Partner of a front-line child protection social worker here. Too often is the focus on the social worker at the coal face, or at the service manager at the top.
More often than not (and take it from me, having seen my partner go through six managers in the last two years) the problem lies in the middle; with the incompetent and/or under-resourced manager that is coasting along, managing a team of cases and workers that he or she doesn’t care to monitor, whilst the families *AND* the social workers suffer.
Drift is not caused by the job; it’s caused by the incompetent management in the middle. My partner will tell you this; she’s had three separate engagements working for Birmingham CIty Council:
1) she left out of frustration and fear for her practice license; she wasn’t being supported, had no supervision (meetings) with her boss, wasn’t allocated enough time or resources to do her job, was working evenings and weekends just so she didn’t let the families and children down and then was disciplined for taking time off due to ill-health
2) she was made redundant from a team only to then find out the team were under-staffed and started recruiting again, where an incompetent and dangerous social worker handling half the cases she was was allowed to remain in practice
3) was almost an identical repeat of engagement #1 except with a different manager - I believe that almost all of the workers have resigned from this team now due to it
As I said … don’t look at the top, don’t look at the bottom. Look at the WHOLE chain, if you want to find out what’s going on. It’s not always the core of the apple that’s rotten - and usually if the skin is looking bad, it’s what’s just the other side of it that’s to blame!
Partner of a front-line child protection social worker here. Too often is the focus on the social worker at the coal face, or at the service manager at the top.
More often than not (and take it from me, having seen my partner go through six managers in the last two years) the problem lies in the middle; with the incompetent and/or under-resourced manager that is coasting along, managing a team of cases and workers that he or she doesn’t care to monitor, whilst the families *AND* the social workers suffer.
Drift is not caused by the job; it’s caused by the incompetent management in the middle. My partner will tell you this; she’s had three separate engagements working for Birmingham CIty Council:
1) she left out of frustration and fear for her practice license; she wasn’t being supported, had no supervision (meetings) with her boss, wasn’t allocated enough time or resources to do her job, was working evenings and weekends just so she didn’t let the families and children down and then was disciplined for taking time off due to ill-health
2) she was made redundant from a team only to then find out the team were under-staffed and started recruiting again, where an incompetent and dangerous social worker handling half the cases she was was allowed to remain in practice
3) was almost an identical repeat of engagement #1 except with a different manager - I believe that almost all of the workers have resigned from this team now due to it
As I said … don’t look at the top, don’t look at the bottom. Look at the WHOLE chain, if you want to find out what’s going on. It’s not always the core of the apple that’s rotten - and usually if the skin is looking bad, it’s what’s just the other side of it that’s to blame!