Dear social workers
A letter from a psychologist.
My name is Jen and I’m a clinical psychologist working in a small independent service of social workers, psychologists and therapeutic workers. I originally joined your workforce back in 2015. I became part of a team of dedicated practitioners under the innovation fund to support children and families on the ‘edge of care’. It’s been 9 years since then and I have learned and observed so much of what happens ‘behind the scenes’ of local authority work with children. This letter is written as a way of bringing together all that I have seen, my own reflections on this honourable task and some thoughts about the future of working together with social workers and others.
One of the things that really struck me when I started working within children’s services, is the sheer volume of expectation given to social workers - the sense of responsibility for managing risk and for coordinating not just your own work but the work of others too, in frequent meetings and in between. Prior to my time working in the local authority, any responsibility for risk has contributed to a huge amount of risk averse practice - even where this was a team decision. I’ve worked alongside individuals unwilling to accept the inevitable nature of risk and preferred to protect their own interests… never wanting to be considered responsible for the death or adverse outcomes for another person. I saw teams of smart individuals winding each other up just thinking what could happen to another person (genuinely one time - a fellow colleague didn’t want a service user going on a night out in case they fell down). It’s fair to say that the capacity to control factors linked with risk was massively over-reaching in these settings. There were times when individuals didn’t get ‘rehabilitated’ to live in the community arguably because no one was willing to be responsible for what might happen if they did. When I joined up with social work teams, alongside social workers, family/ child practitioners and leaders - I was pretty excited about what could be achieved when risk is no longer viewed as something that can be removed, permanently, and those with a willingness to tolerate a level of risk in order to work through it. It was refreshing to work with people who did not want to have ultimate control in other people’s lives, but instead wanted simply to not even be needed in those people’s lives - because they were doing fine and things were safe (enough) without them. But I have seen how hard this is and the pressure within the system. The sense of responsibility cannot be over-stated - from keeping children alive, to protecting them from potential abuse, neglect and the impact of these on their lives far into the future. Often it can feel like constantly shifting goal posts and movement only goes up and down (in line with thresholds) - it never seems to firmly shift forward.
Years later and I’m still very interested in the complicated relationship between responsibility and risk. Social workers don’t cause the original risk but they are responsible for managing it - something I know is keenly felt. In terms of human nature - the way we think and the decisions we made when risk is at stake - it’s not the same psychology we have in everyday life. To feel responsible for whether something bad or even catastrophic happens or not - that’s not a regular state of being! I have seen many different ways of managing this - from escalating up the threshold to becoming desensitised to risk over time. I just remember thinking - this is too much to be on the shoulders of individuals. These decisions need to feel genuinely shared. I know in theory decisions have many layers with supervision and oversight of managers as well as network meetings with different professionals attending. But leaving the room when these meetings take place - I have seen that it often remained on the shoulders of the social workers - what we would do next and how this risk would be managed. Social workers would be expected to follow up - go and speak to people, write up agreements to change behaviour, put through another referral to another service to come in and help… etc. Social workers would reach out to therapeutic providers to help manage the factors linked with the presenting risks only to be told that the risk is too high for therapeutic work to take place. Overall, regardless of process and systems - my sense is that social workers feel deeply accountable for managing risks - they are acutely aware of the ramifications, both personally and professionally, of ‘getting it wrong’.
As well as having this keen sense of responsibility for managing risk, there’s a sense of ‘getting it’ from all angles. Social workers are supporting individuals and families with complex histories and complex needs. Often, they have had local authority involvement for years, even decades. When I see social workers trying to improve their relationship with these families, they are often up against the tide, because those families can feel patronised, controlled and sometimes just really hopeless and frustrated. This combination makes the gold standard of relationship based practice really difficult to manage. I see this struggle in safeguarding - families know you are the decision makers, they are so aware of what you could do. They are often the families who also feel they have very little control in their lives, so when you step on board - they will project that lack of control onto you.
Where am I going with this? I really wanted to say that, I see this struggle - I see the dilemmas in the tasks you have - to manage your responsibilities to keep children safe and also knowing that you can never guarantee this. You know you cannot make any guarantees, even if they go into care - this is full of so many unknowns and uncertainties too. I see how the evidence tells you to focus on the relationship and how this feels nearly impossible when families know who you are, what you are there to do and the perceived power you have over them. In my opinion it needs to feel like we’re all in this together - making decisions - tolerating some risk and uncertainty, doing what we can to bring about change - and keeping the best interests of a child right at the centre of these discussions. It should be a constant question, because the best interest is likely to change based on circumstances and individual factors. The goal posts will always change and you need comrades who understand this - who don’t view you as a magician, capable of eliminating risk but as a shared decision maker and a co-creator. At times it seems like everyone works in silos - with their own crazy caseloads, systemic demands and unique processes. It can feel like a tennis match with the ball bouncing from one side to the other - instead of feeling like an intricate network of interconnected agents - all working closely with shared appreciation of one another alongside genuine discussions about what needs to be done and what can be done.
What do I think will help? I honestly think there are so many examples of good practice and it works best when it really feels like a team effort and a genuine discussion. Personally, I don’t think we have enough genuine conversations - where everyone can say what they really think, where people can say ‘I am really worried that something bad is going to happen’ without this then becoming a race to determine who is responsible for preventing something bad from happening. It works well to keep following the thread of this - naming thoughts, worries and opinions as such and not presenting them as fact. This allows more openness and less guarded practice because then we can say what we all think realistically needs to change, how it can be done, how we will know its better and at what point do we decide we’ve done enough and need to take a different course? Everyone needs to feel they can name their worries whilst acknowledging the good stuff and being clear that risk isn’t a one way thing - no matter what action we take - we’re never removing the risk, we are in fact creating new and unknown risks. It’s so important not to assume that A. the risk is obvious and B. the solution is equally clear-cut. We need a lot of nuance in these discussions. When truly collaborative discussions take place - it’s a good opportunity to be reflective together, to throw around a number of ideas and hypotheses alongside a willingness to test them out and not marry our own theories! Equally important is the capacity to respectfully disagree. The aim shouldn’t be consensus - we shouldn’t be aiming to think the same as one another - the aim should be openness to debate - having different opinions that are welcome. The only thing that needs to be officially agreed is not opinions or theories - but rather a plan for us to test out different ones. This is ultimately in children’s best interests - I know that if I had a team of people around me - I’d want them to be challenging each other in case they were on the wrong track and needed more ideas on the table.
One final thought, and I’m biased for sure, but I really do think that psychologists and social workers are a really good match for working together and coming up with solutions. I think we need more opportunities to be sharing our practice with each other and getting around the table as often as possible alongside our colleagues across health and social care, youth justice and education. I think this will help social workers to feel the risk is managed collectively and we truly have shared roles in meeting the needs of our treasured children and young people. Whilst we all separately chose to invest our time to care, nurture and protect children - it is when we come together that we achieve the best possible outcomes for them.
With respect and warm wishes,
Jen
If you’ve found this letter interesting and you would like to learn more about how we’ve developed our working relationship between social workers and psychologists - please send us an email and visit our website for up-comng events/ training and some free resources for practitioners.
