42 min
Professional standard 3: be accountable for the quality of my practice and the decisions I make This Is Social Work
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- Society & Culture
In this episode, regional engagement lead Matthew explores professional standard 3, be accountable for the quality of my practice and the decisions I make, with social workers George and Calum.
George and Calum share their unique experiences of social work practice, decision making and safeguarding in different social work settings. They also discuss the impact of COVID-19 on their practice, their teams, and the people they support.
Join the conversation using #ThisIsSocialWorkPod on our website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Transcript
Matthew
Welcome to This Is Social Work. I'm Matthew, Social Work England's regional engagement lead for the North West of England.
In this series we're focusing on the professional standards, the 6 standards all social workers must know, understand and be able to do as part of their role. The professional standards are specialist to the social work profession and apply to social workers in all roles and settings across England.
In this episode, we're focusing on standard 3 which is ‘be accountable for the quality of my practice and the decisions I make’. Today I'll be joined by George who's a lead forensic social worker and Calum who is an adult safeguarding team manager. They share their own experiences of decision making, particularly in relation to safeguarding and discuss how social workers identify risk indicators and cope with the demand that this places on their own wellbeing.
We hope you enjoy the conversation.
So we're going to make a start and make a start with some introductions so George, can I come to you first, and just ask you to introduce yourself and to give a bit of background as well, about your social work career.
George
Okay so my name's Georgina Adams. I've been qualified as a social worker since 1993 so it feels a very long time and for all of my social work career, I've worked in Devon, for Devon county council.
My background predominantly has been around children's social work so the first kind of 25, 30 years of my career I’ve worked in social work whether as a social worker, as a team manager, chairing child protection meetings or as an independent reviewing officer. I've also worked for a safeguarding board, I've worked there for a few years, and managed the child protection service in Devon for a few years.
As well as, part of that career actually, I'll go back a bit really, I worked for the emergency duty team and I was predominantly a children's social worker but I also did my AMHP training so I did some work there working as an AMHP in mental health services, but I've taken quite a different career change very recently in that I’ve become the lead social worker for the secure services here at Langdon hospital in Devon. So we, we are a secure hospital with roughly about 110 patients, all male patients, and we have 4 wards that are medium secure wards, 2 wards which are low and one ward which is open, and I also have as part of my role across the secure directorate although I manage 7 social workers here in the hospital, we have social workers that are also working in our community forensic team and our liaison and diversion team, and I take a responsibility, not for line managing them, but providing some professional supervision when needed, and also making sure that their social work voice is heard across some of those agencies where they're working particularly whether in the police, and we're also making sure that their CPD is up to date and they're thinking about some of those social work issues, they come to some of our forums and come to our training so although I only kind of line manage 7 social workers in a hospital, I have a kind of broader role across the secure directorate here.
Matthew
Perfect, thanks George. Calum, can I come to you?
Calum
So my name's Calum Titley, I work for Stockton Borough council. So, I qualified as a, as a social worker back in 2009 and I’ve worked for Stockton Borough council ever since.
Prior to doi
In this episode, regional engagement lead Matthew explores professional standard 3, be accountable for the quality of my practice and the decisions I make, with social workers George and Calum.
George and Calum share their unique experiences of social work practice, decision making and safeguarding in different social work settings. They also discuss the impact of COVID-19 on their practice, their teams, and the people they support.
Join the conversation using #ThisIsSocialWorkPod on our website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Transcript
Matthew
Welcome to This Is Social Work. I'm Matthew, Social Work England's regional engagement lead for the North West of England.
In this series we're focusing on the professional standards, the 6 standards all social workers must know, understand and be able to do as part of their role. The professional standards are specialist to the social work profession and apply to social workers in all roles and settings across England.
In this episode, we're focusing on standard 3 which is ‘be accountable for the quality of my practice and the decisions I make’. Today I'll be joined by George who's a lead forensic social worker and Calum who is an adult safeguarding team manager. They share their own experiences of decision making, particularly in relation to safeguarding and discuss how social workers identify risk indicators and cope with the demand that this places on their own wellbeing.
We hope you enjoy the conversation.
So we're going to make a start and make a start with some introductions so George, can I come to you first, and just ask you to introduce yourself and to give a bit of background as well, about your social work career.
George
Okay so my name's Georgina Adams. I've been qualified as a social worker since 1993 so it feels a very long time and for all of my social work career, I've worked in Devon, for Devon county council.
My background predominantly has been around children's social work so the first kind of 25, 30 years of my career I’ve worked in social work whether as a social worker, as a team manager, chairing child protection meetings or as an independent reviewing officer. I've also worked for a safeguarding board, I've worked there for a few years, and managed the child protection service in Devon for a few years.
As well as, part of that career actually, I'll go back a bit really, I worked for the emergency duty team and I was predominantly a children's social worker but I also did my AMHP training so I did some work there working as an AMHP in mental health services, but I've taken quite a different career change very recently in that I’ve become the lead social worker for the secure services here at Langdon hospital in Devon. So we, we are a secure hospital with roughly about 110 patients, all male patients, and we have 4 wards that are medium secure wards, 2 wards which are low and one ward which is open, and I also have as part of my role across the secure directorate although I manage 7 social workers here in the hospital, we have social workers that are also working in our community forensic team and our liaison and diversion team, and I take a responsibility, not for line managing them, but providing some professional supervision when needed, and also making sure that their social work voice is heard across some of those agencies where they're working particularly whether in the police, and we're also making sure that their CPD is up to date and they're thinking about some of those social work issues, they come to some of our forums and come to our training so although I only kind of line manage 7 social workers in a hospital, I have a kind of broader role across the secure directorate here.
Matthew
Perfect, thanks George. Calum, can I come to you?
Calum
So my name's Calum Titley, I work for Stockton Borough council. So, I qualified as a, as a social worker back in 2009 and I’ve worked for Stockton Borough council ever since.
Prior to doi
42 min