Services for Signers

Elaine Duncan's experiences in Nine Wells Hospital have highlighted poor practice in offering interpretive services for deaf people. Duncan was admitted to hospital for an emergency appendectomy, but did not have any interpretation services offered during her 12 day stay, despite asking  for these, leaving her frightened and isolated. Sometimes the problem can be due to a shortage of registered interpreters, but at other times the incorrect assumptions of those working in public services, that deaf people should be able to communicate adequately through lip reading or writing, may be the problem.
Murray, K (2013) Lack of British sign language interpreters putting deaf people at risk. Guardian, 7 May, 2013.
Signature is a charity promoting and delivering BSL education, with offices in Glasgow, Durham and Belfast.

How Safe Are Our Children

A new report from the NSPCC:
"This report compiles the most robust and up-to-date child protection data that exists across each of the four nations in the UK.

It sets out 19 different indicators and each indicator looks at the question from a different perspective. These indicators will be regularly updated as new statistics are published.

The report allows us not only to understand how many children are being abused and neglected, but also to track progress so that society can be held to account for its responsibility to children. Only by monitoring the extent of child abuse and neglect in the UK can we judge whether efforts to prevent maltreatment and to protect children are working."

Burnout in Child Protection Work

The experience of child protection has been documented in a study (not yet published) of child protection workers in Northern Ireland. The research has been conducted in the province since 2009, gathering data on five characteristics of resilience, organisational factors and demographic variables. Lowered resilience among staff often started with an excessive workload, leading to emotional exhaustion, de-personalisation and low levels of personal accomplishment. More information is available in the Guardian, 23 April, 2013.

Nine benchmarks to test social work decision making

Andy McNicoll, writing in the Community Care magazine  Social Work Blog offers a nine point framework against which to measure decision making in social work. The nine characteristics were developed in the 1980s, but may still prove useful for reflective social work practice.

A rapid literature review of evidence on child abuse linked to faith or belief

This publication from the Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre, funded by the Department for Education (England and Wales), is a small scale review of previous research conducted to collate information for future policy. The review looked at the incidence and characteristics of child abuse linked to faith or belief in the UK and some other countries, looked to identify good practice in the identification and reduction of such abuse and sought to define gaps in the evidence base where further research may be helpful. The main sources of information were Stobart’s analysis of Metropolitan Police cases (2006; 2009) and the more recent (as yet unpublished) research from La Fontaine (2012). The review includes evidence on "witchcraft and spirit possession" related cases and also "ritual and satanic abuse".

10 Skills Every Social Worker Needs

A succinct article for social workers from the University of Southern California. All skills transferable across the big pond.

Family Group Conferences

Todays Guardian online contains an articles on How Family Group Conferences Have the Power to Change Lives. prinicpally by gathering extended family groups together in an informal setting to find solutions for children's problems within the family. Problems addressed might include the finding alternative accomodation for children rather than being fostered by social services, help with education, substance misuse or getting into trouble with the police. Although the article makes reference to services in England, facilitated by the voluntary organisation Daybreak, Family Group Conferences, also known as Family Group Meetings are also facilitated in Scotland by Children 1st among others. For further reading see Examining the Use and Impact of Family Group Conferencing (2007),  research project conducted by researcher's from Stirling University on behalf of the Scottish Government.

Social Work/Social Care & Media

I have just stumbled across the Social Work/Social Care & Media Blog - and it looks really interesting. Participants SWCS Media bills itself as "a knowledge community of practice that brings Social Work and Social Care practitioners, organisations, academics, researchers, students, policy makers, users of service and other allied professionals, stakeholders or enthusiasts and interested parties together, to discuss issues, innovations, opportunities, dilemmas and challenges as well as relevant developments in relation to Social Work and/or Social Care.". They regularly conduct live twitter debates on issues and case studies in social work and social care, (@SWSCmedia  #SWSCmedia) and collect together the posts in each debate on the blog. Well worth reading.

IRISS FM - social work podcasts

Last month IRISS - The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services launched their IRISS FM service - giving access to Social Service Podcasts on diverse social work topics. To listen online or download to you MP3 device of choice go to http://irissfm.iriss.org.uk/

Resilient or burned out?

This months issue of the British Journal of Social Work carries an article which should be of interest to those preparing for a career in social work:
Kinman, G. & Grant, L. (2011). Exploring stress resilience in trainee social workers: the role of emotional and social competencies. British Journal of Social Work, 41 (2), pp. 261-275.

For the Record

CareKnowledge are producing a special series of reports on case recording in social work. The first one is a discussion paper looking at case recording from the practitioner's perspective. See Brackenridge, M. (2011). case recording: the essential task on CareKnowledge.

Munro Interim Report pulished

The second report to come out of the Munro review of child protection, Interim report : Munro, E. (2011)the child's journey, set up in the wake of the Baby P serious case reviews, was published yesterday. In this report Professor Munro's report outlines where the child protection system needs reform and calls for children's needs to be in the forefront of consideration rather than meeting managerial targets and compliance with bureaucracy which have hindered social workers in using their professional judgement. The report also recommends making it easier for other agancies to access social workers for advice and improving the system of serious case review to enable greater information sharing and learning nationally in such cases.
Also reported on in the Guardian, 1 January 2011.

Social work drama

BBC Radio 3 are presenting a play, Natural Born Caretakers, by Sarah Daniels based around the work of a social work team on a child protection investigation. BBC 3, Sunday 8pm.

New Scottish Executive E-documents

Link to the documents below have also been added to our Suprimo catalogue - just search for them in the usual way:
McVie, s. (2010). Gang membership and knife carrying: findings from the edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime. Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.

Social Work Inspection Agency. (2010). Guide to leadership: taking a closer look at leadership in social work services.

New Government - new review of social work in the England

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education has engaged Professor Eileen Munro of the LSE to conduct an Independent Review of Child Protection in England. Michale Gove's letter outlines the scope of the review in the areas of early intervention, empowering and supporting front line social workers and maximising transparency and accountability. Following the commissioning of the review Professor Munro stated in a BBC radio interview that she favoured a team approach as modelled in Hackney, where decisions and responsibilities for an individual case were shoulderd by a group of professionals, with administrative work on cases being performed by an administrative worker on the team, leaving social workers with more time to spend on home visits. BASW have commented favourably on Professor Munro's appointment. See also Guardian, June 10.

Professor Munro recently had published the article "Learning to reduce risk in child protection", British Journal of Social Work 40(4), pp. 1135-1151.

Another reform will see the full publication of Serious Case Reviews, starting with the two Peter Connolly reviews. See BASW.

Support worker wins Orwell Prize

An anonymous social work blogger who writes Winston Smith - working with the underclass, has won the 2010 Orwell Prize for political writing, in the best blog category. The blog details his experiences of working in supported accomodation with teenagers and his frustrations with managers, policy and practice in social services.

SCIE learning objects

SCIE provides a number of E-learning resources including Communication Skills, Law and Social work, and An Introduction to Residential Care.

New E-publications

Action For Children (2010). Deprivation and risk: the case for early intervention. In three sections: policy analysis, life stories and a summary of effective practice in tackling child deprivation.
Statham, J. & Smith, M. (2010). Issues in earlier intervention: identifying and supporting children with additional needs. Department for Children, Schools and Families. Focuses on two broad types of need: the risk of abuse or neglect and the risk of emotional/behavioural/mental health difficulties.
Walker, J. et al. (2010). Relationships matter: understanding the needs of adults (particularily parents) regarding relationship support. Department for Children, Schools and Families. A qualitative study designed to inform policy formulated to support relationships between parents, in order to minimise the risks, for children, associated with parental separation.
Department for Children, Schools and Families. (2010). Building a safe and confident future: implementing the recommendations of the Social Work Task Force. A joint policy implementation plan from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Department of Health and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in partnership with the Social Work Reform Board.
DCSF Violence Agains Women and Girls Advisory Group. (2010). Advisory Group final report and recommendations. this group was set up to advise ministers on how schools can help to tackle the issue of violence against women and girls.
May, T. et al. (2010). Differential treatment in the youth justice system. Equality and Human Rights Commission. Examines the inequlity of treatment of different ethnic groups by the youth justice system.

Improving Social Work in Scotland

12th of March saw the publication of the Social Work Inspection Agency's overview of inspections in scotland from 2005-2009, Improving Social Work in Scotland. While inspections generally found social work services to be of good standard, reliable and improving, there are some areas of concern. In the area of supervision and management of violent offenders, inspectors found plans failing to focus on risk management and confusion among social work staff as to whether their role was to prevent reconviction or to protect the public from violent offenders. There were also concerns about the ability of services for older people and children to meet the growing demand for services. See also the Herald report, March 12.

College of Social Work referendum

The British Association of Social Workers is holding a referendum of its members, to garner support for the establishment of a professional College of Social Work, independant of plans being drawn up by the Social Work Reform Board, reflecting BASW disillusionment with what it sees as an England-centric model, too closely tied to government and lacking the independence necessary to transform standards, empower and promote social work as a profession to the media and public. The ballot will be concluded by the end of April.