of activities when they talk about social work roles and tasks. These include: Practical support: helping people fi nd out about and do things, sorting out diffi culties, exploring with them what can be done; Emotional support: enabling them to explore their feelings, articulate and work
Peter Beresford OBE is chair of Shaping Our Lives, the service user-led organisation and network, and professor of social policy at Brunel University Suzy Croft is social work and bereavement team leader at St John’s Hospice, London, and a member of The College of Social Work’s Transition Board
20 SOCIALWORKMATTERS MAY12
Good social work practice can make a reality of the current
rhetoric of choice and control, self-directed support and co-production
through them, providing encouragement and the honesty of a ‘critical friend’; Advocacy: helping them take up the
cudgels to deal with diffi cult situations or organisations, representing them with other agencies and helping them to represent themselves, being someone who is always on their side;