The foundation all Social Workers have a legal obligation to work from.

This is the first blog post, whilst I am working on getting the website up and running. It will for that reason be somewhat brief in comparison to later posts. I offer a huge welcome to all those students currently half way through their final placement and hoping to make the transition into employment later this year. I hope you find the content I will be uploading of some help, support and comfort in the future. The information provided is from my personal experiences and so may not always exactly match yours, but I'm sure the skills, knowledge and emotions will sit side by side in various ways.

When thinking of what topic to choose for the initial post, it struck me that the best place is always the start, the bottom, the foundation. With this in mind today's piece will focus on "that" decision, and why you need not fear it.

As you have progressed through your training as a social worker, you will have come to realise, that the foundation of social work decision making is built upon the Children Act (1989). Whilst helpful in clearly explaining that as a social worker, we all work from the premise where safe and appropriate, children should remain with their birth families....the Act also explains the Child's welfare and safety are of the paramount importance and at times will necessitate a move away from birth parents.

In practice however, how do we know at which point such a move is necessitated? This is a key area I grappled with on a moral and emotional level when first entering the profession. The answer is uncomfortable, as it should be, due to the colossal nature of the intervention. Professional Judgement. As a social worker you will make a judgement call on when the child's needs are not being met, when the same child is or is not at risk of significant harm....and when the matter needs to be put before a Court. These are huge decisions and the implications of getting them wrong are unfortunately relayed in every Serious Case Review, newspaper, and other hate filled posts within Social Media.

That is the side of social work that I and many of those studying alongside me feared most. There is however light at the end of the tunnel, because what you can't learn at University is the supportive feeling of your team as you discuss cases well into the night. You can't learn each of the different Continuum of Needs around the country or the varying thresholds that exist in different areas with different workers. Social work offers a huge challenge and many sleep deprivating decisions; but it also offers a family of co-workers, it offers the gratitude of the most innocent people in this world, it offers the opportunity to positively develop and support Children and Families.

For any student who is fast approaching the threshold of crossing into Social Work employment, I can advise you with confidence.....do not wish away your fear. For it will keep you grounded and ensure the gravity of your work is never lost upon you or anybody around you. You will have many many co-workers to help you through, managers to share decision making, friendships will develop and last a lifetime.

Come into social work with a healthy level of mixed emotions, and give it your all, that is all any of us can do.

I am sure as you progress in your career you will come to realise just how gigantic the question posed above is. For now, I leave you with the words of Family Judges which I hope may help in the first instance as they have often brought my thoughts into focus:

Hedley, J

Re L (Care: Threshold Criteria) [2007] 1 FLR 2050, para 50, :

"society must be willing to tolerate very diverse standards of parenting, including the eccentric, the barely adequate and the inconsistent. It follows too that children will inevitably have both very different experiences of parenting and very unequal consequences flowing from it. It means that some children will experience disadvantage and harm, while others flourish in atmospheres of loving security and emotional stability. These are the consequences of our fallible humanity and it is not the provenance of the state to spare children all the consequences of defective parenting. In any event, it simply could not be done."

His Honour Judge Jack

North East Lincolnshire Council v G & L [2014] EWCC B77 (Fam):

"The courts are not in the business of providing children with perfect homes. If we took into care and placed for adoption every child whose parents had had a domestic spat and every child whose parents on occasion had drunk too much then the care system would be overwhelmed and there would not be enough adoptive parents. So we have to have a degree of realism about prospective carers who come before the courts."

For further exploration, please see the judgment made by the President of the Family Division; Sir James Munby:

http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed143260

Until next time,

The power of imagination, makes us infinite,

S.W.F.