Lying in bed....tired but not sleepy. Mind churning. Lists of things to do for work going through my head. This does not feel good. I worked till 8.25pm last night. I left for work at 7.30am to hand deliver a form to a GP surgery before going in to the office to be on Duty. I picked up my second s.47 report in 2 days, on top of 3 or 4 new initial assessments.
What is difficult is planning my time, when there is so much to do. It's obviously important! And without it, I hurtle from one day to the next without any sense of being in charge. But I am not a naturally organized person, a "Born Organized" sort. I like to move at a certain pace, think in a certain way, which is not frenetic.
And this job is frenetic. One of our colleagues is going to offer a 30 minute workshop on getting Initial Assessments done on time. I was looking forward to it, though it was on a Duty day so I thought I would probably miss it.....in any case he discovered that he had a clash on his own diary! As the email informing us all of this put it, he was going dealing with his own time management issue......funny! But not really, as this is a very, very organized person.....what must it be like for the rest of us who aren't quite so?
So I worry about the initial assessments I have not yet started. I know I need to have a process.....robotize the response so that I don't even think about the first steps. One would be to send out a letter within a day of receiving the referral. Don't think to much about the background, just get the basic appointment letter out. Give people 3 or 4 days notice and just get the visit in the diary. The only difficulty with this is when referrers have not told parents as because we work in partnership with parents :-) we need to start with them being willing for the referral.
......I need to contact the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about this. Sounds grand. And it is potentially interesting. 14 year old girl, shipped out to Angola by Mum, to strangers, apparently. Girl had been doing well in school. Girl not happy in Angola. FCO want us to do an assessment. However, Mum does not know about this. So I suggested there is a need for FCO to contact Mum and break the good news to her. That was Tuesday....now it's Friday and I haven't heard and time is slipping by. I haven't made an appointment with Mum and will have to move fast now to get the assessment done in 10 days. Did I remember to put it in my diary as due? I hope so....
Today our ICS (computerized record system) is being upgraded. So it won't be working from 2.30pm. Oh Joy! I hope the whole thing just goes through a sort of spontaneous combustion and liberates us from the trance of technology. I did social work before ICS and it has been one of the most ridiculous, time wasting, clumsy and expensive encumbrances to the job. Yesterday for example I had an assessment ready, pretty much, in Word, and just had to copy and paste it into the boxes. I had almost no more actual writing to do.
I did that little bit of writing. It took me about 1.5 hours to sort out getting the assessment actually into the ICS system and copied to siblings. Click, click, click, click. At least 4 clicks, per dimension, 8 dimensions, then finishing off...another 20 clicks or so. 50 clicks. It is mind numbing. If I just typed it, and put it on to the system with one click, how much time would be saved?
This week I have been on Duty. For the intake team, that's when you're right in the frontline, dealing with all new Child Protection Referrals for the Local Authority. Starting on Wednesday, we were 3 people plus a manager. I haven't done an actual s.47 for months. One of my fellow Duty Social Workers has never worked in the UK before. And she, like me, was booked in for 2 days of ICS training. Mine was postponed, but my colleague had to go to do hers. The third is not actually a fully fledged Social Worker though she has passed her examinations but there are the layers of bureaucracy to go through first, of course.
So effectively I was the only Social Worker available to do Child Protection Enquiries. No pressure there then, for me or my manager!
You are meant to write things up, right away nowadays. After the CP enquiry on Wednesday I went home and did a draft write up. I had the energy, and it's reaassuring to know something is in print, for the bit of me that does care about getting things done on time....yes, I do have that bit, and I want to have a job of course. Yesterday though, the CP enquiry included the girl being with foster carers.
A young Pakistani girl with a boyfriend that Mum does not know about, who is on the phone "all night" and after a row with Mum she has a nosebleed which she says was caused by being hit by Mum. Mum denies hitting her. She says she is keeping her younger sister awake by all the phoning. She does not want her to have a boyfriend until she is 18. It's all fascinating stuff, and it's people's lives, what happens now could change all their lives as Mum is a professional child care worker....Oh and the girl does not like her stepdad, whom Mum adores, and alleges she was raped by the brother of stepdad.
So yesterday I did a visit, to Mum, and heard her side of the story after hearing the girl's side all morning.
I spoke with one of the siblings, and saw all the bedrooms. I have to speak with all of them, contact schools, contact GP, and it's half term next week. I have to attend an ABE interview (video interview with the police re the alleged rape). There will be no supporting evidence, the suspect is in Sweden....I am going to support the girl. Then we will be returning her home, or at least not offering her further time with fostercarers.
I haven't made notes about the bedrooms, and don't remember who slept where....tut tut. I know they weren't dirty or messy at least but ideally I would have time to make some notes when I came back to the office.
But yesterday 2 IAs were due and I had to submit them. Which was really more important? Well time to think about that girl and her family and discuss the situation in an unpressured way would have been good. And it would be good to have recorded what I did in detail. Here is a list of what I will need to write up..in detail.
The intervew with the girl.
The discussion with TM and police
The second part of the interview, about whether she wants to pursue the allegation against her mother into a complaint.
I sent the girl back to foster carers while we, policwoman and I went to see mother. Police don't want her to go home because of interview re rape.
Mother not in.
I had no telephone number for mum so I called her work.
Mother called me and said she was in.
I did visit to Mum and saw 2 of siblings.
Back to office, it is now about 4pm.
Discussion with TM and another night with foster carers is agreed.
Referral form to be completed. Gets sent just before 5pm.
Our knuckles are rapped for sending girl back to carers she was with the first night.
I feel thankful that as it is a Police Protection Order, I don't need to complete any more paperwork.
And I feel it was the right thing to send the girl to the same carers, how ridiculous to move her
when it is only going to be one more night. But these are emergency foster carers so they need to
keep the bed available. Etc.
So once that form was sent, I spent 3 hours at work processing the two initial assessments that were due. I phoned one of the mothers involved and had a discussion that should have happened face to face, but I don't have the time for that sort of luxury. I also told another client to complete a form herself, that I should do with her, so that she can get help from the mental health team. All these not so great, but have to get it done, decisions.....I left the office at 8.25pm.
And you know what made my heart sink ever so slightly. I wasn't last to leave. There were at least 4 social workers and 2 managers in the office, likely to work till 10pm. And no one seems to think it is the least bit strange....We have a culture now where it's acceptable to work from 9a m to 10pm...no wonder my colleagues in snatched conversations say they can't cope, it's impossible, it's slavery and it's also dangerous. Where getting an assessment done in time becomes a mini crisis, you lose your perspective on the real world and what is happening out there.
For example, the son of a client was stabbed. I should have phoned, I meant to, but pressure of time, and pressure of deadlines for initial assessments meant that I just didn't. I was so keen to get assessments done, and the checks that they entail, that a simple, caring call did not happen. I'm not happy about that, I hope it's a lesson to me about not getting caught up in the mania to get things done at the price of human compassion.
When I left the office I took a breath, and realized, this is my life. It's happening amidst all this frenetic activity in which I don't connect with myself for hours at a time as I am so busy doing. It was almost a shock to be free again, to think my own thoughts. To feel my feelings. Is it right to be so busy because of a controlling system, that I forget to be aware of this being it, this is life. This is my precious life, and I choose to enjoy it, no matter what.
I remember seeing a tree in the morning, on my way from dropping off the letter. It was a tree with a wonderful, vivid red apple. Like an apple in a fairy tale. A moment of beauty which I appreciate.That's why it's worth it to write about my real life in social work. I get to reconnect with who I am.
Rilke is a great source of comfort and inspiration. He knew a thing or two about the relentlessness of the every day challenges we face and I am glad to remember what I believe about life and its ultimate mystery...
My life is not this steeply sloping hour
By Rainer Maria Rilke
My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.
I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.
No comments:
Post a Comment