How I would introduce recommendations from BASW. 

 

Last year I suggested my authority introduce a Social Care ‘surgery’ to strengthen relationships with the community.  I believe this would build better relationships and give opportunity for constructive feedback and suggestions on how to improve services.  Building alliances with other organisations is also important to practice, it would provide a deeper understanding of available resources and what is available applying a strengths based approach in line with the Care Act 2014 which states social care has a responsibility to provide information, guidance and advice.  

 

My authority has seen an increase in vacancies be filled with out of area social workers.  I believe surgeries in the borough would also provide out of area social workers a deeper understanding of the socioeconomic situation of the area of whom they serve.  Of course we all have our personal bias and no doubt our own perception and stigmatised narrative of a certain area would be communicated to new to the authority social workers.  This could reduce through effective collaboration with community groups to allow integration of social work and communities which I feel is currently relatively low. 

 

The particular field in which I work in is mostly with the elderly population.  Barriers to attending any face to face contact for individuals with disabilities could be problematic but in contrast, feedback from my service users is they miss face to face contact.  Using a community resource could reduce an individual’s isolation and improve inclusion in society. 

 

Access to other alliances I feel are effective in my authority.  I do consider however my knowledge after working in the authority for 23 years has benefited my practice as I am aware of the various schemes available to overcome poverty.  The authority currently has food banks, welfare rights for maximisation of benefits and an effective warm homes scheme to overcome fuel poverty. 

 

I think that this resource rightly brings deprivation and poverty to the forefront of a social workers thinking. I was aware that children living with high levels of deprivation/poverty were more likely to become looked after, but this information just compounds how much of an impact that it has. 

The notion of income inequality was an interesting concept. I found it interesting and understandable to learn that where there is high income equality the spread of income will be much greater. On a local level therefore meaning that areas where low income and associated difficulties are more prevalent will result in less scrutiny. Rather than a more affluent area where such concerns will be more noticeable and receive greater attention from social care. 

I also found it interesting that where income inequality is low then social workers may find it easier to convey empathy due to having a similar lived experience. I think that a competent social worker should be able to notice deprivation and be empathic in their approach regardless of the level of income inequality. 

I have seen a research study that found parenting improved when parents were given money. However, it was not the money that improved the parenting. The money aided in removing the barriers and stressors present as a result of deprivation which enabled the parent to invest more in their child. I think that it is sad that we spend so much time and effort managing and supporting service users through the symptoms of deprivation rather than addressing deprivation itself. 

The resource rightly draws attention to austerity and rationing. I have read case law that determines local authorities are not at liberty to prevent access to services just because the authority says that it cannot afford it. However, we all know that this is likely to happen regularly but the issue of services being scrapped completely is also present. Such actions mean that families are unable to access and utilise services to address concerns which is impacting their parenting of their children.  Resulting in a more severe course of action further down the line. 

In my practice I try to adopt and carry out relationship-based practice in order to provide a safe space for service users to share their lived experiences without feelings of shame or guilt. It is hoped that by practicing in this way I will be able to explore and help co-produce plans to address the impact of poverty. 

I think that the local authority as a whole and supervisions neglect the impact of deprivation and during my supervisions this has not been covered. I have undertaken budgeting work for example with service users but reflecting on this, it could have been seen as a box ticking exercise rather than to address economic injustice and deprivation. I think deprivation needs more attention paying to it during supervision so that its impact can be included in holistic developments. 

From my experience in working with service users and observing others’ practice I have seen that as social workers we are very good at advocating for service users to access what they are entitled to. However, I think that this usually occurs from a request for help rather than taking the initiative to ensure that families are receiving what they are entitled to. I think that more work could be done from the outset to ensure that social workers are supporting service users from the outset, rather than responding when asked. 

I found the resource very informative and the BASW guidance will be useful to support my direct practice to help me consider the poverty and financial inequalities when working with families.  I live out of authority and am not familiar with some of the communities I support.  It would be beneficial to me and the families I work with, for me to find out about the local community, its support networks and available resources so that I can identify strengths based plans that are achievable and can support positive sustainable changes that would prevent families needing statutory services that could be better provided by the Early Help prevention services. 

This was a very interesting piece of work to complete, as well as highlighting stereotypical situations, which impact on children it also highlighted issues such as income equality impacts on the possible services which are available. 

Reflecting on this comparing this to adult social work I can see so many similarities in respect of a reduction in services and opportunities available to citizens because of the cost implication. There is an emphasis on early intervention in both children and adult services but without an appropriate platform to work from this is likely to impact significantly on services which are required in later life. I agree with what another has written in regards to advocating for services when someone is at crisis and crying out for help, rather than being proactive and creative in work that is more informal. 

I can only comment on the authority which I work in and the sector of adult services, but I feel that we were starting to make headway in community lead services and the implementation of community hubs, where a collection of agencies came together to support local citizens. This certainly provided the opportunity for both workers and citizens to know what was available to them in the area and how to access these services, with the hope that this would prevent them requiring additional more formal services in the future. 

I feel that I am very aware of poverty and equality and am confident that I am able to signpost of utilize appropriate services within the local area. I personally feel that the support and services available are becoming more prominent as of late, and that the need to support families who are in crisis is prevalent. An example of this is the media coverage on the Marcus Rashford campaign earlier this year. 

 

I have found this really interesting and I think it’s important for social workers to really keep poverty in mind when working with families. I found the correlation between income inequality/ deprivation and if this is experience in a rural area compared to a city very interesting, and how this links into the level of intervention experience in terms of children’s work. As I don’t work in children’s services this is not something I see experienced in the same way in adults due to the different legislation so find this really interesting. Where I have worked with families who are in receipt of benefits we often don’t have any way to alleviate the financial pressures they may be experiencing, and this can be difficult especially when this is the main cause of stress and ongoing issues for the person or family. 

I wasn’t aware of the anti-poverty practice guide, so this is something I will go away and look at further. 

We work within systems that do not provided adequate levels of support for example service users can leave their council property due the deprivation within the neighbourhood, however from a housing officers perspective this is the home they have been assigned and they will not receive another one.

Even looking at a policy like austerity, despite economists at the time saying it wouldn’t work, we still had a government that chose to adopt the strategy regardless. I can’t and won’t ever know the amount of people in this country who were inadvertently effected by these decisions, the number of people made homeless who would otherwise be housed, the number of suicide cases that may have been avoided had services not been reduced to the point that appointments take months to come, the number of domestic violence case due to benefit cuts and familial pressure. 

Estimates from 2018/9 state that 34% of children within the UK live in poverty. These figures haunt me, and I am very much aware of the impact this can have and reflect upon it through may assessments and working practice. Case law my state a local authority prevent access to services, but the increased case loads for workers, the reduction in budgets for services and the cost cutting measures of amalgamating services together all contribute towards this outcome regardless. 

From my experience workers are very crisis and task focused, they are great a responding at the time. Person centred approached, narrative practice and relationship-based practice all aid workers in understanding someone’s story and needs, and I have seen workers seriously consider the impact of poverty and adopt some creative approaches to support. Looking at the biopsychosocial model and ecological systems theory is another resource we use to asset someone’s relationships and needs on both an internal and external level. However, I feel that workers are doing the best they can in a broken system. The change needs to come from governments and society, how we view the poor and how we view our own duty to the poor, needs a massive and fundamental shift.  

I found this resource extremely informative, it is well known that people in deprived areas are more likely to require interventions than those in affluent areas but unfortunately due to the media, programmes such as ‘Benefit Street’ and being told by politicians that people need to ‘help themselves’ this is rarely put down to the effects of poverty but the fault of the person or parents.  There is blatant discrimination against those with low socioeconomic status and even though I find it abhorrent that there is no statutory safeguards against this I understand this this is likely due to the financial implications it would bring for the state.  What I struggle to understand is why, as in the case study, services can spend money on the time and resources for interventions but will not sanction physical monies to be spent on things such as home repairs.  This would alleviate some of the ‘symptoms of poverty’, would most likely be more cost effective and have a long-lasting impact.  I’m not suggesting that throwing money at people will alleviate all the issues, but it would reduce the risk and reduce the stresses of the household.  This along with support with parenting and budgeting will have more likelihood of success than leaving the person in their current poverty and trying to ‘train’ parents how to manage it more effectively.  Within adults services we have access to a small amount of cash that I have used to purchase appliances, food, travel costs, clothing etc, however we are unable to fund housing repairs as that is seen as the responsibility of the owner or landlord and as the case study states, if repairs are paid for once then the authority sets a precedent to pay for all other repairs.  However, we should have more legal support to ensure landlords maintain their properties or financially support people to move if their housing is not suitable. 

 

I work within adult services and although this research is based on children’s services I have seen a correlations between socioeconomic status and safeguarding and self-neglect.  We routinely support people with benefits and housing, although as a service we still struggle to talk to people about finances.  The BASW guidance aims to ensure that poverty is not overlooked, to do this we need to become more comfortable with discussing finances in detail rather than just asking people if they want a benefits check.  A person-centred approach would enable workers to build a relationship of trust which would not only make the conversation around finances more comfortable but would also allow the family to share more openly about the impact of poverty on them.  I found the concept of empathy gaps with social workers very interesting; this kind of approach will only work if social workers are able to empathise with the persons situation and not make personal judgements based on bias.  I know within my service poverty is not routinely discussed and there is no training around the impacts of poverty, for social workers to truly understand and be able to empathise this needs to change. 

 

The guidance regarding ‘community social work’ is something that my team has been pushing since we moved back to locality working.  We moved from a city wide service to a locality service so that we could get to know our localities in order to better support people, however we are currently based in the city centre and our locality is over 10 miles away.  We do not really know the area that well or understands the socioeconomic of its neighbourhoods.  Community organisations, religious support, food banks and charities rarely have the money to keep an updated website, so we rely on building relationships with them to know what is going on.  Again, there are unknown resources such as local businesses that support the community or which cafes will deliver food to those in needs, all these things we will not know about unless we are regularly there and these are the services that can make a real difference to peoples lives.  Being visible also means that we are more approachable, we better understand the difficulties faced and are not a far away service that will come and make judgements. 

Within the resource there was the suggestion that the families who are living in poverty can be seen as neglecting their children by social workers, this did worry me as I would like to hope that the social workers will take the time to learn why the family are struggling and to actually find out what they are trying to do for their children. For example if a child is not receiving sufficient clothing and food is this simply because the parents are neglectful and don’t care, or could it be that the parents are trying to find work but are unable to do so due to other circumstances. Obviously each case is individual and I firmly believe that it is the duty of the social worker to treat each case in this way rather than thinking of them as another poor family who aren’t providing for their children. 

It does seem to be that poverty certainly has shaped the way social work practice is implemented from reading this resource.  It was stated within the resource that the local authorities with high deprivation has also seen a reduction in their spending on children’s services over the last 10 years, this has to shape the way that social work is practiced as the local authorities resources are going to be spread much thinner than in other areas. I believe this can only form a vicious circle in families requiring support, support not being readily available, resulting in families requiring more support than they might have if support was available at the very first instance. 

I found the BASW guidance really interesting, and I could relate certain parts to my own role. The guidance stated that social workers should recognise themselves as part of the communities in which they work. I live in the area I work and so being able to recognise myself as part of the same community is a straightforward process, what is not such a straight forward process is being able to relate to people who are experiencing poverty, I am not able to say “I understand how you are feeling” but I am able to empathise with the family and take the time to listen to their own individual story.  However when I do work with families who are experiencing poverty I do certainly do all I can to support that family and look for the resources that they may not be aware of. 

This part of the BASW guidance drew my attention to the difficulties some social workers may face when they are working out of their own area, I believe this could cause barriers in building relationships with some families as the family may see the worker as an “outsider” who is not able to understand their situation because they are not from the same area. I also think that if a worker is working outside of their own area they are much more likely to have a lack of knowledge about the support that is available to families in that area, even more so if the worker is an agency worker who quite often changes their area of work. 

Poverty 

I have always found this discussion interesting.  I have lived in Barnsley all my life.  I am from a large council house family in the “rough” end of town.  My dad was a bus driver and my mum stayed at home until the age was suitable for us to get to and from school alone.  In the 80’s this wasn’t a major concern and we weren’t the only ones walking home unsupervised. 

I now have my own family.  I live and work in my home town.  I know the areas of town that I perhaps wouldn’t walk through alone at night but if I lived in that area my view may differ.  It’s the social norms for these areas, the stigma and of course the socioeconomic differences within the boroughs. 

Cawthorne versus Grimethorpe. 

Barnsley does have poverty and deprivation.  Some will reflect upon the time of mining and the reduction in industrial jobs.  However the stats evidence the poverty within the borough. 

See the attached link- https://www.barnsley.gov.uk/media/15794/imd2019.pdf 

Out of 317 LA’s Barnsley is ranked the 38^th most deprived area in England.  These figures are based upon income, education, employment, health, crime, barriers to houses and services and our living environment.  By analysing the data it is clear that there are differences within these categories.  Education (15^th) and employment (27^th) are the most deprived area where access to housing is ranked 311 out of 317.  This highlights the differences within areas for the socioeconomical differences on society and its members.  

There is a need for national and local government targeted support.  Knowing the area and what it needs.  Asking the questions…are there opportunities for carers and training?  Do those with skills and education leave the borough? If so why? 

These are questions for generations.  There will always be areas of town where social care involvement is at a higher rate than that of others however the children within these areas needs to be our focus and how we can improve their futures.  However our social care fundamental role is to acknowledge these struggles and support the families in need to address the core of their struggles.