r/Socialworkuk

Hi everyone! I am currently in my final year of my undergraduate social work degree, I have come across some challenges with my wellbeing during my last placement in adults and will have to retake placement next year.

When I initially started the course I had a passion to be a social worker, however, I have a lot of doubt if I want to do this once I qualify.

I was thinking to go into teaching instead. I was wondering if I don’t complete my AYSE year but continue to renew my registration each year would I be able to pick this practice back up and be a social worker?

Any advice would be helpful thank you.

I always find this one harder than the actual conversation itself. I can prepare what I want to say and go through it in my head, but knowing someone probably isn’t going to take it well still sits in the back of my mind. I’m trying to get better at being honest without sounding cold, but sometimes I end up overthinking it and making it feel bigger than it needs to be.

I am graduating from my degree this year. When I decided to do a social work degree, I never thought getting a job would be that difficult. I understand the LAs are investing more in apprenticeships and less in degree or master's students to be more cost-efficient, but this year it has been difficult to get a job. A lot of LAs only do internal ASYE openings for apprenticeship graduates, and many expressed that they are not making room for reduced-workload NQSWs anymore. Job openings are rare, and even when they do arise, they close weeks earlier, signalling a real mismatch between social work graduates and job availability. Of all things, I've felt betrayed (and so have a lot of classmates who are graduating at the same time), and it is stupid not to make room for new ASYEs.

IF you're thinking of pursuing social work in your career - DO AN APPRENTICESHIP.

Hello.
I am deciding career options as a Year 12 student. My desired careers are durable and nicely paid, but competition is a risk.

I intially thought of being a human rights news reporter covering social issues. But as a back up, I also may want to be a social worker, particularly with children's services, as it feels nice to visit and support young people, obviously carefully to ensure ethics are followed and they are not revictimized. Social work would be similar to the initial main job as both obviously cover social issues and welfare.

I am currently studying A-Levels of Politics and Sociology. Not studying Law.

Not sure if these are relevant to do social work though. It is too late to change as I will have another year - already had one extra year due to insufficient GCSEs.

Hi, I'm working at a refuge as a support worker in London. I was wondering if there were any specific unions that I could join? I know it's dependent on the company as well, but we haven't received any kind of information about whether we have union reps and stuff like that, so I wanted to know if you guys had any idea of who to contact to basically get a good idea of what unions to join. I know there are general unions like Unison that I will be contacting, but wanted further information/where to basically start looking.

Basically, we're criminally understaffed, my coworker has put in a grievance for managerial bullying (entirely justified in doing so), our managers haven't been in office for at least two months with no official reasons provided, they've fucked with my pay and the pay of coworker who left only recently (because of our direct line manager) and they've dragged their feet and completely mismanaged my application to shift from bank to permanent staff. This is not to mention a bunch of safeguarding issues+mismanagement, etc. I've also heard from previous and older workers that HR and management try and cover each other's backs, so I feel it's a good time to get in contact with a union to ensure we're not left hung to dry.

Hello everyone! Unsure if this is the right place to post but please can I get some help.

I’m an international student who is deciding on coming to Hull for my Social Work degree. Could someone please help me out with understanding how it is it like to live there, post studying opportunities and scope, along with current students enrolled in Social Work who will be kind enough to share their journey and experience.

This is quite important for me and I truly want to get a better picture of how Hull is actually like and what does studying Social Work entail in respect to studying in Hull specifically.

I am contemplating Sussex but to be quite honest, financial Hull is the most convenient for me and I want to gauge if I graduate from either of the universities what will be the benefit and how will it be viewed amongst employers in regards to which university I attended.

I will appreciate this a lot!

Hi all,

Does anyone have any suggestions for earning additional money or side hustles? Especially anything that would use skills of an adult SW? Currently exploring AMHP work with EDT and looking for other ideas.

Hi im looking in applying in the next couple of months to universities in london for social work undergraduate courses. Can someone recommend what are some good unis i could get in as a international student with not perfect grades(but decent) and getting​​​ some financial help? If so,when is the best time to apply for a September 2027 starting course?​

How accurate are these ratings for local authorities? Appreciate it may seem a silly question, but Ofsted get so slated by schools and teachers and are often reported as a grade not truly reflecting how the school actually is, yet I haven’t heard any push back or similar thoughts from social workers? I’m looking at applying for jobs in local authorities, one is graded outstanding across all areas and I think that is clouding my judgement a little.

Feels like a lot of people either burn out or move sideways. Interested in whether that’s really the norm or just what it looks like from the outside.

Hi all, following from my last two posts I’ve gotten an NHS social work role🥳

I got a verbal offer for an NHS role on Monday and I’m trying to get a sense of timelines. Called the hiring manager today (Friday morning) and she said she’s put it forward so I should receive the conditional offer letter today yet still nothing has come through. She asked me to call her Monday afternoon if I haven’t received it by then.

At the interview I brought all my ID, qualification certificates and an enhanced DBS (on the update service) and the manager scanned everything and confirmed she’d uploaded it to my trac for right to work purposes.

My questions are:
• How long did your conditional offer letter take after a verbal offer?
• Since my ID, right to work docs and DBS were already scanned and uploaded at interview stage, will I have to resubmit them through the NHS jobs portal or will they carry over?
• What’s left after the conditional offer, is it just references and occupational health at that point?
• Any idea on realistic start date timelines from conditional offer to first day?

Recently I’ve been considering trying to contact an old social worker, on a case regarding an estranged relative who I didn't know existed until recently.

My grandfather, who was very reserved about his backround, left his family when he was a child/teenager. Through genealogy I was able to discover he actually had one sister who lived until 1987, a widow who passed away at a care home in Lewisham, run by the Borough of Camden. She had no children.

After buying her death certificate I discovered the informant was a social worker. I was able to find their LinkedIn profile (most likely the right one as he has a very unique name). The person appears to have last worked for Kingston Upon Thames, but is now inactive on LinkedIn, likely retired.

I’ve been trying to search for memories of her, or info on people who might’ve been apart of her life, as the relatives I’ve found on her husbands side have not responded to my attempts to reach out. I am wondering if it would be worth contacting this social worker for that info? Would they likely have any info/documents, or even any memories of her case, seeing as it was a bit of a long time ago? If so, are there any recommended avenues I can take in trying to contact them? I found a work email but I don’t believe it’s active anymore. Would appreciate any input.

P.S is it common for social workers to be the informant on death certificates? Are there any implications behind that?

Hi, I'm sorry if this goes on a bit too long. I am starting my masters in September. I have my degree in health and social work. I don't know much about social work. I have all the academic books. I have been reading through them all. It's a 2-year course. The course lead told me that there will be two tests in the first semester. Adult and child. Law tests.

Has anybody done these before? If so, could you give me a rough idea of what I'm looking at, I'm going to tell you to revise on

Tia x

I’m visiting friends in the UK, and while I’m a Social Worker in my own country I have no experience in the area of early onset dementia. One of my friends has been diagnosed with it at the age of 58. She is unable to provide any information about her own illness or who she sees for it. Her sister (with whom she is close) is incredibly stressed and worried and wants desperately to become more involved and help. However, family dynamics are very complicated and all information is being blocked.

I am seeking advice here from SWs who have experience and knowledge in this area.

Can someone please provide some information on what her sister might be able to do or contact? She also needs some support/counselling, but she is mostly concerned with wanting to best support her unwell sister. The family are based in Salisbury. TIA.

Hi all,

Not sure if this is more of a rant or a question..maybe both.

I’ve been working in a community team in adult services for the last four years. I work primarily with mental health/forensic/substance misuse clients which also overlaps into learning disabilities and autism.

I carry a lot of complex work, I also risk manage a lot of high risk clients. It’s the sort of work that I enjoy, I find the intensity and the pace of the job interesting but as many of you can probably relate, also very exhausting.

Over the last two years I have grown increasingly frustrated with the way services such as residential homes and supported living services are commissioned. My LA has a closed framework of providers which hasn’t changed in 4 years and we have to explore this framework (often taking months at a time) until we can find someone a placement. This is after all the assessment processes, multi agency working and funding panels. If there are no providers on the framework who are willing to take the client we can then ask for permission from an AD to look for services ‘off the framework’ which pretty much 90% of the time, provide a standard of care and support which is miles above any of the framework providers.

The framework consists of large companies that pop services up all over the county and staff them with untrained and/or poorly trained staff. Recently, I have attended reviews for clients in services and also moved clients into framework services. I am absolutely disgusted by some of the practice I’ve seen in these services, providers being paid complex rates for clients but having no PBS training or de escalation training. These then cause the placements to break down despite the care plan that I created with the person/representatives and health professionals clearly detail the required approach for the individual.

I attended a service today which was absolutely disgusting and was bordering on neglect. These are a couple of examples of providers who I have dealt with over recent years, and something about this has started to irritate me more than ever. One of the fundamental responsibilities of our role is being consistently undermined by the shocking services that are commissioned. I raise these issues with commissioning and safeguarding consistently nothing seems to happen.

Has anyone else had this problem? Either there are plenty of backhanders going on which means these providers continue to navigate In the way they do, or the powers above just don’t give a shit. Originally I thought it was about cost but when I have literally presented providers off framework who would be willing to meet the clients needs for a fraction of the price but more importantly a better quality of care for the individual, that gets shot down as well.

I’ve been pretty loud about this in recent months in my LA and it’s got to the point Im wondering if I need to make less noise about the issues, and if this could reflect poorly on me in the future or potentially put my job at risk. Would be helpful to hear your thoughts!

Hi, I’m a social work student in my first placement at a local authority. I’m finding it really hard to ask difficult questions to service users and worrying that this is something that will impact my ability to progress. I’m naturally quite anxious but manage to appear very calm and composed. Does asking the difficult questions get easier with experience? Looking for anyone who has felt a similar way.
I’m also feeling like I’m having to do a lot of extra hour out of hours. This was to be expected but I’m starting to feel like I could become easily burned out and just a bit scared about the future if I become a SW.

Hi,

I was accepted onto Frontline/Approach a few months ago.

I had my placement call last week and they said there’s no availability for me. If they don’t find anything within the next few weeks, I’ll have to defer or back out.

Im gutted. I’m in an “in-between” job at the moment, I was thinking it wouldn’t last long and then I’d most likely be starting social work. There is a part of me that wonders whether it’s best, as I’ve been worried about all the negative talk around social work. But I was still keen to give it my best shot.

Has anyone else had this happen?

What do you think the chances are that they’ll find a place for me, is it a matter of someone dropping out?

Thank you

I have an interview next week, and part of it is a roleplay scenario!
Does anyone have any tips or advice please!!

Hi all, I am a social worker in an LA that is transitioning away from having assessment teams (which I was in) to the family help structure meaning everyone does everything from start to finish (unless it goes LAC of course). I personally don’t enjoy long-term work but I am aware that one of the reasons for this is because I don’t feel that I have the skills to complete long-term interventions.

For context, I believe that my strengths are around the crisis management, immediate safety planning, assessing risk ect. When I was previously in a long-term team, what I felt that I struggled with is creating interventions beyond just “having a conversation” about what needs to change and what the worries are. I feel that there have been times when I have done one or two very good sessions with a young person or parent, but most of the time I just leave a visit feeling like I have done an informal counselling session where someone has told me the same difficulties for the 800th time and nothing has changed.

The issue lies with the fact that I don’t feel that I know how to access support to change this or feel more confident around this. When I have supervision with my manager (who is very supportive), we’re both so busy that it just feels like we are writing a to do list of all the actions that need to be completed rather than reflecting on any direct work or opportunities to learn.

Can I ask for any advice about this? How do people get better at this?

I also didn’t qualify in the UK (qualified 5 years ago), I have since come to realise that my university may have been a pretty sh*t place to study because I feel like I’ve had to learn everything on the job rather than feeling equiped as I entered the workforce. Any advice would be appreciated.