My point is social work is complex and is not only about tick boxes or “have you recorded your visits” without the recordinds not having some value to the content.Social workers are crying out for managable case loads, space to reflect and even scrutinise documents before having to start another task so they can provide safe effective service’s which not only safeguard children but also bring some credibility to the profession.

Micro social work requires the social worker to work with families/ children direct work with children will be on a one to one basis, and requires the ability to form good working relationships.How can a professional do this if you are moving from one allocated case to another one this limits your capacity to form any form of working relationship with the child/ families.Perhaps this needs addressing.

Mezzo social work requires social workers to engage with other organisations and professionals to access relevent resources,feedback and collaboration to inform assessments.Communicating with other professionals can be difficult because each bring thier own agendas to the meeting, you must be able to identify this because this interaction can limit the process of a plan.(Sorry but this is true) if your manager does not support you this again will impact the progression of the plan.

Macro social work involves identifying research to inform practice,advocacy,admin work,each intervention interlink with each other.How can professionals carryout this task if you do not have time,does this not impacts effective practice?

I apologise for repeating myself the role social workers take on are not only complex,affects one’s emotional well being,requires focus, confidence in leadership not one of blame and belittlement.

These are just some of my views from experince all of which impacts the quality of service we has social workers attempt to deliver.

Mobile working,attitudes,tick boxes, and performance indicates in my view do not reflect the true value of the work most social workers are attempting to achieve. Without support systems such as administrative support,management support,respect of each others skills knowledge,contributions and IT support which is now a fundamental part of the work social workers have to use to support them in Safeguarding Children this is very much missing and only impacts the quality of work..

Since the Victoria Climbi enquiry what has changed i ask myself ? It appears more children are suffering significant harm due to a system which works against the work social workers are attempting to do.

Covid brought with it confusion/uncertainty,less focus on good pratice and a lack of directions yet agency staff were employed to carry out the work of permanent staff? Is it not time to ensure social workers are equipped with the right support on all basis to ensure we deliver safe professional practice.

There is no doubt practice procedures in social work is changing because of the digital world we are now expected to live in, however mobile working does not make the role any easier if you do not have the support behind it.

Attitudes and behaviour in social work have changed!!?.This is worrying to observe.

Reports are life changing for a child and should reflect that child’s individual lived experince having to rushing a report in a limted time frame because you have only been given a couple of weeks or having a nicely written report which does not tell you anything about the child, may not bring that child’s lived experince to life.

If Social workers do not have access to support system’s which enables them to provide a valuable service, gives a picture of the child’s lived experience how can you blame social workers, if timescales are unmanable,case loads are dangerously high does this not impact the quality of service children receive(You can not fit a square peg into a round hole no matter how much you try) surly this is obvious?

The service is now target load and although I recognise delay can significantly impacts on the out come for a vulnerable child, in my view the child /adult has a human being is being lost.Did we not enter social work to advocate for the rights and Safeguarding of all children who face abuse? Therefore social workers should be equipped with the right support right attitudes to enable a professional service which reflects what most social workers in the profession are attempting to do does it not?

Xin Wei Sha (Sha Xin Wei) is today, perhaps, one of the worlds leading authorities on the errors made by an over reliance on computational information … being baffled is the area he writes and blogs about maybe you should have a look at his work ….

Why do you baffle people with language. “For cpd see Xin Wei Sha Navigating….. ” Means absolutely nothing to me

The inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbe ignored the findings of the death of Toni Ann Byfield.

They are politically orchestrated. Check out the party political fight over the terms of reference for an inquiry into failings in Calderdale and Kirklees following Rotherham.

Two children’s deaths in Sunderland, 2014 while satisfying the terms and conditions of the serious case review failed to take full account of the actual operating environment. Having asked Lord Laming, prompted before 2014 by BASW branch members, to register serious misgivings I still have no reply.

In this instance a agency worker from the US was hung out to dry.

To talk of improvements in drug and alcohol services, like most disabilities services, has been with a blind adherence to theory and practice ill-suited to and not derived from social work.

When Eileen Munroe was asked to attend the, then, Government response to the death of Peter Connelly she didn’t even know she was going to be asked to lead on drafting ‘Working Together’ .

On her arrival she was somply landed with it.

Saying, as Prof Munroe, did at the time of drafting the guidelines that social work is a complex adaptive system and relational ignored that these words have specific meaning within the world of Enterprise Architecture for IT development.

Ever since Westminster Council and in the early 1980s developed UCare, the 1st generation of IT kit, there’s been woeful attention paid to the actual benefits of such kit. The same happened throughout Youth Justice in the noughties and became the real economic driver throughout the drug and alcohol services ~ the at your finger tips demands for information has had absolutely nothing to do with keeping children safe.

The tail has been wagging the dog for decades.

The BASW AGM 2007, based on a show of hands, returned a vote of no-confidence in the, even then, blind faith being invested in going Digital and interoperability, and especially in Youth Justice ~ I became an IRO as part of the post Climbe review; the administrative arrangements hadn’t eased but had doubled. The data set construction and descriptors needed for performance management requirements meant that social workers were having to write additional reports, having already negotiated all manor of drop-down options, and attach them to the files ~ unless you knew such existed such reports are irretrievable because they aren’t coded.

Let’s get real about what is going on, eh? The MacAlister Review remains incomplete ~ information management requirements being one crucial factor being ignored and like for over 40 years since the Westminster experiment.

And, experiment it is.

For cpd see Xin Wei Sha Navigating Indeterminacy for an accurate definition of the terms complex adaptive systems and the word ‘relational’.

It was said in the 1980’s … there is no such thing as society. Children are experiencing harm in many ways as a result of underfunding, most social workers I have known care about children and their families , the only politics social work responds to is the Government of the day. Most families I have worked with do not understand the power of the vote, because of their lack of education, which again is impacting on the many, not the few.

“ Try and argue, present a case for S17 funding”. As a survivor of the 1960’s care system, who could not read until the age of 13 I went to university in the 1990’ s and clearly remember the Utting report. Services to children and their families have reduced year on year, cuts in education, professionals being the ‘ eyes and ears of the state’ and reporting rather than equalising the wealth of knowledge. As a society we have a duty to support the vulnerable, disadvantaged, not just social workers, teachers, police officers, health professionals.

I am still a registered social worker beyond retirement age I am passionate about protecting, feeding, educating children, our future.

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There is no doubt that this area of work demands a focused engagement with the child while being clear and straightforward with the adults about the risks to the child and the source of those risks. The combination of the focus on the child and focus on the adults is not an easy one. For professionals, there will be compliance with organisational due process and accountability while creating a direct, honest, relationship with the family which is sensitive, realistic, and child-centred.