OPINION


FROM THE EDITOR


MARK IVORY


be remiss of me not to say a huge thank- you to all of you who took the trouble to respond. We had almost 80 responses to the


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consultation, which requested views on The College’s draft Advice Note setting out what social workers (and no one else) should be employed to do. Most came from social workers and organisations with an interest in social work. There were lots of thoughtful and often


extensive contributions. Next steps are to bring together a task group, drawn from our Professional Assembly, to consider the responses with a view to revising the Advice Note for publication in the autumn. Every one of them will be taken into account. I cannot do justice to all the responses


here, but there were calls for greater clarity and rewrites of some of our putative roles and tasks, the deletion of others, and the inclusion of yet more we hadn’t thought of. As one of our respondents nicely put it,


‘defining social work’s uniqueness is no small task’. We agree! And we salute his further point: ‘I warn against downplaying the more nebulous aspects of what it is that social workers do, which are implicit in such concepts as “relationship-building”, “taking the lead” and “ensuring fairness”, because they are at least of equal importance.’ We need to get the Advice Note right


both for social workers and the people they work with. It must be made clear to employers – and government – what social workers are there to do if service users are to be at all well served in these difficult times. ■ Consultation document here


4 SOCIALWORKMATTERS JULY13


ow that our consultation on roles and tasks requiring social workers has formally ended (28 June), it would


Why are assessment skills so inconsistent?


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ssessment skills are supposedly core to the social work task, and yet time and again we hear that the assessment isn’t up to scratch,


the report isn’t well argued or the case notes are not up to date. Part of my role as an independent social


worker is to provide independent assessments for clients in adults’ or mental health services at the request of their legal counsel. Usually this is because they have either been assessed as ineligible for a service or, worse, assessed as eligible but the local authority has failed to provide the much-needed support. Part of this task always includes


There appears either to be a


skills gap or an inertia that leaves social workers going native and talking solely in health terms


a fi le review, gathering the history, talking to relevant others, carers, family members and other professionals, and analysing the information that is available. I’m not doing anything diff erent from local authority social workers, and yet it is often the case that a


vital bit of information has been missed, often concerning issues that directly contribute to the individual’s risks and presenting situation. Time and again, particularly in mental health services, I read in client fi les that the person presents a clinical risk but I can fi nd no information about their social needs or their eligibility for social care support. It is a concern that there appears either to be a real skills gap here or an inertia that leaves social workers going native and talking solely in health terms. When it comes to the core skills of assessment


and report writing, social workers should be coming into their own. Unfortunately this doesn’t always seem to be the case. This is no good for the client, the original assessing social worker or the organisational budget.


Daisy Bogg is practice development adviser of The College of Social Work and an independent social worker


Read The College of Social Work’s new curriculum guide on courts skills


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