Skip to main content

The Latest Bulletin

Now available! The Social Worker’s Practice Manual

Now available! The Social Worker’s Practice Manual

Now available! The Social Worker’s Practice Manual. Neil’s latest publication is not a textbook; it is a hands-on manual that distils his decades of experience in social work. Click here to order your copy now! Are you a social worker who uses Facebook? If so, why not join Neil’s Social Work Focus group? A group for discussion, support, learning and sharing. Just click here.
Dr Neil Thompson
March 8, 2018
Neil Thompson’s Lesson for Living – Don’t Understimate Yourself

Neil Thompson’s Lesson for Living – Don’t Understimate Yourself

Some people regularly stray into arrogance territory, by which I mean that they overestimate their own importance and their own capabilities. Indeed, this is a common theme in movies and dramas: the person who annoys others with their inflated self-belief and then eventually gets their comeuppance. It makes for satisfying viewing. However, what I think is far more common is for people to go to the other extreme, to underestimate their importance, their capabilities and the difference they can make. This is often a matter of a lack of confidence (possibly linked to self-esteem issues), but that isn’t always the case. In a significant number of cases it is simply that we have genuinely underestimated what we can do. We…
Dr Neil Thompson
March 8, 2018
Young Carers Awareness Day 2018

Young Carers Awareness Day 2018

A big thank you to everyone who took part on 25 January 2018 and helped us highlight some of the pressures that the UK’s youngest young carers are facing. The aim of Young Carers Awareness Day is to identify and raise awareness of the 700,000 young carers across the UK who are caring for a sick or disabled family member. By raising awareness we hope it will help them to get the support they desperately need. For Young Carers Awareness Day 2018 we carried out a snapshot survey which showed that many five-to-ten year olds, known as infant young carers, are getting up at night to care for a sick family member. There are around 10,000 young carers between the ages of…
Dr Neil Thompson
March 8, 2018
Disabled actors on prime-time TV? No wonder I cried at Silent Witness

Disabled actors on prime-time TV? No wonder I cried at Silent Witness

While watching Silent Witness ... it struck me that I’m old enough to remember Ironside, the crime fighter in a wheelchair, on TV in the 60s and 70s. As a disabled kid, I loved his van - I wanted that van. I never once thought about whether the actor Raymond Burr was disabled. Which he wasn’t, of course. The first time I saw a disabled actor - an actual disabled person - playing a role was probably Sandy in the British TV soap Crossroads (also when I was young). Yet it remains a rarity, all these decades later, to see a disabled actor on TV, especially in a powerful role. So to have three disabled actors on prime time ... in a long-running BBC drama such as…
Dr Neil Thompson
March 8, 2018
Managing an autistic employee

Managing an autistic employee

Working with someone on the autism spectrum (including those with Asperger syndrome), can be an enriching experience for managers and colleagues alike, but it may also present some challenges. Here we explain how to avoid or overcome any difficulties, in order to ensure enjoyable and effective working relationships. Many autistic people have a variety of sometimes exceptional skills that enable them to thrive in roles ranging from sales assistant to computer programmer and journalist to statistician, to name a few. However, they are often disadvantaged when it comes to getting and keeping a job because of difficulties with social communication and interaction, other people's lack of understanding, and sensory issues. Click here to read more
Dr Neil Thompson
March 8, 2018
How to grow from conflict: Respect, second chances and diversity of ideas

How to grow from conflict: Respect, second chances and diversity of ideas

It's all too easy to develop a grudge, and let one bad experience inform how you view a person going forward. But as leadership expert Angie McArthur says, "The more certain we are, the more stuck we will remain." A moment of broken trust can compound into a closed mind, but to loosen up that knot, revisit the experience and ask yourself: how subjective is your narrative of the events? What was going on in your life at the time - and what may have been going on in theirs? "You can’t change people," says McArthur, "... but you can respect yourself and you can at least let them have the experience of being respected." When you start to see…
Dr Neil Thompson
March 8, 2018
Neil Thompson’s Lesson for Living – Don’t believe everything you read

Neil Thompson’s Lesson for Living – Don’t believe everything you read

I will be very happy if we ever reach a time when people are no longer naïve enough to say: ‘It must be true, I read it in the newspaper’, but I am not holding my breath. While complete falsehoods and fabrications may well be the exception, opinions being expressed as facts is a very common phenomenon. And, of course, even when factual information is presented, how it is presented can be very significant. For example, consider the difference between: ‘The team achieved an impressive success rate of 82%, a slight improvement on last year’s major achievement of 81%’ with ‘The team failed in almost 1 in 5 cases for the second year running’. The facts are the same, but…
Dr Neil Thompson
February 22, 2018
Using a time diary to stay on top of your workload

Using a time diary to stay on top of your workload

On average, social workers work for 9.5 hours a day, despite being paid for only 7.5 hours, research from Community Care and Unison showed in 2017. Lack of time is a huge issue in social work. A climate of austerity, fewer resources and increased caseloads leaves little spare time in the day for any social worker. Two-thirds (67%) of those who responded to the Community Care/Unison survey had not had a lunch-break that day, and 64% said they almost never took a break at work. This is undoubtedly an issue for government, heads of service and senior managers to focus on. It doesn’t matter how efficient or productive an individual social worker is, if the wider organisation they work in has too few…
Dr Neil Thompson
February 22, 2018
How to support transgender employees

How to support transgender employees

The 2010 Equality Act states that employers have a legal obligation to ensure their staff are not being discriminated against – over age, race, sexuality, gender or gender identity. Despite this, many companies treat transgender people as a disruptive influence in their workplace, worrying about how they will manage in a customer-facing role, or if they will upset existing employees. This is the wrong attitude; the first step to being an inclusive employer is accepting that a transgender person is just another employee with the same rights as any other member of staff. Creating a supportive environment for transgender employees ultimately means allowing them to take the lead on expressing their gender identity. Unless someone tells you they are transgender,…
Dr Neil Thompson
February 22, 2018