INTERVIEW
sense of their practice. It’s about formularising what they were already doing. What we will end up with is an overarching model of mental health social work with some research evidence to support its eff ectiveness, which is something that we have never had before.’ Rob clearly hopes that this evidence will
help raise the profi le of social care within mental health care. However, even within the pilot projects themselves, social workers have not always found themselves at the forefront of the service. Some areas have been using nurses or occupational therapists to deliver the intervention. ‘The social workers have been too busy setting up personal budgets and management haven’t allowed them to get involved in something that I see as the pure essence of social work,’ says Rob, clearly disgruntled. Not for the fi rst time, it seems as if the personalisation agenda (or its implementation) is working against an initiative specifi cally designed to improve personal choice. ‘Personalisation as a concept is a great thing,’ says Rob. ‘But focusing purely on personal budgets and on targets is taking
10 SOCIALWORKMATTERS JULY13
it away from the individualised, tailored approach. If we are trying to impose a massive target to get as many personal budgets as we can, then it is taking away the choice.’ He also points out that the service users
within the Connecting People programme need a social worker more than they need a personal budget. ‘A lot of people are far too risky or complex in their needs to be dealt with using personal budgets. What a person in that situation will need is a social worker.’ Jackie Stallard is a social worker and,
moreover, one who wants to remain a social worker rather than a service commissioner or an ‘automated robot’. Working within the integrated community mental health team in Skegness, she has embraced the ‘free- thinking’ approach of Connecting People which, she says, has stifl ed a growing sense of disillusionment at the way social work was heading.
‘It has helped me feel that I was on the
right track all along,’ she says. ‘I did worry about losing my heart in social work. Services and commissioners can get so focused on targets and monetary constraints, but I didn’t
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