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for those who recieve(d) the service of social services

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
right... i have never heard anyone talk about their experiences with social services in a good way. it seems to me nobody has a good word to say about them, although everyone bad mouths them at the first opportunity. okay so, personally, i do hate them and have done since i was a lot younger so i am also a person who has nothing good to say about them from experience. anyway... what occurred to me today was, does anyone have a good thing to say about social services? has anyone ever had a good experience with social services? and also just out of interest given the above it also occurred to me as to why would anyone want to become a social worker - or is that they just randomly think they could do some good? what do you think about social services... this is a purely random question btw but i'd be interested to hear some replies.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yes I have.

    Don't know why people would want to work for them though.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've never had any involvement or contact with them in any way.

    but surely, social services are concerned with social problems and their causes, and as such will only become involved in cases where there is a problem.
    This being so, anyone who has had any dealings with social services is likely to have been experiencing "problems" (whatever they may be, from a huge list of things), and as such is more likely to have bad things to say about that period of their life than good things.

    although that's merely a guess.
  • **helen****helen** Deactivated Posts: 9,235 Supreme Poster
    Replicant wrote: »
    This being so, anyone who has had any dealings with social services is likely to have been experiencing "problems" (whatever they may be, from a huge list of things), and as such is more likely to have bad things to say about that period of their life than good things.

    I think that is probably true in a lot of cases. But it's very interesting that this topic has come up as just last night I was out with a social worker at a party and one of her clients from about ten years ago came up to her to tell her how great she was, and how well she has been doing recently.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Most of the people I know who have good things to say about social services tend to have it to have been involved as a third party, or have looked back on things afterwards, as other people have mentioned here.

    It often depends on what situation people are involved in, very few people tend to have good things to say at the time, for example, about the social workers who work in child protection or emergency duty social workers. But they are often the people asked to do some of the very worst parts of social work.

    On the other hand, many people I know have been helped with issues around disability support, dementia care, elderly care or terminal illness. The circumstance is all I guess.

    But as to why people choose to do it - if you're asking about services like child protection, I couldn't honestly tell you - little pay, huge workload, and few thanks for the work they do doesn't seem to be the ideal work package. I guess some people do, thankfully, believe they can help.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm sure I read somewhere that many people who go into social care have been in care themselves or something?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i'm doing a social work degree at the moment. I think that social services do a lot of good work, but a lot of this is unrecognised as it only tends to be the cases where mistakes are made or where people are unhappy with what social services have done that make the news or are heard about. from various placements i've found that while people are apprehensive about social services getting involved, they can provide the right support to help people live their lives, and thats the reason that i am wanting to go in to working for social services.

    Its not a bed of roses though, its difficult work, people don't want you involved in their lives for whatever reasons, theres not enough resources or funding, departments are overstretched etc but when you realise that you've helped someone live their life the way they want to, this makes you feel really good, and there are people out there that are appreciative of the help that social services give. And thats why i've chosen to go in to it, is that there are people that need help or support out there in one way or another, and i think they should be given the chance to access it.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've got a friend who's a foster carer, she does a pretty good job BUT social services give her completely unsuitable kids, too many kids, don't arrange education for them, take them away from her and put them somewhere they are not getting looked after, arrange meetings at ridiculous times at short notice and expect her to find a baby sitter for the kids, do nothing when the kids get taken into hospital and are generally really unsupportive as soon as the kids are over the doorstep.

    I my mum also never has a good word to say about them, as a lot of her patients are in need of social services support and don't get it. Yet she gets lots of hassle from them wanting details of a couple of her patients appointments so they can fight a court case.

    They must do some good but they really don't have a good reputation for it and I can think of 2 foster kids I know now who are going to become part of that fantastic statistic about kids in case who end up in jail, purely because Social Services let them down.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    My current social worker is really good, because she knows i've had crap from a lot of other people. Even though i'm no longer in care, social services still have a "duty of care" until i'm 21, and to be honest, the finacial support is ok (not good enough but better than nothing), but other than that they aren't much hat, than for writing letters helping me to get grants...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yes I have.

    Don't know why people would want to work for them though.
    I work for them:D
    Although I'm only admin its still a very important role considering that alot of the social workers dont really know how to use a computer and often throw things into scanning that really dont need to be scanned.

    Thing is I can see things from both sides of the story...My family was/is involved with SS because my sister has autism. My sisters first SWorker told my parents that it would be for the best to put me into the care system so they could devote 100% of their attention to my sis. When I found this out I was not impressed to say the least.

    And my mate recently had her kids put on the CPRegister cos a nurse thought a bump on her (just learning how to walk so was falling all over the place) baby, was a sign of abuse. and since that her bourgh have been arses to her and not provideing reports, not giving dates of when baby was due to return home, cancelling meetings last min and not imforming her. But then this borough are shit and its to be expected from them.

    Looking at it from the veiw I have in my job, I can see how easy it is to make mistakes, admin not updating an address, or a warning flag not being taken off, or being put on by mistake can make the SWorker look like a blithering idiot. Also if the filing system hasnt been updated and files go missing, we (as clients) expect out SWorkers to remember who we are, why we were fisrt referred to SS and what progress we have made, just off the top of thier head just they have only just been assigned to our case when in reality the SWorker has 15 other cases to remember stuff for too.


    Ok my rant is over and I shall go and read everybody elses replys now...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    My family recently had to get social services to help us because of my Gran's situation in her OAP home... The social worker we had was absolutly fantastic and got everything sorted out for us. :)

    My mum has to liase (sp?) with social workers a lot through her job (she's a behaviour support teacher) and does come across a lot of crap ones, but I think mainly they get stuck with the system being how it is and stuff.. she does come across very good and helpful ones as well.

    Personally I'd never consider being a social worker cos it must be very stressful and the general view of them seems to be that they're crap... it would be hard to cope with. You'd probably also see a lot of bad things happening that you could do little to help with tbh. :yeees:
  • Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
    Zella wrote: »
    And my mate recently had her kids put on the CPRegister cos a nurse thought a bump on her (just learning how to walk so was falling all over the place) baby, was a sign of abuse. and since that her bourgh have been arses to her and not provideing reports, not giving dates of when baby was due to return home, cancelling meetings last min and not imforming her. But then this borough are shit and its to be expected from them.
    For God's sake!
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