Social work has changed – and remained the same

Reading a recent edition of Professional Social Work, it seems to me the profession is still struggling with many of the issues I encountered throughout my career.

Community social work doesn’t get the recognition it deserves; the care service is over-bureaucratic; the mental health system is failing; social workers have too high and complex caseloads, and the roots that trigger racism, racial violence and poverty remain unresolved.

When I started as a social worker, children and their families faced the same problems of stigma and felt the system was set up for them to fail. Back then, it was a challenge to access resources and each resource had to be fought for.

Let me share some memories and reflections on my 37-year career.

I was 18 years old when I left college to train as a social worker as part of a sociology degree. This was a four-year course, which broadly broke down as three years for the sociology degree and one year for the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work.

I had four placements which were mainly during the summer holidays, within mental health, learning disabilities, an adolescent assessment centre and two fieldwork placements in Leicester and Bristol.

I qualified in 1975 at the age of 22 and got a job in Bristol where I worked in an inner-city area with a diverse population. I was told that only 18 per cent of the department were qualified social workers. 

The team consisted of a qualified senior social worker, two qualified social workers, four unqualified social workers and four social work assistants. All my colleagues in the team would have been classified as white British.

During the five years I worked in Bristol the number of qualified social workers rapidly increased and most of the unqualified went on to be trained. 

One of the best childcare officers I ever worked with was an unqualified social worker. She was near retirement and came into social work after her wartime work of placing child evacuees from London with families in Somerset. Her knowledge, sensitivity and empathy were a great support to me as a young inexperienced social worker. 

This was the post-Seebohm era, which brought elderly, adult and children’s services together in local authorities to enable social care services to be more efficient and reduce costs. It also introduced generic social work teams and generic workers. 

Despite this, we all had special interests which were reflected in our caseloads. My main interests were childcare, juvenile justice, child protection and mental health work. 

I was expected to train as a mental welfare officer to work with the 1959 Mental Health Act, which I did within six months of starting and joined the rota which worked across the city. 

Like today, social work had an image problem. We were seen by the media and wider society as either being ‘secular priests’ or ‘left-wing radicals’ who were intent on changing society. 

These images were supported by the common appearance of young male social workers, including myself, who in line with the fashion of the day, had long hair and a beard, wore bellbottom trousers and an open neck shirt. We had one tie in the team that male staff shared and would wear if we needed to go to court.

I think the views of society were illustrated by our restricted response to the Bristol riots in April 1980: we were told by our bosses that the police had said no social workers should go into the area of unrest for three days.

The police perception was that we were working to bring about change in the community and would try to protect the youths that were involved in the riots.

There was an assessment team for the city who undertook short term work. Cases were transferred if they were considered to need long term involvement. 

There were no emergency duty teams so each area team took turns to provide an on-call service from 5pm to 8.30am Monday to Thursday and, over the weekend, from 4.30pm Friday to 8.30am on Monday. 

We did not get additional pay for this emergency cover or time off in lieu. In fact, despite being on-call, we were still expected to be in the office for 8.30am the next working day. 

This was before the time of mobile phones so when we were out alone in Bristol, sometimes late at night or in the early hours, we had to use a phone box to contact agencies or colleagues to arrange services to meet the needs presented. 

Along with several members of our team, I was involved in IT groups. Back then, IT didn’t mean information technology, but ‘intermediate treatment groups’, where we ran weekly sessions after school for a fixed group of adolescents who were in danger of becoming involved in juvenile offending, or children who were recognised as needing more emotional support than could be provided by home or school.

Our aim was to increase self-confidence and self-worth. We often went to the beach for games and a barbeque, to the cinema to see the latest films, ten pin bowling and horse riding.

One of our team worked as a volunteer at the local youth club and several members from our group joined this. Sadly, non-denominational funded youth clubs and adventure play groups with trained paid staff have, in most areas, been lost in the last two decades due to budget cuts.

Each of our cases had a casefile which were always hand-written. These were just a record of contacts and events with no planning as such. They were rarely read by the senior manager and were generally only read when the case was transferred to another worker. There was no notion of case load numbers or weighting cases – if a referral came in it was generally allocated on the basis of workers’ interest, or whose turn it was.

I think we were generally more relaxed about our work and there was an expectation that if a team had a particularly bad week we were allowed to finish early on a Friday. We spent this together at the pub, on the beach at Weston-Super-Mare or at the cinema.

We moved out of an office block overlooking Bristol docks to an old school in the area where we worked in order to provide easier access to the community. We were social workers with a closer link to the community, rather than community social workers.

I left Bristol to return to my hometown of Leicester and got a job in another generic team. 

The department was still recovering from a case of a child known to them who had been killed by their parents. The local press condemned the department and severely damaged their reputation. 

I continued to act as a mental welfare officer and then trained to practice as an approved social worker (now known as AMHP) under the 1983 Mental Health Act. My interests continued to be mental health and childcare. I also trained to be a guardian ad litem. I went on to be a team manager for mental health, then a service manager.

During this period the teams had become more representative of the communities they served. It was pleasing to see several of the Black workers I managed become managers and senior managers in the department. 

For the last ten years of my career I was responsible for all community mental health teams in Leicester, two mental health wards and two day services.

Social work is a job like no other. I have enjoyed every stage of my career and am fortunate to have worked with some wonderful and skilled people.

Your chosen career provides you with the opportunity to improve people's lives. Learn from more experienced colleagues and support the members of the team. Use supervision effectively and continue to learn. I wish you all a long and rewarding career.