I have a particular interest in social work organisations and management in those organisations so was delighted to review Organisations and Management in Social Work, 3rd edition by Mark Hughes and Michael Wearing for The British Journal of Social Work….
You can read the review here….
You might also be interested in this article about Charles Handy’s ideas about organisations
As a social worker, albeit a one who now teaches social work rather than does it, I watch from the side lines and see people clearly stressed about the work they are doing, caught up in that Sunday night feeling of ‘what waits for me tomorrow’, and clearly feeling a sense of overwhelm.
I recently wrote an article on self care for Cache Alumni and started it like this….
“You can not see your reflection in running water”. I love this Taoist proverb as it reminds me that sometimes we have to slow down, take a break, and take stock. For me that’s the starting point of self care. Dodd (2007) says self care is “the practice of activities that individuals initiate and perform on their own behalf in maintaining life, health and well being” (Grafton and Coyne 2012).
I wonder what you do to ‘self care’
For me I do a range of things. I try to eat a healthy diet, I try to exercise daily, and I try to practice mindfulness and yoga. And most importantly I try to get a good nights sleep!
Did you know…
“Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer. Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you develop Alzheimer’s disease. Inadequate sleep – even moderate reduction for just one week – disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic…” and the list goes on [from Matthew Walker’s ‘Why We Sleep’ (Page 3)]
I like to refer to sleep, nutrition and exercise as the holy trinity of self care. Read about it here. So, I ask you… What are you doing?
Nutrition
Here’s a few articles to have a look at:
https://www.selfcareshorts.com/2019/05/06/3-best-breakfasts/
https://www.selfcareshorts.com/2019/08/17/you-are-what-you-eat/
https://www.selfcareshorts.com/2019/08/26/kombucha-fizzy-goodness/
https://www.selfcareshorts.com/2020/01/26/take-it-with-a-pinch-of-salt/
Fitness
https://www.selfcareshorts.com/2019/07/30/gonna-make-you-sweat/
https://www.selfcareshorts.com/2019/09/03/discipline-lets-get-to-work/
https://www.selfcareshorts.com/2019/10/25/small-steps-end-in-big-results/
……make a start ….do something ….you owe it to yourself!
In the repertoire of social work skills I think there is nothing more crucial than negotiation. That might be negotiation with the service user themselves around what you can realistically do, or with a son who has different ideas to you or their parent about what is best, or also in your relationships with other professionals. How you negotiate can make or break a situation the same way as in the business world it can make or break a deal.
The business world seems to talk more about this as a skill so I’ve turned to them to figure out what it is we need to be good negotiators! So here’s a analysis from the business section of Houston Chronicle – let’s see what it tells us –and whether it fits with social work!
Problem Analysis
You must be able to analyse what’s going on in the environment and figure out the interests of each party. Sound familiar? Case conference? Meeting with a family? You need to know what each party is after from the negotiation around the problem because in doing so you can find the areas where some compromise might be possible
Preparation
As ever, preparation is the key! Fail to prepare – prepare to fail! What are your goals? What can you compromise on? Where’s your flexibility? I know in saying this it seems, on the surface, to fly in the face of putting the service user and their goals at the heart of this, and in a sense I see that, but you need to know what your role is in a meeting and what you may be able to achieve. You can give the service user centre stage when you are in the meeting but having a sense of what your options are, based on the information you have, might help. I’m not suggesting you should have solved the problem and have a service in mind but, for example, you could read the case file to get an understanding of past history and the importance of certain relationships so you could introduce elements that might help into the conversation when required.
Active Listening
Here we are again back with our core communication skills! You need to listen to everything when negotiating – the words, the body language, what’s not being said – as all of it is telling you something. You need to get behind the words and find the meaning that is there. You can fall into the trap of putting forward your view too strongly before you’ve given the service user time to explore their own position. Sometimes as social workers we just need to be quiet.
Emotional Control
I’m going to add in here as well being emotionally present. We often deal with very difficult circumstances as social workers and understanding your own emotions and triggers is essential. More on that here. But also, it’s difficult if overly emotional about something to end up controlling it to the extent that you appear distant. This is a difficult one and not easy to find a balance when in an emotionally charged situation. I see nothing wrong in responding to distress and upset with an emotionally driven human response. It’s ok to show your humanity. Other more destructive emotions like anger and obvious frustration are best avoided. This is not to say we can’t sometimes employ a firm tone to show our emotional position. It is, however, all about a controlled response.
Verbal Communication
It seems obvious to say, but is still worth saying, how you communicate verbally is crucial. It’s crucial when you look at the previous paragraph on emotions because the words you use sometimes can ‘give you away’. So you must be mindful of the language in which you present your ideas and thoughts. Who practices phrases in the car on the way to a meeting when they know they have something difficult to say? You should. How the words feel in your head and how they sound when you add in the tone and the delivery can sometimes be starkly different.
Collaboration and Teamwork
When you are working with a broader multi-disciplinary group or even with a family you need to see them for that moment in time as your team. You’re all working on the same problem and all trying to achieve an outcome to resolve the problem. You’ll not always all agree on how to solve it though! As well you know, I’m sure! But nevertheless you are a ‘team’ and must create a collaborative atmosphere and not one dominated by any power – real or otherwise. When a son or daughter feels permanent care is the best thing for their parent they will genuinely believe that. You can’t simply dismiss it but must work with that view. Turning around that view, if you need to, may require skill and negotiation.
Problem Solving
As in the example above you will need to resolve the problem at hand but also where someone doesn’t agree with your resolution or the resolution the service user is proposing then that becomes a problem! So as you are resolving one problem you may well give yourself another to negotiate a way around. In negotiating you need to show how a particular outcome or resolution benefits all sides even where it is not their preferred option.
Decision Making Ability
Sometimes though a decision needs to be made and sometimes you will be the one who has to make it. You may have negotiated and negotiated and got nowhere with certain elements but then a decision needs to be made. Firstly, can you agree a compromise? Secondly, can you explain things to the person who doesn’t agree with the path proposed and help them understand if not necessarily agree? And Thirdly, do you just have to make the decision!? In making the decision you will need to know theory, policy and law. You will need to know what gives you the remit to say – right – this is how we are doing it. You might be saying – ok – we will do what your Mam wants here. And that may be born out of your understanding that she has capacity to make the decision. Or you may say – ok – we are doing this – because you know you have discharged your responsibility under the Best Interest Checklist in the Mental Capacity Act and need to undertake your role as decision maker.
Interpersonal Skills
Clearly to achieve this you will need good interpersonal skills! You will need to be able to foster and maintain good working relationships even where there is disagreement. ‘Taking your ball in’ is not an available option to the professional! You will need patience. You will need to be able to construct an argument that persuades but doesn’t manipulate. This is done by being transparent and by not withholding information to give you an advantage. All of this will create a positive working relationship.
Ethics and Reliability
And all of this relies on your ethics firstly. Who are you? What do you stand for? How does that drive what you want to achieve in a negotiation situation? And then, be reliable. Once the decision is made follow through, do what you said you were going to do in the time scale that was set. And when you can’t you need to have the professionalism to pick up the phone and explain why not.
Does it Matter?
Yesterday (Thursday 28th June 2018) I got my act together and was ready to leave work on time because it was the day of the final England World Cup 2018 group match with England on a bit of a roll to say the least. I said to my colleagues ‘I’m off to get sorted for the match… not that it matters of course ‘cos we’re through!’ The response of one of my colleagues was ‘well does it ever matter?’ As in, I’m assuming, does the result of any fixture of the beautiful game ever matter? My rather tepid response, ‘well… in the moment I suppose’ left me thinking there was so much more to say on the subject and had me pondering a better response as I cycled home.
Emotional experience
Now, any of you who know me well will be pondering why on earth I think it might ever matter because as you will know I’m not a huge football fan. I certainly don’t follow the domestic game but, as with most sports, whenever the national team are in action I am an avid viewer. So, to that extent my response that it ‘matters in the moment’ is probably an accurate response for me personally. But clearly this is not the case for everyone. Thousands of people have travelled thousands of miles at great expense to watch their country play in the tournament. And the expressions on faces in the crowd of either delight or despair go some way to confirming that it does matter. It matters very much. In the opening pages of his book Fever Pitch (1992) Nick Hornby says he fell in love with football ‘suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it’. Clearly it has an emotional element then, so must matter, because emotions matter.
The Working Class Game
Despite the FA and the formula of the current game being firmly rooted in the public schools of the late 19th century football is, (or at least was till big money and high ticket prices got in the way) a working class game. Greenwood in his beautiful and heart-breaking novel ‘Love on the Dole’ (1932) speaks of the drudgery of the daily grind in the factory, working the Saturday morning, and then being freed from the shackles of labour in time for the Saturday afternoon football match. This was the highlight of the working man’s [sic] week and their mood would rise or fall based on the outcome of the game. So, it appears that it does matter.
These working class roots certainly seems to matter in terms of the make up of the England team where your class doesn’t appear to be a barrier to inclusion. The England team are also ethnically diverse and therefore more representative of the nation than you see in some other sports. Raheem Sterling epitomises this. Born in Jamaica, his father murdered when he was young, brought up by his mother in London, and now on the international stage, celebrated for his football skills. Or take the story of Dele Alli, born to a Nigerian father and English mother who experienced alcohol problems, he ended up at 13 living with the family who he refers to as his ‘adoptive parents’. His heroes and his inspiration to achieve were Steven Gerard and Frank Lampard. So for Sterling and Alli, yes, football matters.
Benefits on mental health
The Mental Health Foundation are also very clear that watching football has a positive effect on mental health. They point out its impact on emotions, relationships, identity and self-esteem. They identify young men in particular pointing out that;
‘the opportunity to externalise tension and emotion is important to maintaining health. Young men are at the highest risk of suicide – it is the most common cause of death for young men under the age of 35. This age group is one of the dominant in football crowds across the country’ (www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/football-and-mental-health)
They also report a study (unidentified) that noted a reduction in the number of psychiatric admissions during and after World Cup Finals. So, it would seem it does matter.
Domestic Violence
There is a darker and very alarming side to the potential of an England defeat and that is the evidence that instances of domestic violence increase after such an event. A study by Lancaster University (Kirby et al. (2013) Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency) looked at incidences of domestic violence across World Cups back to 2002 and found some alarming figures. They found that reports of domestic violence increased by 11% after England played no matter what the outcome of the game, rising, by a staggering 38%, if England lost. The factors at play are not just the football match, but also increased tension that might go with it, and notably increased alcohol consumption. Although it was a small study the findings and the outcomes for the victims are obviously harrowing.
So – Does it Matter!?
So, does it matter. Does it matter that there’s an England game? Does it matter whether ‘we’ win? Well it would seem that the ‘big game’ can have both negative and positive impacts. I certainly feel the excitement of the England game. The build up, the drama. I find myself talking to people about the national team and ‘the game’. So, it does instigate conversation with different people in different ways. If the positive aspects on people’s mental health are tangible, then that must be a good thing. If the ‘beautiful game’ helps people from a relatively disadvantaged position dream, and sometimes achieve, then that has to be a good thing…. That has to matter… surely!? The on-going success of the England team will see children running around in England strips aspiring to be Kayne or Sterling. They’ll maybe get outside and run around and kick a ball. That’s got to be a good thing. That’s got to matter.
…and if (when?) we lose …well the Mental Health Foundation tell us that sharing a moan after a defeat is another way we can bond. And then we’ll move on. But we’ll have had that moment. And it’s in those moments that we share our lived experience and create the bonds that bind us together. ….so it’s got to matter? Surely?
Charles Handy author of landmark bestseller Understanding Organisations says ‘many of the ills of organisations stem from imposing an inappropriate structure on a particular culture, or from expecting a particular culture to thrive in an inappropriate climate. Social Work, I feel, has always felt at odds with being seated in a large organisation and a time managed, performance driven framework. In trying to help and support people you can’t have the clock ticking and you shouldn’t have a huge bureaucratic system to feed with information. This takes your focus away from the job in hand. It seems that the therapeutic dimension has been stripped out of most local authority social work. This is not because of a lack of desire to engage in such work from social workers but as a consequence of what has been imposed on social work.
Handy identifies various cultures in organisations and the one that fits best with what we see in local authorities is the role culture. Role culture comes with the hierarchical structure that we all know so well with its need for ‘sign off’ and authorization by someone often detached from the actual work that took place. This leads to a formal and rigid chain of communication that can often slow down decision making to a virtual stop. There are rules and policies to guide how the organisation operates and functions leading to process driven work that sometimes just doesn’t fit with the specific style of the individual worker or the needs of the person you are working with. So while there appears to be flexible options at our finger tips to offer service users – like Direct Payments for example – these too are drowned in bureaucracy. The emphasis in this organisational culture is on written documentation…. Don’t we know it!
There are, or were, positives to such a structure. Historically working in such organisations gave great job security. ‘Work in local government! It’s a job for life!’ Sadly we know this not to be the case now as a smaller workforce with higher caseloads, and the constant threat of a restructure, will testify. Also clear, transparent systems with criteria and thresholds should mean there is more chance of the division of resources, via the provision of services or funding, being more equitable for service users.
Handy uses a diagram of a Greek Temple (or is it Roman I never can tell) to show how such an organisational culture works. The strong pillars (the departments in the organisation) are all distinct with a specific role supporting the roof that overarches all of the pillars where the senior managers sit linking together all of the pillars in their strategic meetings. For as long as I’ve ben involved in social work there has been a drive to move away from this ‘working in silos’ approach but I still feel that there is an ethos of ‘that’s not my job’, ‘someone else will do that’ in local authorities. There has been some movement away from some tasks having to be ‘handed off’ but this is more from chance than design. It’s more as a consequence of administrative roles being removed with such tasks being handed on to social workers rather than a well thought through positive change in direction.
Handy suggests that this role culture is appropriate in organisations that are not subject to constant change. The culture functions well in a stable environment, but is insecure in times of change. We tend to view change and change management in terms of thinking about a change that is on the horizon, thinking about how to plan for that change, delivering the change, then having a settling down period after the change. This is not now how organisations work. All organisations, not just social work departments, are in constant flux, responding to changes in the task environment often primarily driven by external influence at the whim of government whatever their political position. This role culture that is typically found in local authorities finds it extremely difficult to change rapidly. But a way to work in this constant state of change needs to be found. Organisations need to be responsive.
This role culture, based on a bureaucratic model, Handy said, may be suitable for government organisations, but it is not suitable for business organisations that need quick decision making and flexibility in procedures. I would argue that social work departments and indeed local authorities in general have become businesses therefore this model no longer works. There is too much difficulty in communication, too much emphasis on reports and justification, and a stripping out of professional decision making and autonomy.
The environment needs to change or social work needs to move into another environment. We are seeing social work move out of the local authority arena and into the independent sector and this seems to be where the interesting work and the more therapeutic work goes on. However if such independent organisations are commissioned by local authorities to do their work and are constrained by the same inflexible management and performance systems then we just move the problem somewhere else. The opportunities in the independent sector to do things differently with a different focus need to be embraced.
Handy would suggest a task culture where work is task or project orientated, where groups of people come together to pool their expertise, and where groups can be formed and reformed depending on what is required, drawing on all of the transferable skills that come embodied in a professional worker. This would provide the flexibility to respond to change. Change at the level of working with an individual – a ‘what does this person need’ approach to shaping the work around them – and at an organisational level where responses to changes in the task environment can be adapted to quickly and effectively.
Social work certainly isn’t dead or not required, and does have a very positive future. But maybe we’re hanging onto old structures and old ways of doing. As I read somewhere, and am fond of saying, “what got us here won’t get us there’.
Humanistic and existentialist thinking might lead us to conclude that our sense of self is constructed from, among other things, being autonomous, being free thinking and being part of a community. More here!
But just what is ‘self’ and why does it matter to us as social workers?
I wonder what your idea of your own ‘self’ is? Given you’re reading this blog you may define yourself as ‘social worker’ or ‘professional’. And obviously that will only be part of the story. You may also be a father, mother, son, or daughter, friend. Some of those words I’d also use to define myself. So, what makes me different to you and how do I know that I am different to you?
Psychologist Ulric Neisser (in an article in Being Human: The Inside Story of What It Means to be One of Us, New Scientist, The Collection, Volume 2 Issue 3, Reed Business Information Ltd., England (2015) gives us a multifaceted description of self.
You have an ecological self. You understand that you have a place because you have a point of view. How others respond to your point of view shapes something about you. Do others acknowledge your point of view? Does this validate who you are? How do you feel when someone criticizes your point of view? You also have a sense of your physical being and that there are rules about access to your body by others. There are acceptable things and unacceptable things defined by culture, the life experiences you have had, and by the age you are. When we think about supporting adults with disabilities these lines often become blurred due to the nature of the support that needs to be offered. The line between acceptable and unacceptable intimacy around personal care sit in a different place and in delivering such care concerns around lack of dignity need to explored.
You know your image in a mirror and the sound of your voice. You understand that others are physically different to you. You understand that they have a role, a purpose and that they also can make decisions to interact with you or not. This is your interpersonal self. You understand you can, and do, use your body language to try and influence the action of others. You generate ideas about how it might be for others born out of your own experiences. But caution! You can never know – not really – what it’s like for the other person. Similar experiences are not the same experiences. Avoid, “I know how you feel”!
Your existence is temporal, lasting only for a period of time. Fleeting, in terms of the ‘big picture’, you might say! But you are not just what you are now – you are what you have been. What you are going to be, or want to be, shapes you. The awareness of your potential future, or your aspirations, have great bearing on who you are in the here and now. So, consider then how this must be for people who, because of lack of opportunity, lack of support, disability, or lack of social status have their sense of self eroded by feeling their options for the future may be limited in some way. This ‘temporal self’ links to your conceptual self. You have an idea of who you are based on your life story, your personal goals, motivation and values. So in practice, when, for example, we think about making best interest decisions under the Mental Capacity Act it’s essential that we have not just an understanding of the risks associated with the decision, or the pertinent facts that relate to the situation, but also an understanding of the person’s values that have, and are being, shaped by their story. What would have been ‘driving’ them if they had been making this decision for themselves? This must be factored in so that when making a decision for someone lacking capacity we maintain them at the heart of the decision and don’t draw conclusions from our own value base, or as a consequence of risks that may well be professionally or organisationally constructed.
So, existentialism underpins humanist ideas of self, about being free and autonomous but with responsibility. There is also a shared journey between us as social workers and the people we work with. There are some tensions created by the fact we work within often very inflexible, risk averse frameworks.
Reflective practice definitely has its place here in our existentialist view of the world. Developing insight, through reflection is required so we understand what we are doing and most importantly why. Are we working to the service users agenda, our own, or our agencies? At best, in reality, it may be a combination. At worst the service users voice may be silent or misheard. Theory, research and practice wisdom, as well as knowledge from service users all have their place here.
Our work needs to be holistic, incorporating all the elements and taking a ‘big picture’ view so we capture an understanding of the essence of the person – where they have been, where they are at, and crucially where they want to go. As social workers we can’t just deal with situations from an objective viewpoint but have to understand the subjective dimension. We can only discover that by exploring the person’s sense of who they are and what they value before any decisions are made.
Just what does the Roman philosopher, politician and orator Cicero have to do with social work in 2017!? What can the musings of someone from 107 – 44 BCE tell us about life in the 21st century? Well, Cicero’s philosophical writings on the nature of the person and existence have contributed to humanism and this in turn has contributed to ideas around person centered intervention! So there you go! Read on!
What exactly did Cicero have to say? He suggested that people’s sense of self, their sense of who they are, was created by being autonomous, and therefore making their own decisions, and by being free thinking, and therefore able to make their own mistakes! He said people were possessed of rights that define responsibility. This tells us that to be valued, and see themselves as valued, people need to be active participants in society defined by their rights and, as a consequence of those rights, they must take, as far as they can, responsibility for their actions (maybe we can explore this in relation to the Mental Capacity Act at some point…)
Cicero also suggested that the human community is the bond between people. People need to be connected to other people because our sense of self is not only defined by our inner dialogue but also by how people perceive us and we can see how people perceive us through how they interact with, and react to, us. These interactions give us definition and status.
But what are the two things that have often been denied to people who come to social work for some form of intervention? Yes! They are denied the right to make their own decisions and the ability to be part of the broader society. This could be for many reasons. The views of professionals and the misuse of power they hold taking decision making away from people. Or it could be the lack of access to information, knowledge and physical spaces that comes with having a disability. These things erode the ability of people to develop a positive view of ‘self’, denied autonomy, denied freedom, and denied access…. No wonder people kick against ‘the system’!
As social workers we can run the risk of ‘doing to’ people rather than ‘doing with’ especially when time is tight and the demands on us great. We must see people as individuals and part of a community in order to see the full picture and encourage individuals to make their own decisions and take risks. Maybe this needs risk to be redefined in our organisations to include the positive aspects of risk taking more strongly.
The threads from Cicero’s thinking are picked up in existential philosophy which emphasises the existence of the individual person as a free agent determining their own development through acts of will stressing their position as a self-determining agent. People form their ‘essence’ in the course of life resulting from their personal choices. Who you are results from the decisions you make.
There are some assumptions here though. This assumes people are allowed to make their own choices. At best often people are given choices from a very narrow range of options or people are not made aware of all the options that are available. Our job as social workers is to ensure people are fully informed so that they can fully engage. Sometimes people need support, as they are not psychologically in a position to make decisions, even when all of the facts are available. Some people may feel constrained by society’s view of them. Undervalued therefore not worthy of being permitted to make decisions. Disempowered by ‘the system’. This certainly was a theme in the House of Lords Select Committee report into the Mental Capacity Act
Social work clearly has a role here.
We need to support people to make their own decisions so they can own them and develop a sense of who they are and where they ‘fit’. We need to let people take responsibility for their own risks and the consequences when things go wrong without the fear of being held accountable for the capacitated decisions people make (this is a one for the managers and politicians to grapple with though as it often those people who are restricting good social work). Freedom to make your own decisions is both liberating and at times a heavy burden so that means working with people to acknowledge and accept risk and to go with it.
For many ‘existence’ is characterised by powerlessness and helplessness – decision making taken from them. This needs to change if we are to provide truly person centred social work. People need to shape their own lives with support so they can be true to the individual version of themselves they are and want to be. We are shaped by our experiences. We have to give people the opportunity to ‘experience’ so they develop into the best version of themselves that they want to be. Just in the same way we all do.
There is a tension here between the authority and duty that comes with the social work role and being involved in the, what is often, non directive work that is required to help people find their own way with support. There is a need for people to be given real choice and control so that can move forward in the direction they want to. What social work needs to do then is support people to engage as citizens, to give people back some power, to support people to grow and develop, maybe to provide opportunities for fulfilment, help people make their own decisions – promote choice. Most of this is not done in the services that are ultimately provided but in the foundation building face to face work we engage in. How we ‘social work’ in the time we are with people is what’s important. Much more important than what we then write about them or provide to them. Personalisation is in the face to face interactions we have and not necessarily just in the flexibility of services.
Ongoing increase in outstanding assessmentsThe annual review of deprivation of liberty safeguards has revealed an on going increase in situations that still require attention through assessment. The safeguards ensure that those deprived of their liberty in a care home or hospital in England and Wales, who do not have the capacity to consent to being accommodated, have recourse to the law to challenge their deprivation.
The law has been problematic since it’s inception with difficulties around definitions of deprivation and ‘best interests’, two concepts essential to getting the right decision in this area. The Cheshire West ruling opened the floodgates of people needing an assessment. So, when people were under continuous supervision and control and unable to leave, this deemed them to be deprived of their liberty, and an assessment to confirm this was in their best interest was required. The reality of this ruling was that it applied to most, if not all, people in a care home who lacked capacity to decide to live there. This created an immediate crisis of a backlog of assessment. The solution to train more social workers and to employ locum best interest assessors has clearly not resolved the problem and with a review of the legislation placed on hold until at least 2019 it’s difficult to see how the problem will be resolved.
Estimates seemto suggest that it will take years to clear the backlog as obviously, as people enter care or hospital, they add to the numbers of those already deprived who require assessment. Uncompleted cases have now risen to, in excess of, 100,00 it is thought.
The North East of England appears to have a disproportionate number of assessments to undertake. The reason for this is an interesting one. It appears that practitioners in the north east are happy to recommend a short review period and that local authorities are happy to accept this. The best interest assessor can recommend a period of anything up to one year before the deprivation is reviewed but in terms of best practice this should not be seen as the default time scale. Where someone thinks a situation may change, or where recommendations are made to make the deprivation less restrictive it is right and proper to review this in a timely fashion. Hence, a shortened time scale. The irony of this is that best practice is compounding the problemof the assessment back log and while we wouldn’t want to lose this it highlights the need for a new more efficient and effective system of managing the safeguards.
This is the third year in a row that the backlog has increased despite more practitioners being trained to undertake the required assessments. The risk of not transforming the law and process is that councils may resort to ‘short cut’ methods like ‘desk top’ assessments. Some already have. This will mean the safeguards will have very little if no potential for impact on the lives of vulnerable people. Through the process the best interest assessor gets to meet the person and talk to them and is tasked with finding out as much as they can about the person. This can result in recommendations that may reduce the restrictive nature of a deprivation with the potential of improving quality of life for someone. A ‘desk top’ exercise turns this person centred assessment into a bureaucratic exercise. Surely that can’t be right?
There’s nothing clever about what I’m about to write. It seems obvious in a way. But it’s not something most of us routinely do. It’s certainly not something I used to do until I knew about it! It’s the power of small wins!
Making progress is an important thing. The Harvard Business Review reports on research that shows that on days where people make progress they report having a good day but on days when people have a setback they report that as a bad day. We already know that people who are motivated intrinsically (from inside themselves) rather than extrinsically (motivated by external motivators) are happier in the workplace. So it’s not the stress of deadlines or performance or a top-down approach to being told what to do that motivates people but rather internal mechanisms that drive people to achieve goals that they value themselves. Someone needs to ‘own’ the end date of an assessment for themselves for what it means to them rather than being motivated by some external performance measure. So, it’s the inner work life that’s crucial when we think about best days.
The Harvard Business Review goes on to say:
Two other types of inner work life triggers also occur frequently on best days: Catalysts, actions that directly support work, including help from a person or group, and nourishers, events such as shows of respect and words of encouragement. Each has an opposite: Inhibitors, actions that fail to support or actively hinder work, and toxins, discouraging or undermining events. Whereas catalysts and inhibitors are directed at the project, nourishers and toxins are directed at the person. Like setbacks, inhibitors and toxins are rare on days of great inner work life.
So to get the best out of people we need to be encouraging and helpful with our team or colleagues. Obvious really, but often not how it works in reality with unrealistic demands and a job done at any cost approach supersedes a job done while maintaining a positive psychological position for the worker.
I’d suggest that ignoring the inner work life of social workers is why we see so many professionals in social work and other professions experiencing poor mental health in the work place.
One easy to execute approach that helps is the ‘power of small wins’
We frequently set ourselves goals that are the long term and define what the completed project or action will look like. So one goal for you as a social worker would be completing as assessment. Routinely you will psychologically set this as the goal when you receive the allocation so you don’t get the ‘win’ of the completed task until the assessment report is passed for sign off. But, in reality, you will make incremental progress towards this final goal. The secret is to set yourself each of these steps as a goal in themselves.
Personally I would do two things with such a task. I’d start by listing all of the steps I need to achieve to get to the end goal and then I would put all of those steps into my diary on dates and at times when I will do them. I prefer this to a ‘to do’ list because I don’t feel they work. They are never up to date and never capture everything going on in your world. You also tend to make a to do list based on the bigger goals you want to achieve, tick a few of them off on your paperwork day (when you’ve probably made the list) and then find the list under a pile of things a week later when it’s out of date. The beauty of breaking a task down into smaller tasks and putting them in your diary (electronic works best for this) is that if you don’t get a chance to do one of the tasks you can move it into tomorrow – so you don’t lose the fact it needs to be done and you will sense the urgency of undertaking the next step when you are moving into the same day as the following step!.Using your diary like this helps you have a good overview of what’s to do and how urgent things are. Knowing what to do is more about knowing what it’s ok not to do!
The other advantage of this approach is the psychological impact of the Power of Small Wins! Each time you check off a diary entry (I turn it from the usual blue colour in my electronic calendar to grey to signify completion) you get a psychological boast from achieving that small win. The goal now isn’t the final end of the project or assessment – the goal is now each small step – with the feeling of having completed something that goes with it! And that will lead to you feeling like you’ve had a good day! Result!
Try it! It really works.
Emotions are a strong and powerful force. Sometimes our emotions get the better of us. Sometimes they lead us to lose focus and control and respond in ways, in hindsight, we wish we hadn’t.
When my teenage son was out for the night with his friends and I’d asked him to be back in for 10 o’ clock it was remarkable how I could go from being completely chilled and mellow at 9.59 to being an absolute fire ball of annoyance at 10.01. And how, when he walked through the door at 10.03 with a jaunty ‘Hello!’, I would react, dare I say, a little negatively. But in the cold analysis of this he was only 3 minutes late! And anyone can be 3 minutes late for all sorts of reasons. So, why the extreme reaction!?
Evolutionists would argue that our emotions, and the fast responses they give us, have proved useful throughout our history. When approached by a wooly mammoth we got scared and ran away! That’s a good reaction! So when confronted with my teenage son being late I feel fear for his safety, which in turn fuels anxiety, which in turn promotes one of three things – fight, flight, or freeze. Now, in the ‘late teenage son’ example none of these are particularly helpful as the situation doesn’t need a fast, automated, response but we have such responses easily available to us… so I pick fight!
Why do we pick the easy ‘in built’ response? Well, Daniel Kahneman in his excellent book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ explains that we have two systems at play in our brain. Our automated ‘quick response’ brain and our slower more ponderous brain. He explains in much more depth, and with much more eloquence, that we are generally lazy when it comes to thinking and when we have a quick response available to us we have a tendency to go for that response rather than having to engage our more thoughtful and slower brain. Because to engage that part of our brain is frankly hard work!
So, as Howe (2008) tells us despite our emotional reactions lacking subtlety they are 
quick and powerful and provide us with a range of possible immediate responses to situations we find ourselves in. Some of which are useful, especially when things like safety are being compromised, but some of which are less so when a better response would have been a more thought through one.
Howe (2008) lays out the positives of these rather automated responses. He states they are tried and tested solutions to the problems we all face. When lost, physically rather than metaphorically (!) we experience fear and that fear drives us to take stock quickly of the circumstances so we can be ‘found’ again. The emotion makes us focus on the task at hand quickly until it is dealt with, at which point, hopefully, the emotions will subside.
He also suggests that emotions help us explore situations quickly that are too important to leave to intellect alone. When out on a home visit and confronted by a large angry dog growling and snarling and approaching you you want something inside you to say ‘run’ rather than to stand there and think ‘well let’s consider my options’. ‘What will the person who loves their dog think of me?’ ‘How deep would the bite be, and therefore how much at risk am I really?’ ‘Will the owner intervene… oh I’m sure they will, I would?’ No! There’s not time! Run! And figure the rest out when you’re safe!
The core of an emotion, like in the example just given, is a readiness to act and to formulate plans. You need to give a sense of urgency to your actions with regard to the advancing dog so in a few moments you will plan what to do, as your emotions will demand it of you. You will not consider how this might impact future relationships, or what it will mean for the end date of the assessment, or whether you will need to inform the home support staff you commission! You will consider ‘how can I get to a position where I don’t feel terrified anymore!’ And that’s fine!
One of the problems with the modern world though is these in built, almost animal like, gut instinct responses, work for wooly mammoths and advancing dogs but don’t work so well for situations where the threat is not as obvious and the solution not as instant. You might feel anxious and scared when you look at your diary for the week, or you might feel fear and distress when you see you have a visit to a particularly challenging family – but you can’t run from these things. It’s unlikely you can use a ‘flight’ response given you’d like to get paid at the end of the month but you may feel like engaging in a ‘freeze’ response or a ‘fight’ one when your manager gives you another task. Neither of which in the long run are helpful.
The emotions you are feeling in such moments will ‘flavour’ your responses in other situations as they present themselves. Unless of course you manage the emotion in some way so that you can use your emotional responses to drive you positively rather than letting them have a negative impact.
Here’s a ‘low-level’ example. I was driving to work recently and there was a broken down car up ahead. I was already a little late and this was going to make me even later. I started to get anxious and angry because I left some prep till the last minute for a 9 o’clock lecture and now I wasn’t going to get to work until 8.30. This would mean the usual things I’d do on a morning would not get done. And if you know me you know I love my routine. I started feeling tense. So I engaged in some planning! I figured that when I got to work I wouldn’t even turn my computer on. I’d grab the printed copy of the slides, grab a coffee, and spend the small amount of time running through what I had. I used the negative way I was feeling to drive me to plan rather than just living in the angry, frustrated, moment. And it worked. I had a plan so felt myself relaxing and felt the negativity disappear. Now I know some of the issues we face in practice are bigger than this example but the idea still works.
This type of approach is not easy but it comes with practice and certainly relies on being self aware. You have to be able to know your emotions, know what triggers strong feelings in you and plan for how to deal with them rather than leaving your reactions to chance. This is born out of experience. In a sense ‘forged in the fire’ of practice. But you can start to develop an understanding of yourself by considering your strengths and weaknesses in relation to emotional responses. You can think about your values and what’s important to you ….and dare I suggest looking after yourself should be just as important as the service users you work with or the timescales you work to. Figuring all of this out will give you a sense of self regulation and an ability to control or redirect disruptive emotions to emerging circumstances.
Emotional intelligence is about managing your emotions but also about managing the emotions of others. I’m convinced as social workers you will have the skills to do this. In showing people empathy you will show you understand, as far as you ever can, how they are feeling and may be able to help them move in a desirable direction
The social work task is to work with people who are often in an emotional state. Just the presence of you as a social worker will bring some emotions ‘to the table’. It’s your job to create a safe space to explore those emotions. People’s idea of self, as we’ve seen elsewhere, is formed in the relationships they have and in their interactions with others. People with problems may have their sense of self undermined so need to return to a supportive relationship with someone to explore who they are. This is done by you engaging with them in a warm and sincere relationship.
You’ll need to make the person feel comfortable and this may take time. But you will also need to feel comfortable yourself. Not be distracted or rushing to get through the appointment. Being ‘in the moment’ with the person will show you are available to them, not just physically present, but also emotionally and psychologically present. This will develop an encouraging relationship and a safe environment where the service user can explore themselves and hopefully come up with their own solutions and way forward.
Howe (2008) says that once this relationship connection is made ‘the self of the service user can form and re-form. The social worker is like the sculptor who frees the sculpted form from the marble; the worker recognises the potential of the client and enables him or her to realise that potential’ (Howe, 2008, p.186)
Howe, D., (2008) The Emotionally Intelligent Social Worker
Kahneman, D., (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow