The ideal practice guide for every social worker and social work student. Based on Neil Thompson’s extensive experience of bringing theory to life in a practice context, this invaluable manual is an essential guide for all practitioners, from student on placement through newly qualified worker to old hand.
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Gathering appropriate information to get a helpful picture of the situation we are dealing with is a central part of the role of a wide range of professionals. If we do not have a reasonably clear picture of the circumstances we are engaging with we can miss significant issues, distort and oversimplify the situation and potentially make a bad situations worse. Not having enough information can therefore be problematic. However, what can also be problematic is if we have too much information. This is because: (i) we can waste a lot of time and effort in gathering more information than we need; (ii) we can confuse ourselves and others if we end up drowning in far more information than is necessary for our purposes; (iii) important information can get lost in the welter of more details than are helpful; and (iv) we may alienate people if they feel we are putting together a fuller dossier of information than the current situation requires. So, the key skill here is being able to keep very focused on our role and task so that we know what is relevant information and what is not.
As our lives have become busier, desire to do things quickly and efficiently has grown — something the rise of speed reading apps, lack of break-taking at work, and a general focus on “productivity” has shown. Good time management skills, therefore, are now highly prized both at work and at home.
But do such techniques actually work? In a meta-analysis published in PLOS One, Brad Aeon from Concordia University and colleagues find that they do — but perhaps not for the reasons you’d expect. While time management skills have become more important in evaluations of job performance since the 1990s, their biggest impact lies elsewhere: in personal wellbeing.
Body image is how we think and feel about ourselves physically, and how we believe others see us. When we talk about body image, there are lots of ways we can think about our body and the way we look. In June 2020, the Women and Equalities Committee launched an inquiry to hear from young people and professionals about how body image can impact how people feel about themselves and how it can impact their mental health.
We want carers to know all about this year’s Carers Week and how they can get involved with helping Make Caring Visible and Valued. To help you get the word out, we’ve a range of resources for you to download and use. Whether you’re looking for logos in English or Welsh, social media graphics or materials to print at home, they’re all free for you to use.
An essential resource for practice educators and study supervisors. Helping others to learn is a skilled job. This practical guide offers extensive advice and guidance on how to get the best results, whether in student supervision or any other process of helping colleagues to learn.
Available from here or from Amazon.
There is a general expectation that professionals should keep a record of their work. Such records can often be assigned a secondary role and dismissed as relatively unimportant – just the ‘paperwork’. Although this is understandable, we also have to bear in mind that record keeping is a form of professional communication – the absence of which can at times be potentially disastrous. What can easily happen is that a vicious circle can develop: record keeping is put off so that, by the time the professional concerned gets round to getting records up to date, there is an annoying and energy-sapping backlog. Dealing with a backlog of ‘boring records’ can demotivate us and make it even harder to keep up. What also contributes to the vicious circle is that the bigger the gap between the work being undertaken and the record of it being made, the harder it is to remember the details of what happened and the greater the risk of inaccuracies and mistakes (and the longer it takes to do the records if we are racking our brains trying to remember the details). So, all in all, there is much to be gained from developing a system and pattern of work that enables us to keep our records up to date and to avoid the problems that can ensue if we don’t.
Gender stereotypes strike early. From the age of six, children associate traits like ‘intelligence’ with being a boy and ‘niceness’ with being a girl. Gender stereotypes continue to damage children everywhere – and affect their whole life. Young men and boys who hold rigid beliefs about gender stereotypes are more likely to be perpetrators of violence against women and girls. We hear from girls who have low self-esteem and feel insecure, with one in five 14-year-old girls self-harming. This is heart-breaking and it cannot continue.
There is a moment in Martin Luther King’s historic ‘I have a dream’ speech when he turns his attention to the White people who, realising their destiny and that of their Black fellow citizens was intertwined, joined the movement for equal rights.
“They have come to realise that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom,” he said. “We cannot walk alone.”
Life is tough for many of us right now, and the future feels very uncertain. Looking after ourselves, our families and communities takes time and energy. There is so much to do. The challenges of the past year have exposed the deep inequalities between us, including in housing, income and access to healthcare. But the crisis has also shown how interconnected we are – that the wellbeing of each of us depends on the welfare, safety and hard work of others. We are part of a shared ‘us’.
