Mission Impossible? - The Challenge of Promoting Social Work in a Health and Social Care Trust
This paper focuses on the challenges for Social work in the first Care Trust in the U.K. and is presented by the first Social Work Consultant. I will reflect on the pressures, demands and benefits of integrated working and will identify key issues for the profession. In Britain in 2000, the Government in their Modernisation agenda announced the setting up of Care Trusts to improve the coordination and delivery of health and social care services. The Northumberland Care Trust was set up in April, 2002 and is the integration of primary health care and adult social services. The mainly rural population is served by social workers working with specific service user groups.
My unique role was devised to promote social work within this new management structure and culture. The challenges are many - how does social work work with health and retain its identity? Nationally social workers, stressed from continuing Government initiatives and the demands of performance management, experience low morale; a loss of therapeutic work and an underuse of core professional skills. How can social work values and practice be maintained and promoted? I need to inform senior managers of the value of the holistic social work approach in managing risk, conflict and change; in problem solving and prevention; and in working directly with individuals and families to promote independence, choice and control. There are also national issues to be considered such as registration, recruitment and the new post-qualifying framework.
My post outwith operational management allows me to work in a multifaceted way to achieve change. With formal links with a local university I can bring academia and practice more closely together through the development of research initiatives and teaching opportunities. As a champion, catalyst and conduit, I aim to improve the quality of social work practice within the Trust and thus improve the service to the person in need.
Social Work faces an uncertain future but this paper demonstrates a positive way forward.