This is social work: Perceptions of social work transcript
This Is Social Work: Perceptions of social work transcript
With Kate Metcalf, Paul Peros and Carrie Blackwood
Kate
Welcome to this episode of Social Work England's podcast ‘this is social work’. I'm your host, Kate Metcalf. I'm a regional engagement lead at Social Work England and I'm also a registered social worker.
In 2023, Social Work England carried out research with YouGov exploring public perceptions of the social work profession. We found that social workers feel their profession is misunderstood in society and not as respected as other professions.
They told us this was largely due to negative and often inaccurate portrayals of social work in the media.
That's why we've launched a new campaign, ‘Change the script’. We're urging TV and film makers to portray social work more accurately, showing the positive impact that social workers have on people's lives. You can head to our website, socialworkengland.org.uk, to watch our short film, it tells the story of social workers from the perspective of the people they've supported.
On the podcast today, we'll be exploring the research findings in more depth. What does social work mean to different people? What are their expectations of a social worker, and how do these perceptions impact social workers in their roles?
Now, I'm pleased to introduce today's guests. We have Carrie Blackwood, member of the National Advisory Forum.
And we also have Paul Peros, policy manager at Social Work England. I'll come to you first. Carrie, please let the listeners know who you are.
Carrie
Hi everybody my name is Carrie Blackwood. I am, I like to say I'm just a social worker, but I think I get told off for saying that. So I am a social worker. I'm currently a social worker in Sheffield. I was originally in field works which are child protection for two years and then I've just had another two years in their kinship fostering team. So supporting friends and family who have had to take on a child in their network and supporting them through the assessment and also I sit on the national advisory forum, that's been quite recent, so I've only been on that for a few months, but I'm very much enjoying getting involved in all the different things including this podcast.
Kate
Brilliant. Thanks, Carrie. And should just say the national advisory forum is the forum that sits in Social Work England made-up of practising social workers, people with lived experience and other people from the sector and the profession as well. So thank you for that. And you're right. The word ‘just’ in front of the job title social worker is definitely banned. We need to banish the J word. Thank you.
And Paul your turn.
Paul
OK, I'm Paul Peros. I'm a policy manager at Social Work England. I've been in policy and in regulation for quite a while, so we and policy team deal with all the kind of external policy development work. You know what does regulation look like and how can we best support social work through the regulation that we do I’ve been here 4 years, it's been quite a ride, and it's been really interesting to finish this piece of research about how people view social work.
Kate
So really lovely to have you both here and thank you all so much for joining us. So let's jump straight in and talk about impressions of social work. And Carrie, I'm going come to you first, if that's OK, because what I want to know is. Kind of, in the early stages of life for you, what was your experience of social work? You know, before you met a social worker and then maybe when you first met a social worker, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Carrie
So my social work experience goes back quite early on, right back to primary school because I had social workers involved when I was younger, it was only sporadically and it was at quite a low level, but they were in and out quite a bit. And then in secondary school it was just this person who came out, didn't really speak to me. And then that was it done. So I would say I had a pretty poor experience. I didn't feel like I was really spoken to or listened to, and at the time, obviously I was wanting that support and help from anybody really, and I felt like it just it just wasn't there. And I think my family as well didn't have a great perception of social work, but I suppose looking back on it now, I can understand why. The town that I grew up in, I was in the 10% most deprived areas, so the town perception of social care and social workers was very poor. They didn't have a great relationship with them at all, and I think people have a tendency to see it as a really scary thing. And that's very understandable and not a supportive thing. That certainly wasn't the perception that my family had. But then obviously that's changed throughout the years and my perception of it has changed obviously, because now I'm a children's social worker.
Kate
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Come full circle. And I I will come back to you on the more recent years and how that has changed now, but it's just powerful to hear, you know, early stage impressions of the profession.
Paul, I'm going to bring you in here. Having heard what Carrie has said because you were sort of instrumental in some research that was commissioned at Social Work England a little while ago now, there were findings on the public's understanding of the role of a social worker, what the public thought social workers did.
Paul
Yeah, thanks. It was really interesting to hear Carrie speak about that because we did ask some questions in the research that give us a sense of what you know, the public generally feel, not just about what they know about social workers, but how they would react if a friend or family member was being supported by social workers. So just to sort of see whether they welcome it or read it or, you know what, what the impression is so, all the findings, some were surprising. Some were not. YouGov ran the survey and they asked 3000 people.
We, we found 82% of people know that social workers work for councils. That was the sort of biggest answer that people gave when they asked where social workers work. There was a sort of a spread about courts and police and schools and other sort of services and people were much less confident about what they actually did day-to-day. But only 37% of people when asked in the research, they were asked without a prompt, so you know survey just sort of said.
What do you think they do? and left them to give an answer and then made a note of anything that they said, and 37% of them were children, far and away the biggest total and next up was that they work with adults or older adults. That was only 13%. So people are much less confident in knowing what social workers could actually do and how they support people when they're offered a a list of options about the kinds of things that social workers do, which they were in the next question.
75% said that they safeguard children and YouGov said that they found generally across the interviews and in the focus groups. People talked mostly about children, and they found it was very sort of child centric, but 69% of people did also mention this for adults at risk. So that is there. You know, I think people do know about.
Just over half knew they were regulated, which we took as good news. That's gone up since we first asked this question a few years ago, and I think most oddly, women are more likely than men to know about Social work.
Kate
Yeah, actually, as a social worker of many, many years, a lot of what you've just said doesn't surprise me at all. There is a way to go, isn't there? With the general public and to some degree around educating them around what social workers do actually do?
Paul
We did find that when we gave them sort of a longer list of options, they tended to choose things that were sort of more correct rather than less correct. So the list included things like check if people are eligible for their benefits. Check people's personal information. They scored quite low. Only about 1/3 of people picked those as things that social workers do. 72% said they talked to people they're supporting and they assess their needs.
65% said they work with other professionals, which is a good thing. You know we were pleased with that. That's been understood, 67% said they complete a lot of paperwork about people.
Kate
Well, it is true. I mean, I think Carrie will probably verify that for us.
Carrie
Unfortunately very true, and I wish it was the other way round. We spend more time with the people because that's the intervention work. Isn’t it. But yeah, the vast majority of our job is the paperwork. And then you try and make time for the visit, which is the most important part of the job.
Kate
Yeah, that's and that's my experience too. As, as a practitioner, it's always sort of being stuck at, stuck in front of a computer and trying to get out to see actual people and help support them.
Paul
I think it's good that's recognised by the public and top of the list. One of the questions about what you think about social workers ability to do their job was that they're overworked and under resourced. People know that. So when we asked for characteristics of social workers, people weren't really confident in saying what they thought social workers were like.
So things like trustworthy and accountable and honest and fair, they came quite low down, they sort of quarter of people were giving those kind of answers, which was much lower than we thought. But actually people weren't really very confident about saying anything other than, as I said under resourced and over worked when we asked people what they thought social workers aimed to do, we got 74% said they want the best of people they work with.
62% they make a big difference in improving people's lives. 53% and I find this one really, really encouraging. They're experts in understanding and meeting needs.
So they were really surprising and encouraging findings.
Carrie
If nothing else, I think that would give my team a real boost and I think all social workers in general a boost to know that it's not all doom and gloom. People do see some value in the work that we do.
Kate
Yeah. And I remember thinking a version of that as well, Carrie, when I first read the findings, thinking, gosh, there are members of the public who do value social work. Any other thoughts on the findings, Carrie?
Carrie
It didn't surprise me about the gendered difference in that women were more likely to know about social workers or social care.
I mean, in children's, we tend to find that mostly the first point of contact is Mum and it can be really difficult to engage Dad. So that part didn't surprise me.
Kate
No, and good that we got that gender information in the answers.
Having kindly shared your early stage experience of the profession with us, want to just ask was there any sort of big, pivotal turning point for you in your life around when you thought you might want to become a social worker and and, and what happened there?
Carrie
I wanted to be specialised in learning disabilities. That was my goal. So when I went to do my masters.
I said do not give me a children's placement. I'm going to be a social worker specialising in learning disabilities. So they said we'll give you a children's placement for your first one. I wasn't very happy because I wanted to do 2 adults ones, but they wanted to give me a breadth of experience.
You're probably expecting me to say that I had an amazing experience on my first placement and I loved it. I had a terrible experience on my first placement, but not because of the type of work, unfortunately.
My practise educator, she was off sick for, I would say the majority of my placement so i was kind of just left to my own devices, but I found it was kind of a sink or swim moment. And I think because it didn't break me, it made me and actually I managed to latch on to other social workers and they would take me out and I would see families and I would speak to people.
And actually I ended up really enjoying it by the end, despite it being really difficult. And then my university that said, well, let's give you a do over for your second placement. Let's give you another children's placement of what you should have had on the 1st placement. My second placement was absolutely fantastic. Again, it was in a field work team so it was child protection. I had the most amazing work based supervisor. He was fantastic. He was really supportive and I just had a great time I felt my confidence had grown so much because it had to for my first placement.
That I just felt like it was just something that I was naturally able to do, so it I wouldn't say it was a typica,l well, I had this experience and it was really good. So then I wanted to do this and I wanted to, you know, make this big difference and whatever else. I definitely didn't want to do children's because I didn't want to be the rubbish social worker, that I felt like I had when I was younger.
Now I'm in the job. I can absolutely see why they couldn't do more to help me so. It's definitely my perception of social work has changed massively over the years and I think it's even changed again now since being in the job for a little while because I see all these things that I want to do as a social worker and all the constraints that I have and a lot of it comes down to money and funding and that's the battle that we have all the time.
Kate
People go into social work for all sorts of different reasons, don't they? Life experience, experience of discrimination or adversity, or, you know, lots and lots of different reasons. And what you were saying about your placement experience is particularly interesting. I don't know whether all listeners will realise this, but obviously we regulate education and training for social workers. And of course, those experiences on your course, when you're training, on your placement are pivotal, the fact that you kind of charged through and just made it work is hugely commendable, but it just highlights for me how important it is for those early stage placement experiences to be right.
Carrie
That was what inspired me to do practise education myself, so I'm very involved with all things student and I just want to give a better experience than what I had.
But I suppose that feeds in social work as well. I want to be a better social worker than what I had. I want to be a better practice educator than what I felt I had at the time.
Kate
That's so brilliant. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Paul, I'm gonna come back to you for a second, if that's OK. Cause based on what Carrie just said about reasons for finding herself as a social worker. How does it compare to the public perception of social work as a profession, do you think?
Paul
Yeah, it was interesting. Hearing your story Carrie, public support, public kind of expectations about what social workers are like and what they do kind of matches what you spoke about. And the question we asked that was particularly interesting was around how well respected people think social workers are in our own society. So we didn't ask ‘do you respect social workers?’ We asked how well respected in society in general do you think social workers are?
As you can imagine, doctors and nurses come out top of the list with sort of 90% of people thinking they're well respected and 99% of social workers think doctors are well respected in society. Social workers further down, as you can imagine, 44% of English adults thought that social workers were well respected in society.
11% of social workers thought that was true, which again isn't isn't surprising. Kind of reflects, I think you know that the harsh reality that you see as a social worker, but one of the comforting things about that was in the focus group interviews that YouGov also did, they found quite frequently that people thought social workers get a raw deal in the media and generally that people know that even though they don't know what social workers do day-to-day. That social workers aren't necessarily how they're being portrayed in the news stories and in, you know, in in the media, people were well aware that there, there was a child snatcher stereotype and they were also well aware that that wasn't usually true. So yeah, interesting. I feel a bit sad that social workers are so far below the public in thinking that they were respect in society. But you know, we we can't deny that it's a profession that's had a tough time for a long time.
Hopefully something slightly encouraging for social workers to know as well that, you know, perhaps they slightly underestimate how well thought of they are.
Kate
Yeah, that's really fascinating that. But I wonder what Carrie thinks that that cause. Gosh, that is really interesting, but horribly accurate. That social workers think the public see them as unpopular, but that doesn't quite correlate with the findings of the research where the public might not really know what all social workers do, but they're not viewing social workers as harshly as you would expect them to. I wonder what your thoughts are on that, Carrie.
Carrie
I'm shocked to be quite honest, I thought it was going to be just terrible across the board. Everybody thought social workers were rubbish.
Because, that's all that's portrayed in in the media, and if you don't have any direct experiences of social workers yourself, what else have you got to go on? You know, we need mentioned about soaps and dramas and things portraying social workers as being child snatchers. That's definitely something that I've had experience of. This was when there was a storyline on EastEnders, basically a social worker just turned up and had taken this child off, and when I got through the door she was a really young mum. She was terrified that I was just gonna pick up her child there and then and just walk out of the door with him.
Kate
Which shows you how powerful the media portrayal is, doesn't it?
Carrie
Yeah. And then she told me about this EastEnders episode that she'd watched and how scary it was and how she thought that was gonna happen to her. And then obviously I had to explain to to her that that is absolutely not how it works. And even if things were so dire that I felt like your child had to be removed immediately, I have to call police. I can't just bundle him off in my child's snatcher net. And that's absolutely not the case at all. I would say the large majority of the times we're there because we want to keep the kids there and to keep them safe with their families because we know research shows us this time and time again and it's common sense really that kids do the best. They have the best outcomes when they stay with their families.
Kate
And, and that's a good point actually. Because it's possible that a lot of people who've never come into contact with the social worker don't also realise it's a very evidence based profession which draws upon research and evidence and best practise and what works, and just to echo what you're saying, Carrie, I've only ever worked in adult services, but similar things applied when I would go and visit people at home, they would expect me to organise for somebody's grandparent to go into a nursing home without any discussion with the person. So you're absolutely right around the power of, you know, anything like a soap opera or a documentary. It's hugely influential.
Paul
Yeah, the more detailed question that were options about what people thought social workers did, 72 said, ‘remove adults or children if they're not safer. But you know, people were on the whole understanding that social workers didn't just go in and seize children. I think you know what? What this tells us is this scope to improve that perception.
Kate
Yeah. And what does the research tell us about the difference between how social workers see themselves professionally and how the public perceives them?
Paul
So I'll talk about the social worker numbers for those different professions, doctors were considered by 99% of social workers to be well respected. The sort of list goes all the way down, 90, 80, 70 down to teachers. So that's doctors and nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and lawyers, 86 interestingly, and teachers 75, then it drops, bankers 45, police officers 36 and then it drops again. Social workers, 11 so social workers put themselves at the bottom of the pile. But the English adults. as I say, social workers were down the bottom of the list, but not at the bottom. They were above police officers, bankers. Other than that, everything was in the same order. So there just seems to be this specific feeling among social workers about their own profession. It, it does feel like it's something that we all need to think about how we can try and shift that. And as I say, the potential is there. People do think nice things about social they think good, positive things about social work. So yeah, lots of fun picking through.
Kate
I think keen to know your views, Carrie. Is there something there about a lack of discussion publicly about professional identity of social work as well and its purpose and function do you think?
Carrie
That we could if people knew about all of the extra work that we do rather than just we come in and we take children, we we do so much intervention work. We work with the families, we look at parenting. We look at what support services we can signpost and I do feel like perceptions from families have changed just over the years that I've been a student and a social worker. I feel like families have been less scared when I've knocked on the door. I don't know if that's just coincidence with the type of families that I've been working with. I don't know whether it's that I've been very lucky. But the families that I've I've worked with have been absolutely amazing and incredible. And even in the times when they found it really difficult to work with me, we've still managed to push through that. In the vast majority of cases, and I think it would be nice if the public knew the social workers perceptions of the public as well and that we don't come in thinking, you know, terrible, judgmental things about all these families like social workers have had things going on in their own past, in their own history, and no family is perfect. And we know that and we get that I, I would say the vast, vast majority of people that we're in this profession for a reason because we want to help people.
Paul
We did ask some questions around this actually, the high sort of responses on that question, the value of social work is fully appreciated, 72. Social work helps ensure children don’t come to harm, 77. Social work is important in helping people who are at risk of harm 85, so there is a sort of focus on harm. I think there and and social workers being useful you know essential actually in preventing harm to people which you know it obviously is only part of it but on the whole people's answers were positive.
Kate
I wonder whether just getting back to the aspect of how social workers perceive themselves. I wonder whether historically for the profession, there's been a sense of the internalisation of that negative portrayal. I I definitely have felt over the years that social workers have internalised the negative imagery and representation of their profession and not brilliant celebrating the huge positive impact they can have on people's lives.
Carrie
I just wanted to add another point. I think social workers would feel better about themselves and their profession if they felt they could be the best social workers they could be. But because of the caseloads, because of the lack of services and the amount of paperwork and the how overworked we are and I feel like if we have more staff or we have more people stay in because there's a really high turnover of staff, understandably because it's really stressful if all of those things were made a bit better than I think we would feel more confident to say yes, actually this is a good environment and we are doing a good job and we are being better. I think everyone wants to be the best version of themselves at work and they want to help people, and I, would certainly feel better if I had all of those other things in place and I could be the best social worker that I can be.
Kate
Yeah, absolutely. Coming to a close now on the conversation, sadly, because it's been really, really interesting stuff, I suppose what I'd like to do is just give the listeners today some sort of key takeaways. I wanted to ask each of you what you thought the most important thing was that you'd like people listening today to remember. I'm gonna come to you first. Paul. What might be a key takeaway for people to think about after today?
Paul
I think the key message that we, you know, take away and want to pass out is don't be too discouraged and people do generally have positive views about what social work is, what it's for, how important it is. It's a difficult line of work, there, there will always be different shades of opinion, but actually, you know what we're finding is things are slightly better than you think. There's scope to improve things over the coming years.
Kate
Thanks, Paul. That is really encouraging. And Carrie, I'm going to ask you the same question. What would you like to share with them?
Carrie
Again echoing what Paul said about it isn't all doom and gloom, and I think sometimes as social workers we hone in on the doom and gloom a bit too much and that's very easy when things are so difficult with all of the things we've talked about, the pressures that the profession is under, that amount of paperwork that you have to do compared to the time you can spend with your families, I'm really surprised to hear about the perceptions and that actually they aren't that bad. And I would hope that we can really take that on board and realise the worth of our own profession and our own practise at the core of it. It's just everybody wants everybody else to be safe and happy. And that's where we're, we're all coming from the same place and I think it's important to remember that.
Kate
Perfect. I can't top that. So that's a great note to finish on today. So a big thank you to Paul Peros from Social Work England and a massive thank you to Carrie Blackwood, social worker and National Advisory Forum member. We hope that you've enjoyed listening to this podcast today and it's just one of a number of podcasts by Social Work England. So do tune in and listen to as many of those as you can. And thank you again for joining us. This has been ‘This is social work’.