impact on the experiences of most people we work with, the public are just fed up with our constant megaphoning of this and just want us to do our job. My partner is a hospital doctor. I have never heard her or her colleagues whoop that they saved a life today but I have listened to her and her colleagues agonise and weep that they couldn’t. The difference should matter.
Whatever the era, whatever the prevailing orthodoxy, whatever the developments in theories and teaching reductive generalisations seem to remain the only constant in social work.