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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…

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…

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,…

When I was a child and got scared of something or couldn’t sleep, my granny and great aunt used to tell me stories. Their words magically carried me away from my fear and worry and allowed me to explore new worlds. They are both gone now, but as they approached the end of their lives, I remember sitting by their beds telling them stories about my life, my work and memories we shared. They smiled, relaxed and seemed to forget about the pain for a while. Now here I am, 15 years later, working in a care home with other people’s much-loved grannies and great aunts. At Abbey House care home in Swindon, we offer our residents a wide range of…

There are over five million informal carers in the UK and their number has increased 16.5% since 2001. The economic value of their contribution, calculated from the cost per hour of providing homecare to an adult, is £132 billion a year – nearly twice what it was in 2001. Many carers are of working-age (an estimated one in ten working-age people) and being a carer has a profound impact on someone’s ability to work. Despite the difficulties involved, an estimated 2.6 million people combine paid work and caring. With the right support many can remain in work and work may even provide much needed respite. However, many find this difficult and if time spent caring increases and impacts on work, this…