Recording and report writing in social work: SW Student Connect Webinar 43

Summary

In "Recording and Report Writing in Social Work: SW Student Connect Webinar 43," Siobhan Maclean and a panel of esteemed guests delve into the crucial skills of report writing and documentation in social work. The session unpacks practical tips across different fields, spotlighting the significance of precise, empathetic, and purpose-driven record-keeping. By emphasizing the human side of social work, the panel underscores the vital impact of well-barred documentation on both social workers and service users, highlighting methodologies like the 4Ps model to enhance clarity and efficacy in reporting.

Highlights

• Social work documentation is a powerful narrative tool that extends beyond mere record-keeping, entwining empathy with precision 📖.
• The panel introduced the 4Ps framework to streamline the report writing process: Purpose, Point, Prediction, and Plan ✌️.
• Emphasizing the human dimension in social work documentation turns mundane records into impactful, life-affirming stories 🌱.
• While writing reports, ensure your language remains respectful, clear, and devoid of unnecessary jargon for broader comprehension 🔠.
• Incorporating the client's perspective and voice into documentation leads to more effective and personalized social interventions 👥.
• Discussions shared strategies to avoid bias, ensuring that reports are reflective of the true circumstances of service users 🚫.

Key Takeaways

• Social work documentation is not just a bureaucratic duty but a storytelling privilege that captures the essence of a client's life journey 📚.
• Understanding the 'why' behind report writing is as crucial as the 'what' and 'how' of the process 🤔.
• The 4Ps (Purpose, Point, Prediction, Plan) provide a structured approach to creating clear and effective reports 📝.
• Employ empathy and respect in your language to accurately and compassionately portray a client's narrative 💖.
• Incorporating the voice of the client and accurate, jargon-free language ensures more impactful and inclusive documentation 🗣️.
• Reflecting on past behaviors helps predict future outcomes, which is essential in making informed social work decisions 🔍.
• Precision with details, like spelling names correctly, greatly affects the validity and integrity of social work records 🔠.

Overview

In a lively and informative session, Siobhan Maclean alongside a distinguished panel delved into the art and science of social work documentation. The event shared essential tips and strategies that advocate for more meaningful, accurate, and empathetic record keeping. The discussion revolved around harnessing the power of storytelling in reports, making them not just documents but important life narratives.

The panel highlighted various frameworks and methodologies, such as Farah Khan's 4Ps – Purpose, Point, Prediction, and Plan – for structuring clear and impactful reports. These methodologies empower social workers to maintain clarity and focus while embracing empathy in their writing. Speakers underscored the importance of accuracy and empathy, elements that transform record keeping from a clerical task into a human-centered mission.

In emphasizing the real-world implications of social work documentation, the webinar championed a shift in perspective. It urged professionals to view documentation as a crucial part of their role that significantly impacts individuals' lives. They highlighted how proper documentation supports informed decision-making, facilitates transparency, and fosters trust between social workers and clients.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Welcome to Webinar 43 This chapter introduces Webinar 43, which focuses on the topics of report writing and recording. The host welcomes attendees and highlights the presence of a special panel for the discussion. Participants are invited to share their current location and professional background, such as being a social worker, student, or practice educator, as the session aims to tailor its discussions around these profiles. Enthusiasm for an engaging and relevant seminar is emphasized.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Purpose and Importance of Report Writing The chapter discusses the purpose and importance of report writing. It begins with a prompt for the reader, asking them about their last experience with writing a letter, excluding emails. This is used as an analogy to emphasize the infrequency and special nature of traditional report writing compared to everyday electronic communication. The context is set within a webinar setting, indicating the broader application and relevance of report writing skills in professional and educational environments, with 150 attendees involved in the session.
• 03:30 - 05:00: Introduction of Guest Speakers and Topics The 43rd webinar introduces guest speakers and topics focusing on recording and report writing. The session begins with an interactive segment, asking participants about their current roles and the last time they wrote a letter. Siobhan is introduced as one of the session leaders, taking over the conversation.
• 05:00 - 13:00: Farah Khan on Recording and Report Writing Tips The chapter titled 'Farah Khan on Recording and Report Writing Tips' parallels a similar format to a previous essay writing webinar. It provides various tips from different individuals on assignment writing, all of whom are at various stages of their social work careers. The chapter focuses on sharing diverse experiences related to writing records and reports.
• 14:00 - 25:00: Mary Buckman on Social Work Report Writing This chapter discusses the nuances of writing and recording in social work, focusing on the transition from handwriting to digital entries. The panel aims to explore the best practices in record-keeping, ensuring accuracy and reliability in documentation. Although the session segues into various tips, the central theme is about improving how social work records are written and organized effectively, highlighting the importance of doing the 'right' thing, both ethically and procedurally, in documentation.
• 27:00 - 36:00: Richard Devine on Understanding Chronologies The chapter begins with the host acknowledging the packed schedule of the session, suggesting that the audience might want to revisit the session later on YouTube due to the numerous important points being discussed. The host skips formalities and promptly hands over the microphone to the first guest speaker, Pharah, indicating the beginning of the guest presentations.
• 37:00 - 47:00: Ian on Perspective of the Assessed The chapter titled 'Ian on Perspective of the Assessed' features a transcript of a speaker, Farah Khan, who introduces herself to the audience. She expresses pleasure and honor at being present and mentions joining from Leeds. Farah is the principal social worker for children and families in Leeds and also holds the title of head of service. She shares her career experience, highlighting her extensive work in Leeds, including roles in partner authorities dealing with children and families, as well as involvement in the voluntary sector.
• 47:00 - 49:00: Caroline Aldridge's Book and Quote The chapter provides tips for recording and report writing, as well as insights from being on decision-making panels. It discusses expectations for meetings and reviews, specifically focusing on child protection case conferences.
• 49:00 - 58:00: Dan on Case Recording in Welsh Context The chapter titled 'Dan on Case Recording in Welsh Context' explores various meetings and reports social workers encounter, such as fostering panels, adoption panels, and court reports. The speaker reflects on their social work training, particularly a memorable course led by Barnardo's which featured insights from young people in care, emphasizing the importance of imagining the child's perspective in these processes.
• 58:00 - 64:00: Alex Moaks on Voice of the Child and Report Clarity The chapter starts with a metaphor of someone looking over one's shoulder while writing about them, emphasizing the importance of considering others' perspectives. Alex Moaks shares a personal anecdote about being severely dyslexic and discusses how it has influenced the development of unique strategies for effective communication, suggesting that readers adopt what works for them.
• 64:00 - 70:00: Summary and Conclusion: Privilege and Responsibility in Record Keeping In this final chapter titled 'Summary and Conclusion: Privilege and Responsibility in Record Keeping', the speaker reflects on their personal method developed for organizing and processing information efficiently, which aids in report generation. Despite technical issues with the microphone and chat, they share their strategy, emphasizing its visual nature, which aligns with their learning style. The framework they propose is coined as 'purpose point prediction plan', characterized by its simplicity and alliteration with the letter 'P', making it memorable and effective for organizing thoughts and data.

Recording and report writing in social work: SW Student Connect Webinar 43 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hi everybody and welcome to webinar43 tonight we'll be talking about report writing and recording and we have a very special panel of special guests for you while you're all coming into the room we've got 60 of you so far what i want to ask you is where in the world are you um are you a social worker are you a student are you a practice educator what field of work are you in and because tonight is talking about
• 00:30 - 01:00 recording and report writing i want to know when was the last time you wrote a letter to somebody so um emails don't count for this kind of question when's the last time you wrote a letter to somebody so tell us um what kind of letter you wrote we don't need like all the details um but if if you've written a letter recently what did you write and when was last time you wrote a letter so we are on webinar 43 we have 150 people here
• 01:00 - 01:30 so tell us where in the world you are are you a student social worker are you a practice educator um and when was the last time you wrote a letter um it is three minutes passed and the numbers seem to have slowed down so i'm going to hand over to siobhan and i'm going to read the rest of your comments in the chat so brilliant thanks everyone so as kelly said welcome to our 43rd um webinar we are tonight looking at uh recording and report writing and we're actually going to follow a
• 01:30 - 02:00 similar kind of format to the format that we had for our essay writing webinar because that was so popular with different people giving you different tips about what worked for them so tonight we've got lots of people with lots of different tips about assignment writing and there are all different uh stages i suppose of their own social work career and journey and their own experiences of writing records and reports and and so everybody's going to be sharing
• 02:00 - 02:30 different kinds of tips tonight that will all come together and we'll bring them all together at the end so um just checking the slides aren't moving there we go so we're going to be looking at doing the right thing in your recording and i suppose it's a bit of a play on words as in write or writing you're recording most people are now typing recording i suppose instead of handwriting them but it's all that about how do we write our records and our fabulous panel of guests i'm not going to
• 02:30 - 03:00 introduce each of them at this moment because they will introduce themselves as the session goes along and but it's going to be a very packed session and i think probably one that you're going to want to watch back on youtube actually and just pick up again because there's so many um really fabulous points to be made tonight so i'm not going to mess around i am just going to hand straight over to our first guest um pharah if you're there and can switch your microphone on then um we're going to hand over to you
• 03:00 - 03:30 hi thank you siobhan i am um hi everyone it's uh an absolute pleasure to be here and an honor and so my name is farah khan i'm joining you from leeds and it's really nice to see lots and lots of people from yorkshire joining us and so yeah let's keep it going in the north uh principal social worker for children and families in leads and also a head of service and i suppose um you know i have worked he leads most of my career uh but also in the partner in authority for a while in children and families and the voluntary sector
• 03:30 - 04:00 and what i want to do today is to share with you a few tips that i've developed along the way in relation to recording and report writing but also uh based on now being more on decision making panels um you know that what the expectations are on what people are looking for or when you do go to different meetings or reviews etc so i thought the um reviews we could the um meetings we could look at is maybe child protection case conferences looked
• 04:00 - 04:30 after reviews uh legal gateway meetings people call them different things in different authorities might be a fostering panel report an adoption panel report and also the dreaded court report um and just uh you know years ago when i trained to be a social worker many many moons ago and something stuck with me i went on a training course delivered by bernardo's uh by young people who were looked after and one of the young people said imagine that i'm stood behind you
• 04:30 - 05:00 uh looking over your shoulder um imagine that i'm doing that while you're writing about me and that's something that's always stayed with me so i think that's really important can we go to the next slide please um i also i'm going to share something personal with you so i'm quite severely dyslexic and that means that i have developed a range of weird ways that work for me so if this just take bits from this that might work from you but these are tips that
• 05:00 - 05:30 i've developed that actually worked for me and helps me organize and process um information that can then make sense for reports and i hope you can all hear me because the micros aren't working too well earlier and my chat isn't working now um so i look at things in a way um that actually stick i'm quite a visual learner and so i came up with this concept of um purpose point prediction plan and i thought that's all the p's and it's actually quite easy to
• 05:30 - 06:00 remember so if i think of four ps in relation to report writing i thought that's quite an easy concept to remember so it's not rocket science as social workers and i'm not an academic uh but i just devised things and took the best bits of other people's work and thought about what would work for me and i suppose whatever format you're writing in whatever meeting you're writing for it's really important to think about the purpose and take a little bit of time to think
• 06:00 - 06:30 about the purpose of your report because i think if you're clear on the purpose that will help you um that will guide you through the report but also make sure that you stick to what the aim of the report is um and the purpose the definition of a purpose is really why we're doing something you know and what's our aim and intention what are we trying to do so if you think about um a looked after a child a child care review where children are in local authority care what you want to do when you're writing a report for bar is you want to give an
• 06:30 - 07:00 update on where the child's at and you want to provide a really thorough understanding of the child's needs and circumstances for that meeting and so if you focus on that then you will have that in mind when you're going in to write your report um so i always spend a bit of time thinking about purpose and also reading a lot of reports it's very very clear people who've spent time thinking about purpose and because we know that they're not copy and pasting from different reports
• 07:00 - 07:30 and they're not copying and pasting from for example um an assessment that's kind of been done six months ago to a review that's happening now so they're thinking about them now and i know it's so tempting when you're busy to think that copying and pasting in this is the solution and it's absolutely not because what you can do is be informed by what's happened before but firstly if it was about me i'd be quite insulted that people haven't taken the time to
• 07:30 - 08:00 update what they're writing but secondly it actually uh comes across to the reader as not professional as sloppy and it's quite you know um and actually not up to date not being truly reflective and providing um a real picture of what's going on so think about your purpose think about why you're writing that report and what what your aim is if you go into a decision making panel then you want to make sure that you're clear on what the decision is that you're
• 08:00 - 08:30 seeking and also um that you've thought about all the possible outcomes um so the next slice thank you siobhan you're better than professor chris whittie then the um point and in this in this kind of uh uh in in report writing in relation to this subject matter uh staying to the point which is really hard for me i'm conscious of time it's about uh you know sticking to the topic keep to the topic without drifting to other topics and this is really easy done because in
• 08:30 - 09:00 social work and i'm finding it a challenge right now we tend to drift and our mind tends to drift here there and everywhere and you practice educators will do it and you'll pick that up if you are a practice educator be mindful that you're teaching students good habits um so what i mean by that is you know it's okay to talk about what's happening now and maybe a little bit of history to inform to understand patterns of behavior but if you go into somebody's um history unnecessarily
• 09:00 - 09:30 and actually think to yourself is this necessary is this adding anything to the report what is the person reading going to gain from this what how is it going to make a difference to the person i'm writing about to their lives then that's really important so um by that i mean sometimes report can be really overly critical because we hang on to history in a negative way and don't allow people to move on so stick to the point you know it is not a young person's fault if they've had a care history but what we do is often when we write
• 09:30 - 10:00 about them now we don't let go of the care history you know we write them out amount as if they have to carry that burden and we don't look from a strength based approach so that's what i mean about point think about your point next slide please okay and i've got prediction what is prediction actually and it's uh you know a lot of uh people think about prediction as um you know analytical prediction and kind of computer and machine learning but actually as human beings we predict
• 10:00 - 10:30 all the time so today i was going out looked a bit cloudy i took my umbrella with me there was a chance of rain so i think it's really important that you think of um from the information you have what are you predicting what's that information telling you what do you think will happen based on that information and again it's not rocket science yet a covering information what's relevant uh to the point and then you're thinking about how that affects the child and family and predictions based on evidence of
• 10:30 - 11:00 okay because that's what we do in social work at all in social work all the time predictions based on uh biases or discrimination or what we think um you know is is right or not okay so make sure that your predictions are based on the information you've gathered and that they're backed up by evidence and use research appropriately as well but according to research you can find research to back up anything you believe in
• 11:00 - 11:30 and so if you come with a bias you will find research to back up your bias so i say to people unless you're going to read news research the right way you know don't go there it's important that we think about research because research helps us develop and grow and understand and learn however you know you have to make sure you're not using it to back up your biases and just to prove a point because we can easily do that and try that theory out sometimes it's so easy to do can we have the next slide please and
• 11:30 - 12:00 finally you know all your kind of your um your purpose your point your prediction the pointless unless you're going to formulate a plan out of them and so you know we've got to make sure that all that information we gather and what we predict we're actually using it to inform what support a family needs so a plan is really a proposal for doing or achieving something and so you know if i go to slimming world and they tell me that i need to lose so many stone and i go on the scale
• 12:00 - 12:30 then help me devise a plan as a result of that if i just went there and they told me offer it and made me feel really useless and not achieving anything there would be no point for me to go so think about that when you're doing your reports there has to be a plan reports are not just about gathering evidence and they're not just there to capture in history um information about a family they have to formulate a plan because otherwise there's no point of doing them and i think the best plans come from reports and that are actually
• 12:30 - 13:00 quite clear that a strength base that are positive but another p that i forgot to add in here that are about the person so think about what you would want written about you don't write anything about anything anybody else that you wouldn't want to see about you and people often think that they can't write positively where there are concerns and of course you can there's always a different way to write something i think i kept that in time you
• 13:00 - 13:30 absolutely did paris thank you so much and although you had four p's as you were talking there were so many other p's weren't like you were talking there about the person and being positive and you could have done 20 p's really but what i loved was that idea of four p's and although your slides say child-friendly leads and obviously you were talking at the beginning about um decision making forums around children those four p's could be applied anywhere in any area of social work and that's what i really liked about what you've
• 13:30 - 14:00 just shared there and i think it was a great start to the evening so thank you very much for that pharah i'm sure there's going to be lots of questions for you in the q while i can see questions popping up already so i think you'll be busy in the chat now for the rest of the evening pharah thank you and now we're going to um hand over to mary so although pharaoh started us off thinking about children's services tonight we've been joined by people from across the whole spectrum of um social work so i'm hoping mary mary's now
• 14:00 - 14:30 spotlighted so mary if you put your mic on i'm going to hand over to you thank you siobhan um yeah so i'm mary buckman mental health social worker by background and still a practicing approved mental health professional i am the associate director of social care for oxford health nhs foundation trust which is a mental health and community health provider across a number of different counties and i'm also the co-chair of the bowser england mental health special interest group so
• 14:30 - 15:00 what i want to say first is thank you to siobhan for inviting me this evening and it's really nice to be speaking to all of you how many hundreds of you there are out there in the ether what you'll also notice today is there's going to be some golden threads that run through probably all of the speakers there'll be some common themes that we're using and there'll be a reason for that so pay particular attention if you're finding that we're saying the same things even in slightly different ways so i want to talk about social work
• 15:00 - 15:30 report writing and as siobhan has just said whilst i'll be talking from particularly from a mental health um an adult social care um perspective these um suggestions and hints are relevant across the board so i want to start with thinking about who your audience is what is this thing you're writing who is it for who's going to be reading it we don't write these things just to sit in files on computers we write reports for a reason someone
• 15:30 - 16:00 needs it we need to be very mindful of them our power when we're writing reports we have access to a huge amount of information about people we know much more about them than they know about us we're writing that down for other people to see it so as you've heard pharah say earlier i would also be saying that write your report always might write your reports as if the subject of them will be reading them
• 16:00 - 16:30 because whilst that might not be true immediately for whatever reason the context might not enable that to happen they may well access their records at some point in the future and what you don't want to happen is you've written a report as if the person you're writing about is not going to read it and you're saying things in a way that might be difficult for them to read but also might be quite harmful to them if they're reading something particularly if they don't agree with it or you've got some facts wrong so if we're thinking about the service
• 16:30 - 17:00 user um the family reading the report we're writing we'll be extra careful to make sure that what we're writing is accurate how are you referring to them what language are you using firstly be consistent but also be respectful don't automatically use the person's first name if possible if you've been able to involve them in the writing of the report for example if you're writing a mental health tribunal report a report
• 17:00 - 17:30 for the court of protection have you been able to involve them in that process have you talked to them about this report that you're writing what language do you want them to use they want you to use so ask them if possible and only use their first name if that's what they want i would suggest the default is always to use mr mismas but ask them what prefix they would prefer and the voice of the person you're there
• 17:30 - 18:00 representing them you're telling a story using your professional judgment but you're telling a story and make sure that the voice of the person is coming through so reports that i receive that i think are really good at reports that i can read having no previous knowledge of that person and no i leave that report thinking i know a little bit about them i know what they like as a person i know what's important to them i can feel their voice coming through this this report
• 18:00 - 18:30 so in terms of the structure what story are you telling you know if you're writing an essay you start with formulating an argument so what is that argument and how are you going to structure it so some you know some reports thinking of it like an essay can be quite useful some reports come with a pre-existing structure um social circumstances reports for tribunals often have a standard template that is quite useful but what is it you're saying so don't just bring a lot of facts
• 18:30 - 19:00 together without thinking about what it is you're trying to evidence they're going to be decisions made often by other people based on what you've put in that report so be very mindful of what facts you are using or information that you've obtained that you're presenting as facts i'm going to give you an example from from my practice from many years ago when i read a report saying that someone had aspergers
• 19:00 - 19:30 and as a result of having asperger's they weren't eligible for learning disability services and it excluded them rightly or wrongly these days diagnoses either ena entitle you to services or sometimes exclude you from services and it took a lot of unpicking to say where does this come from where is this diagnosis come from i'm not i can't see anything else in his records but there was one reference to um a consultant who'd seen him once in passing many years ago and thought he
• 19:30 - 20:00 might have aspergers and in every other report it was written as fact it was written as he has asperger's and actually he didn't um and because of that he'd been excluded from the appropriate support services for him so if you are including things like diagnosis or including information about risk behaviors or vulnerabilities that they might have make sure that that information is accurate you know you can always ask them
• 20:00 - 20:30 and members of their family as well sometimes some of the complaints we receive after people have accessed records is that there's something written here that's not true and i don't know where it's come from so always make sure you know and i saw in the chat earlier references to cutting and pasting it's always evident when that's happened so make sure when you're writing a report that you are writing something fresh if you are lifting and shifting from someone else's report or a report that's written for a different purpose
• 20:30 - 21:00 it will be quite clear but also you don't necessarily know where the author of that piece of work got their information from and if you haven't written the report before ask what good looks like so if you have no idea what a tribunal report looks like a social circumstances report or report for the court of protection ask if one has been done by one of your colleagues speak to your supervisors speak to your team managers about is there a good version that i can read so i get an idea of how to
• 21:00 - 21:30 structure and how to present this information um we don't always know we've always we've all been there for the first time staring at the blank screen not knowing where to start always a good idea to see if you can say is there a good version of the report that i can see and make sure that the information you're putting in the report is relevant we have as part of our professional role access to huge amounts of information about people and be clear who your audience is as
• 21:30 - 22:00 we've talked about before and make sure that the information you're putting in that report is relevant to the argument that you're making don't just put all the information you have into the report if it's not relevant because it's not your information so what have you assessed if this is an assessment report and you are giving your professional opinion don't be afraid to talk about your professional judgment there's a reason that you're writing the report it's because you're a social worker
• 22:00 - 22:30 with expertise you've made an assessment you are giving them your professional judgment and often making recommendations whether that's to a tribunal to a court or to some kind of for some kind of resource um panel so make sure that you're being clear don't be afraid to say in it is my judgment that you've presented the evidence to support that don't just come out with your judgment from nowhere present all the evidence and don't be afraid to say it's your professional judgment
• 22:30 - 23:00 remember your social work values and demonstrate them in what you're writing don't make value judgments um in adult social care we're often going into people's homes we might be seeing circumstances that are quite challenging they might be struggling to care for themselves there might be examples of self-neglect be really careful how you describe that think about rights-based approaches as well you know what if you're structuring your argument to
• 23:00 - 23:30 achieve something whether it's to access resources or whether it's um for a tribunal or a panel to make a decision about someone maybe leaving hospital no longer being detained under the mental health act um think about the rights of the person and how you are supporting those rights um to be enabled avoid jargon we hate jargon we all use it we all do every day but don't put it in a report particularly acronyms
• 23:30 - 24:00 even things like cmht for example we might use it every day um mhp cpn cmht we use them all the time if you're going to use them a report at least the first time you use it spell out what that acronym actually stands for remember that you're the expert there's a reason you've been asked for the report and that's because you've made an assessment so you are the expert and if for example it's a tribunal where you write a report and then you're
• 24:00 - 24:30 expected to present that report and answer questions on it remember it's your report so you should be happy to stand by the information you've put in it and the recommendations you've made and then read before sending it grammar and spelling spell checks are wonderful but they don't correct things that are real words so sometimes you can end up with the the wrong words being used in the wrong context because it's not picked it up in spell check and sometimes the grammar suggestions that come through don't particularly
• 24:30 - 25:00 make sense so try and structure i don't find that easy grammar is is terrible i find it really hard to structure things and i have to read it again and again but sentence construction where you put a comma can really change the meaning of a sentence so be really clear about what it is you're trying to say how you've structured your paragraphs to make that argument read it before sending it as i say i often read reports that are written by
• 25:00 - 25:30 other people and it's a real heart sync moment because you read a lot of reports we're all rushed you read a report and you think i'm not sure what this is saying i'm not sure about this or the grammar's really wrong where there's lots of spelling mistakes and i can't if i'm being asked to approve it i can't send it where it needs to go there's work that needs to be done on it i'll only end up sending it back to you which is always a bit of a heart sync when i have to structure an email saying thanks for it thanks for this report i know you've put a lot of work into it
• 25:30 - 26:00 but can you pay some attention to and the last thing you want is kind of a report that comes back to you with loads of track changes all over it which it's a hard thing to do it it's a hard thing to receive it and we've all been there you know the clocks ticking we've got 100 million things to do we've got this report to get done we get it done we put the last last full stop in and we ping it off take 10 minutes just take a deep breath step away make
• 26:00 - 26:30 yourself a drink come back and read it fresh read it through because that's when you'll spot the difference any issues with it and the last point for me if you're really not clear ask for help ask for assistance ask someone else to read it if at all you're unclear i'd much rather do that then it come back to you further down the line and that's it for me hope that was helpful thank you thank you very much for that mary sharing your advice i'm going to go
• 26:30 - 27:00 straight over now to hand on to richard if you can put your mic on and introduce yourself richard hi everybody um my name's rich devine i'm a social worker for barf at northeast somerset council i qualified in 2010 i spent several years working in a long-term child protection team and i've spent the last three four years uh doing parenting assessments since i've had extensive experience of writing assessments um it's
• 27:00 - 27:30 i just want to say it's really exciting to be here i've watched so many of these webinars and finally to get chance to meet uh the student connect team and and and obviously to meet siobhan she's uh like when you've been in social work as long as i have she's like a national social work treasure so um so the i'm going to talk about i'm going to make five key points to today and um basically these are five key points that i've extracted out over the past 10 years
• 27:30 - 28:00 in terms of what i think it basically the five points derived from a blog i wrote about why the why of chronologies um if you've watched any of the past webinars in the past she would have siobhan you would have heard siobhan talk about how we often get taught in social work uh what to do when to do it and how to do it but but less often we're taught why to do it and um so the the the why of why we do
• 28:00 - 28:30 chronologies and the principles i'm going to talk about today are relevant to whether you do a single assessment or um a court report or any other type of report i think within children family social work so the first thing is about understanding children social care and involve involvement i like to know uh uh every referral and what the outcome was every every assessment that's been undertaken
• 28:30 - 29:00 uh and the outcome whether there's been strategy meetings or legal meetings and if care proceedings i would like that to be included too it's really important i think to kind of understand in the present the extent of social work involvement that the family has had in the past i want to be able to know has this family had two social workers or if they had seven social workers and if they've had seven social workers for example i want to be able to look either through the history or the records that
• 29:00 - 29:30 we have or directly with the family which of those seven social workers that were was the most successful informing a kind of meaningful alliance and relationship with and see if there's anything that i can replicate or learn from them the second the second key point is understanding uh patterns of behavior this is probably one of the most crucial parts of our role within within children's social work and and part of it is because we're
• 29:30 - 30:00 trying to determine whether we should be involved or whether the involvement should be statutory or not and i don't think there's anything more crucial than than that um and so when we're looking at patterns behavior whether that be substance misuse domestic abuse mental health or neglect we want to be looking at these three components um the duration the severity and the frequency uh in the science of safety literature
• 30:00 - 30:30 they have quite a useful way of conceptualizing this and it's the the first worst and last and it's kind of a similar idea and the reason why this is important because the duration is what provides information on how long the individuals experience the pattern of behavior because if the pattern if there's a pattern of behavior that's been in place longer is more likely to be difficult to change the severity gives us an idea of how severe the pattern is and therefore
• 30:30 - 31:00 helps us understand the impact of the intensity of support that's going to be needed and the frequency gives us an idea about the impact upon functioning and patterns that manifest in different contexts across time are predicted to be more resistant to change whereas patterns that are context specific are predicted to be uh more um malleable to change especially if the
• 31:00 - 31:30 context that facilitated the pattern changes um the third point ah i forgot to put this bit in is um so this is a quote from eileen monroe in her book effective child protection uh the the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and and that's a really important quote it's not a good predictor it's the best predictor of um future behavior is past behavior
• 31:30 - 32:00 um the third point is around support and and we're looking at three free elements here uh what support has been provided what the pattern of engagement is and what the impact of support is there's really limited utility in working with a family without understanding the support that has been being provided in the past because you risk duplication offering that which has already been provided it's an ineffective use of resources
• 32:00 - 32:30 there's um and there's repetition of the same outcomes so for example if you if we provided parenting support and there continues to be concerns for parenting um then we must consider two things really one that the the parent in support um is unlikely to yield a different outcome if we were to provide it again and two um that perhaps we've misunderstood the problem that if it's um perhaps it's their drug
• 32:30 - 33:00 use or some unresolved trauma that's interfering with their parenting rather than parenting per se um and there's one other point i would like to make about support is that you don't want to get too hung up on engagement with support because some families or some parents they can engage in every service under the sun and make no changes to the to the the experiences that they afford the children whereas some parents won't engage in any
• 33:00 - 33:30 of the services but still make the changes that's required the fourth point is looking at child's developmental experiences especially in terms of the impact of harm and and i would tie that into patterns of behavior that was discussed during the second slide so what i want to be able to do as a social worker is look through the history either on the system or with the family
• 33:30 - 34:00 and for each incident or event we want to know whether the child was present and if so what they heard what they saw and how they reacted at their time at the time and we're really trying to get a sense of the children's lived experiences um and it's also important that we try and understand children's development across time it may be that the behavior of a seven-year-old makes more sense if we understand what happened when the child was two years old
• 34:00 - 34:30 and equally it may be that we were farah talked about prediction if we look at a child's um emotional behavioral presentation and we see that there's problems that begin for example from the age of two and we see that it increasingly gets worse when the child is free and then again when the child is four and then again when the child is five we can begin to make predictions about the likely trajectory of their development if if change doesn't occur and i suppose
• 34:30 - 35:00 that's the important part if change doesn't occur we can make predictions about the possible trajectory and then the final uh but most important point i suppose um this is a quote by andrew tennell who founded signs of safety he he really was a master at finding exceptions times when the family coped well um in in the work that he did
• 35:00 - 35:30 and and his argument is that the worse the problem the more severe the difficulties are the more important it becomes to find find the positives no matter how small because it gives you um an opportunity it gives you something in which you can honor the family members with and exceptions may also include um times when so to give you an example i had a case where um we've been involved pretty
• 35:30 - 36:00 intensively for the last two or three years um and those substantial concerns and when i reviewed the chronology when i wrote the chronology what i found was that there had been we've had this serious involvement um for the last two or three years then we'd had no involvement for three or four years and then we had similar serious involvement for two or three years again so what i was then really interested in was what was happening in the life of that parent during those years and what could we do to try and replicate what was
• 36:00 - 36:30 happening in that parent's life um so it's really important that we um go out of our way and it's a skill to be developed looking for strengths um but it's really important that we that we go out of our way to exploit the family's pre-existing coping strategies and strengths in a way that gradually improves uh the safety of children and that is me done thank you very much
• 36:30 - 37:00 thank you very much rich that was great i really uh totally agree with you about finding those exceptions those positives and that's fascinating isn't it when you see in a chronology what was going on there when we didn't need to be involved finding that exception so thank you very much for sharing that and we're going to move very quickly on because we've got so much to get through tonight and i'm going to hand over now to ian if that's okay are you there ian yes i'm here good
• 37:00 - 37:30 evening all right um so my name's ian i'm a social worker by profession and a team manager at the moment working with people with learning disabilities and physical disabilities but i predominantly have a background with more complex neuro brain injury spinal injuries that kind of stuff in in my history but i also have an alter ego which is the samurai social worker on your screen and the samurai is very relevant because it's um
• 37:30 - 38:00 an experience and part of my psychosis so when i experience psychosis myself and was on the receiving end of an assessment uh it kind of changes your perspective very much about the assessment process what's involved how it takes place all of those component parts if you want to flip on one of my favorite quotes um and particularly a bit about how you make somebody feel
• 38:00 - 38:30 you know when you're sitting in the presence of somebody you may well be distressed um experiencing something that they don't understand um you know what you say to that person how you view that person what you look at them like you know all of those things contribute to how uh that is received and the information is received from you in order to get a good assessment i need to be able to feel relaxed or to be able to trust you to be
• 38:30 - 39:00 able to have a rapport with you in order to give you information that you might find useful and you you know are going to have to work quite hard in order to build a trust with me when you are the all-powerful you want to flip on shiva so these are my little rules for understanding the perspective of the assessed and i just want you to know that these are my rules they're not everybody's rules um but they're relatively useful rules and i would like to hazard a guess that a lot of people who've been
• 39:00 - 39:30 receiving the assessments kind of have similar things and you know when you've been on the receiving end of a process i didn't understand the process when i was being assessed to go to hospital i didn't understand the process when i was in hospital it was really difficult for me to receive that information when i was extremely distressed and not in a good place you have as mary farah richard have all alluded to have lots of
• 39:30 - 40:00 power in this relationship and and you make the choice about whether you share that with me or not you know you can control that power you can hold that power but you're not going to get anything beneficial from me you know you are going to come across some kind of impenetrable wall um i'm going to feel vulnerable you know you're coming into my life when i don't want you to be in it um nobody really wants you in it you know we're social workers we're not
• 40:00 - 40:30 winning any popularity contests you know so when you're entering into my life i want you to enter into it with some compassion and empathy and i always really thought i was empathic in my practice and i thought i was really good at you know connecting with people but it's only when you've been on the receiving end you realize your limitations you know empathy now with people who have experienced something similar to me is almost automatic um you've got to try really hard to connect
• 40:30 - 41:00 with people and i did a neuro-linguistic programming practitioner course one of the main things i learned from that was uh you know three things about how to build productive relationships and that was to make sure that you had an unconditional positive regard for the person you're working with so absolute let that person know you've got positive intent for them build that report and by virtue of those two things it generates trust trust becomes automatic and then your
• 41:00 - 41:30 process just becomes a system of recording and you're gonna have to listen much much much much more than you talk you know i can talk i can talk very well and for england right but i know when to shut up and and so you need to go to show up uh think carefully about why you're asking questions because getting me started to talk is more important than ticking boxes in a form all right and you know you can gather the information you need to tip your
• 41:30 - 42:00 boxes in the form by getting me to talk if i don't talk you're not checking anything you know so get me started and then prompt me to start and i'll give an example of that when i went back to work after being offered six months um i spoke to basswood's uh social work union and somebody on the telephone uh talked me to my own solutions to some of the problems i was experiencing just by prompting me with
• 42:00 - 42:30 hmm yes and i see she didn't say anything else those were the only things she said and all it did was just prompt me to keep talking if you do need to get started on questions don't forget the who what where when why and how ruled and particularly the wise which it says things to remember and get right i am human hold my hand do whatever you need to do to validate me let me know that i exist you know when i was distressed i didn't know i existed i was someplace else
• 42:30 - 43:00 uh get the things that are really important to me correct in the detail and by that i mean in the amp assessment that was written about me they spelled my son's name wrong and it tortures me today all right so you know the detail of just that one thing is one thing in that assessment that causes me most pain try to avoid giving advice advice is not useful you know i need information so that i can shoot these things and
• 43:00 - 43:30 pathways that are good for myself uh respect my space and time uh when i had a cpn visit visit me he was answering his phone he was taking calls he was planning his next appointment it made me feel worthless um paraphrase lord repeat back to me just to make sure you understand what i'm meaning and not just your interpretation of what i'm saying it's really really important to share assessments back to somebody that's being assessed
• 43:30 - 44:00 and just a reminder the things that are incorrect can cause me pain and lost a very long time in my mind they're not going to last a long time in yours and they're going to waste a lot of your time and waste a lot of money right but they're going to they're not going to you know last long in your mind you're going to go home for your cup of tea and a slice of coke and i'm going to be sitting there looking over this assessment for months on end and i'm worried about the detail you want to flip on them this is something
• 44:00 - 44:30 and you can read this at your leisure when you get back to the youtube but this is something i posted up on facebook to all my friends um some time after i'd been uh recovered well i say recovered in the process of returning to work and it just says a lot of the things i think are important you know that process big grand gestures you know the plan for this to plan for that and a plan for everything else is fine but you need to find the key
• 44:30 - 45:00 that unlocks my door so that i can progress it myself and if you don't do that i'm not going anywhere you know so you know they're listening here they're very simple things being human they're all really important i want to read you a little poem because i think it summarizes you know lots of uh things for myself um i might not get to the end of it because it usually cracks me up but i'll give it a go
• 45:00 - 45:30 um so you think you can define me that i'm a tick in just one box like my being is a door that a single key unlocks but let me tell you something i have the universe inside i hold an untamed ocean with a constant changing tide i'm home to endless mountains with tips that touch the sky flocks of ground migrating birds and deserts harsh and dry i house the wildest rivers in the host of sweeping plains i feel in waves of sunshine or in unrelenting rains
• 45:30 - 46:00 don't tell me that you know me that this right here is what you are i'm the universe in motion because i was born from stars all right and i want you to remember that and feel it right because i feel that right you know my experience is based on being bullied in school and then the culmination of it is the ruination of me and now i've had to reform myself and refrain myself in order to get forward in my
• 46:00 - 46:30 life so if you want to fix the last slide in a shameless and brutally opportunistic plug this is so this is uh me and my two uh twitter feeds it started off with uh at positive simply and i started that before i became uh got detained and then i got detained and added the samurai worker and our bloggers the samurai social
• 46:30 - 47:00 worker if you want to read more it tells you some of my thoughts and feelings about the process and you know and i'm angry for quite a lot of that time and i spent an awful lot of time uh without seeing my son so i was i had my rights removed and as i follow one from that i was threatened with you know child protection action uh it'd be on the at-risk register my
• 47:00 - 47:30 ex-wife didn't want that you know so i didn't see my son for eight months and you know i think what i want you to understand that's really really significant you know is that what you do um has an extraordinary extraordinarily large impact right and so tread carefully yeah you know because you have the the opportunity to inflict pain as you can see all right so thanks from
• 47:30 - 48:00 me thank you ian um i'm always totally moved when you're talking and i'll put the microphone on ready to uh you know help with that poem as you were saying you'd get choked with it but i i got more joke probably anyway so i wouldn't have been any good um but i know uh last week we did a webinar on share and you contributed to share you came to the book launch and and talked about your experiences and i think um you know having also
• 48:00 - 48:30 received services and being a social worker it does give you a completely different perspective doesn't it and i always you know just i'm always in awe when i hear you speak so thank you so much and i know you're going to come back and also speak in more detail another webinar but thank you very much for sharing that perspective because i think it's really important um on tonight's session so thank you we're gonna move along quickly though because there are still um we've got two guests to go and some uh really fascinating insights and
• 48:30 - 49:00 advice into um recording but just i just did want to mention that this week um i've been reading um a book called he died waiting written by um caroline aldridge and caroline is going to be joining us um in june i've put the date there at a webinar but um this was a quote from that book which really struck me because obviously i knew we were doing recording this week and i read this and it made me think of what ian was going to share as well um but in the book caroline talks about her son tim
• 49:00 - 49:30 and she says the files that records tim's life in a way that misses the point of him completely there's no recognition of his intelligence his caring nature his resilience or his value to his friends and his family and people become a tick box and more than anything i think we wanted to in the center of tonight's webinar say that's the most important thing in recording and reporting that people are not tick boxes that people are people and so i'm going to hand over now
• 49:30 - 50:00 quickly to dan um if dan can put his mic on and introduce himself yeah hi uh evening everyone uh like the other panelists uh really pleased to be here tonight to be able to present to you uh yeah i've got to now follow ian so uh to cheers for that it's a bit like following the headline gig at glastonbury or something now but hopefully i'll uh i'll be able to share a little bit of knowledge from uh from a welsh
• 50:00 - 50:30 perspective because that's what i'm uh that's what i'm gonna bring tonight i've got um i'm a i'm a social worker i'm a service manager um within children's services in newport i mainly cover child protection i've i've been a social worker in uh in england and in wales so uh tonight i'm gonna talk to you a little bit about some work that we've been undertaking with welsh government and social care whales on uh case recordings
• 50:30 - 51:00 on to that next slide great so as i say the the aim of this presentation is just talk about the background why we why we've undertaken this piece of work in wales and like others have explained a reflection on what is good case recording i share with you some tips on on what to include and what supports good case recording and then to ensure case recording is suitable for the audiences
• 51:00 - 51:30 in which uh those those recordings are then put onto systems and held and they'll also be some tips and a template that you may want to use when you're going to begin your journey in case recordings so welsh context so um for those who know um there is different legislation in wales than there is in england uh there's a social services and wellbeing act um
• 51:30 - 52:00 which came out in 2014 uh and the aim of that act uh is really to to be more co-productive in the way we approach our uh delivery of services um the one of the key elements of the act is the what matters question so what what we're looking at is uh is trying to take a uh a strength-based approach and also to be
• 52:00 - 52:30 co-producing the work that we do rather than done two this is done in collaboration with so i think that's what what we certainly feel the actors enabled uh welsh practice to to shift towards and uh it's around you know looking at from the discussions with practitioners uh individuals and families we recognize there was a need to focus on non-standardized outcomes for families as i say a lot of the a lot of services that i've been responsible for working within or
• 52:30 - 53:00 delivering um is very much what's available to a family rather than listening to what actually the family wants and that's the that's the real key shift when you're looking at the the well-being act and also need to be clear about you know particularly around um about recordings about being reflective uh what are you trying to achieve what's the outcome what are you trying to learn from from this and and being clear as others have said be succinct in your record keeping is really key and important uh value
• 53:00 - 53:30 within this um and just being mindful that it this is a written account that's very personal for people uh and also that this is you know around um you know there should be a clear outcome and a focus to your practice there's a there's an easy to read link to the act if you ever want to go and find that which is embedded within that so um it just tells you a little bit more about what the principles are social services and well-being act
• 53:30 - 54:00 so the starting point for our journey was that we recognized where and i'm sure others and yourselves as students that case recordings uh it doesn't really feature very very much in the academic uh pathway that you when you're learning to be social workers um particularly when we have students who come and do their placements with us case recording isn't something that's taught it's very much something that's learned from um really reading the
• 54:00 - 54:30 records that are on there and for you then to gauge and talk to someone who's supporting you about what do you actually include in a in a case recording what what's important to put in there and why am i why am i writing it lots of people will write you know endless amounts and other people will write one or two sentences so it it is you really get a varied picture and i think you know not having a structure across the systems for case recording is um is very different to some assessments where
• 54:30 - 55:00 you often have a template or a tool that you'll it be introduced to very early on and feel quite comfortable around having that tool is an aid memoir for you to actually then know what you're almost trying to gather when you're going out to speak to someone but within a within the experience of um of of going out to visit a family you know there's that there's one thing which you know i'll just give you tips as we go through really but for me you know i remember going to sit with the family and having my notepad
• 55:00 - 55:30 there and starting writing you know as i was talking to them and focusing on things that i was trying to make sure i got written down in that meeting and as ian was saying it wasn't really what the family were wanting or the parent was wanting it was more so i was thinking about what i needed to record what was important i had to make sure i'd written so i could go back to the office and write it up and i think if you think of that experience you know it's very much um you know very much you know that you know how would that feel if i
• 55:30 - 56:00 sat if you were sat there with your head down and you were scribbling away and i was receiving that i think it's it's it's a really off-putting experience and you're not you're not enabling which is the key formation within that experience is trying to build sort of a relationship with someone trying to break down the reasons and understandings of why you're there so so that was certainly from our perspective in in newport one of the key reasons why we wanted to do that and social care wales
• 56:00 - 56:30 had looked at that experience from uh from many people's feedback on on what it was like to go back and read their records um and so therefore they embarked on a piece of research to look at collaborating with a number of local authorities to um to start a pilot on case recordings um and the journey so far for us has been that we've delivered training sessions to social workers across our child protection teams and the plan
• 56:30 - 57:00 is then to extend that across the service um and then there'll be particular people within the teams then that will be responsible for looking at the case recordings hopefully seeing some improvements and some consistencies and uh feeding that back to kind of enable hopefully some improved record keeping and the next example which i'll show you and i'll just read through for you is really emphasizes the importance of why case recordings is so valuable so um yeah it's there for
• 57:00 - 57:30 you but essentially it's just it's someone's experience of being at 58 going back deciding a later stage in their life that they wanted to understand their records um they left home and got married and felt that that was the right time to go back and see what had been written about them and understand their journey from what had been written in um in the time that they were open to children's services as very little children and it's just really beautiful when you
• 57:30 - 58:00 read that because you've got someone talking about they didn't know what their mother was like but they found an affinity with actually that them that they were an artist themselves and they found out that their mum loved to draw um they found out that they'd seen a picture of themselves as a baby and how astonished they were that that they that their own children actually look like um you know the picture of themselves as a baby which you know when you when you're piecing together someone's life
• 58:00 - 58:30 um and they're reading it for the first time you know if you asked your parent or carer what was i like as a kid you know what was what did i used to like doing did i used to like playing in puddles did i used to like you know sandwiches my you know peanut butter you know they they can tell you you can seek out family members you can tell you that information except for some people that's not there and the information that's you're recording when you're qualified as a social worker is so powerful um and uh you know you as people have
• 58:30 - 59:00 said recognize your power in that experience because clearly just from reading that you can see how important that was to someone so um so what should you consider when you're when you're undertaking a case recording well you know the next slide will tell you that um it's it's really important to be clear and specific what you're writing be as um as farah you know as mary has said you know be
• 59:00 - 59:30 jargon free don't use don't use complicated professional language um reflect the individual uh their voices and their opinions don't just don't just keep it as as fact actually it's okay to to include people's opinions it's really important to include their voices be concise be coherent and well structured make sure it's relevant and most importantly make sure it's an accurate account and by that i would say
• 59:30 - 60:00 you know ensure that you're you can share what you've written in the meeting that you've having with the person it's quite you know if you're sat there before you go just show them what you've written this is what i've written today what's your thoughts on that because you're going to write that down when you go back to the office and if you write that back down and then some at some point that might be cut and pasted into a court document um that might be in your assessment and it might not be what you've agreed in that meeting or what they've understood within that meeting
• 60:00 - 60:30 show you're working out ultimately that's what you're saying there you know be analytical think about why you're writing that so people know what you're saying why you're recording it it's so important and distinguish between fact and opinion when i say you can write opinion that's absolutely fine but be factual as well you can say i believe this is likely to happen because as richard was saying you know the the past is a great indicator of the future so you can say well if this carries on it's not going to end very well for you you can say that that's your opinion but
• 60:30 - 61:00 the fact would be because these things are happening so therefore that's why you're explaining that okay and then in the next slide then um this is a however you choose to write this is just quite an easy way of looking at you don't have to write deficit based with case recordings all the time you know if you talk to ian about his experience of being written about you know or any family that you're working with um they will you know you're often
• 61:00 - 61:30 writing deficit-based stuff as i say you know if if you think of writing an account where you've gone where you've had a referral from a nursery and they're saying mum turned up and you know she smelled of alcohol the kids weren't you know the clothes were smelly um there was a mark on his on his face um you know he was he was cr he was upset all day i couldn't really that's that's okay because you need to include that stuff but you can also write within your recordings you know
• 61:30 - 62:00 the next day you might want to say he's had a really good day today he um he really likes doing this or you know being positive about someone so yeah there might be deficits there might be risks as there's written there about allied he can lose control but also he can really enjoy reading he can you know it's important to to be balanced in what you write you don't have to just think about trying to evidence so much harm and risk within your case recordings that you've
• 62:00 - 62:30 got it over the tipping scales in order to evidence that harm is definitely there without being able to feel confident enough to be to be okay about someone so right actually yeah you're doing a good job here you know there is good stuff within your parenting something's worked over the 10 years that you've had your child in your care you don't have to just write all the negative stuff which court and often things like that can lead you to sort of feel a pressure to do because you need to evidence enough to seek a removal for example so so it's
• 62:30 - 63:00 really important to to make sure that you do try and um include those strengths um and record the why uh and not just the the how so you know rick was referred to a peer support group so you know what what was your purpose of that um and as it says there you know it's just just a simple example but it's it's so important not just to say you know referred them to substance misuse services
• 63:00 - 63:30 you know do they want to be referred is it is it a co-production element to that have you had a conversation where they've come to a epiphany moment where they actually realize yeah i really do need this support this is really important for me so we you know include that it's really rich information it's so important for people's records to balance it and be fair to someone okay and again just reiterating really co-production is so important it's a powerful role that you have um
• 63:30 - 64:00 you co-production enables you to build a relationship with with the family with the person with the individual with the child um so you know recognizing that power you can you know you can come to an agreement you can work with a cl with a client about how you want to read that how that wants to read when you've written it and when we share assessments you know you can convey and summarize the visit um
• 64:00 - 64:30 you know top tip would be always make sure you know whatever you're writing is what you'd be prepared to say to someone as others have said you know in in in other ways i think that's really important you know again top tip make sure whatever you're gonna write is whatever you'll feel comfortable saying to someone um and there's a template as i said you know it we're using that in um in newport so something along those lines once that once that comes out and it's and it just
• 64:30 - 65:00 enables you just to think about when you're structuring your case note when you've come away you know make sure that you're recording your case notes um so you're recording the information in your book on your phone or dictating it however you're doing that in your meeting but that it's accurate then and it's you know you can then go back to the office and make sure you keep on top of your case recording it's really important not to let that drift because you know a week down the line if you've done three visits to someone
• 65:00 - 65:30 and other families and you've got caught up in something really busy if you go back to what you've written and you can't make the tale of it then um how do you you know you'll end up writing something that's not a true reflection so the case recording template just enables you to do that um and again once you've written what was going on be analytical about it so what does that mean and also then just the actions from that what are you going to do as a result of it is really important as well so you're going to talk to your manager about something or
• 65:30 - 66:00 you're going to refer them to a service or you're going to go and visit again tomorrow because you didn't really feel you got what you wanted to get or whatever it is but but make sure you kind of try and have some actions from it as well and i think that's about it from me so um yeah thanks very much for listening i hope that's um useful and there's a few tips there um and back to you thanks dan that was great it's always really good as well to see different contexts isn't it and as for us to recognize that legislation is different
• 66:00 - 66:30 in different countries and contexts so i think that was great thank you very much for sharing that and some really practical um tips there as well so i'm gonna pass straight over to alex because uh time is rolling on and um so alex if you're there to put your mic on fabulous there you are hi there we go hi everybody um so yeah i'm alex obviously uh brilliant guest speakers have sort of set the president here so no pressure um absolutely buzzing to be
• 66:30 - 67:00 here um siobhan you are an absolute legend so i'm alex moaks i graduated from the university of birmingham in 2018 so i'm not the baby out the guest speakers in terms of experience um i'm currently based in a duty and assessment team and have been since i've qualified so i've kind of kind of come at it from from that duty assessment kind of writing those initial assessments being involved in court processes and and writing any sort of documents that
• 67:00 - 67:30 the courts ask of us so if you can move on hope everyone's not flagging thank you so one of the main points that i that i'll pick up on and i expect from my own assessment writing is around the voice of the child so we always have this you know this clear box that asks for that voice but actually i think that that the voice of the child should shine throughout the document you know we can't just sum it up in one box we you know we look at their common assessment framework
• 67:30 - 68:00 and actually it should be molded and as as part of of that assessment um i really focus a lot on the direct work that i undertake with children to gain their voice and to make sure it's accurate and i've done whatever i can to make sure i've got the best evidence from the child and i've got their best views and what they think is important so i use a lot of direct quotes where possible and reference any direct work tools i've done obviously we have the best job in the world to be able to get creative
• 68:00 - 68:30 with our children and young people and making direct work that suits you know their age their interests you know i've played gender before talking about emotions i've made superhero um direct worksheets and just really trying to to to get the best the best sort of representation of their views that we possibly can pulling on that sort of what's important to them obviously a big part of our assessments and any sort of reports that we write are our observations so looking at how they are
• 68:30 - 69:00 with parents carers key people and and then obviously on the other side of that is our lateral checks with key agencies who said it what did they say are they the best person to be speaking to it again um to gain that information because obviously all of that contributes to the decisions and the really important decisions that we make on a daily basis um terminology is a massive biggie for me so we've all got that part where we get a
• 69:00 - 69:30 referral through poor home conditions well that's so subjective what does that mean is there poo on the floor is it that they just need carpet putting down we we have to be really specific about the terminology that we use and remember we are talking about people's lives here and making sure that we're respectful in that terminology and i think the biggie is what's the impact you know what's the impact of even our involvement um it's all around the impact of the
• 69:30 - 70:00 child you know some scenarios aren't great and we look at that good enough principle but actually if that's great for the for the child if that's you know okay for the child that good enough parenting principle then sometimes we our impact is actually detrimental to the work that we're trying to do here so and then i looked at the kind of clarity so being really clear why why are we here why are we doing undertaking this assessment what legislation are we working under
• 70:00 - 70:30 you've heard lots of the previous guest speakers speaking about um being you know being clear around what what are we doing here do we need consent is it informed consent and having kind of all of those discussions about the process what are we worried about what could happen but also i have well i've it's yeah coming from a strength-based perspective i thought i'd put it on there um but making sure that we you know we're balanced in what we're saying because actually it's not all doom and gloom
• 70:30 - 71:00 um you know there might be a really good family support network uh you know other other positives i think social workers are really good at pulling out why are we here no not why we're here sorry that's the point um you know what's happened getting those views looking at what's gone on but we don't always consider the why so you know i've put some pointers in there is it that parents are being purposely neglectful or are they actually just living in deprivation and haven't got the
• 71:00 - 71:30 the means to purchase you know the right food or you know we look at our graded care profile which is how we sort of assess neglect is it that they haven't got the means to do so um is it a failure to protect or actually in you look at a domestic abuse situation is it that that parent is absolutely petrified of the offender um so i was looking at a comment men is it that they're absolutely petrified of their offender that they're not in a position to safeguard because
• 71:30 - 72:00 they're not safe to do so we need to always consider that uh being a void don't see it they're not engaged well actually is it that they're being just avoidant because they don't get it or is it that they've had a really bad experience and actually we need to unpick that before we can look at work moving forward um and then as i've already talked about the strengths-based stuff but the analysis what does it all mean what is what does it mean to that child what is that lived experience of that child and young person
• 72:00 - 72:30 you know we can look at hypotheses we may have thought something at the beginning of assessment but then actually as the assessment has gone by wow you know that that's not true and it was something different and i think the biggest for me um is around do parents understand it so we talk about meaningful engagement a parent can work with a db perpetrator program but actually if they don't recognize that that behavior is is not acceptable or you know it is harmful then we can do any program but they're not going to get
• 72:30 - 73:00 anything from it and then moving on to sort of points again just reiterating grammar spelling and punctuation you know we we're extremely privileged to to be able to write about families and actually these are really important documents um and it's important that we you know rewrite them um like you said as you know as if people are going to read them because they absolutely will uh correct names and spelling of names we already heard from ian um about you know not writing his son's name correctly
• 73:00 - 73:30 this is really important to our families and actually sometimes they may not understand what what you know the issues that we have they might not understand professionals perspective but they are going to notice if names aren't about right or if names aren't in there that should be in there it's super important about including the all relevant people so a good piece of direct work is doing a genogram and finding out you know what their thoughts are around certain family members again i speak about lateral checks the who from where what role
• 73:30 - 74:00 how well do they know that child or they're the best person to be speaking to um avoiding jargon obviously we always say i see pc well actually i know what that means initial child protection conference but is a parent gonna know what that means keeping it balanced so you know it's not like i said it's not all doom and gloom we need to be looking at those strengths because there will be a strength even if it's a minute strength there is always a strength and i speak about that good instinct we
• 74:00 - 74:30 all know about that good instinct but actually we need to make that evidence base you know we can't be seeking orders on it on a good instinct we have to have that evidence base and then sort of the use of research statistics theories case law and again just put pulling on a previous point yes use that cautiously because you don't want to be biased and when you get asked to step up in the court arena saying hold on a second will you put in
• 74:30 - 75:00 here that research says this but actually the counter argument is this you're going to have to sit there on the stand and say well blah blah blah didn't you know if you haven't really researched and understood that research properly and but it's still you know we know a statistic is that we mean that so many incidents happen before a woman i'm doing this gender but not it's just because the stats that you know we mean it takes so many so many incidents of domestic abuse to occur before um somebody will contact professionals we
• 75:00 - 75:30 know that that's what stats tell us we know that ex exposure to domestic abuse as a child can have a long lasting impact including anxiety sleep irritability you know concerns regarding friendships and the ability to sustain friendships we know that so we can use things like that but obviously it's like has been said before that needs to be um that needs to be used appropriately and not just to reinforce your point but to give a broader perspective of
• 75:30 - 76:00 the concerns that might that might be occurring at that point and i think that's it thank you thank you so much for that alex do you know what i loved hearing you saying we've got the best job in the world because actually we have and you also talked about the privilege that we hold social workers and it's fabulous to see someone fairly early in your social work career you know three years in um and uh still really feeling that sort of uh real privilege i think it's really important um and i suppose that takes us on to uh
• 76:00 - 76:30 just summarizing things really and the privilege that we hold so i know lots of social workers will say things like oh this isn't why i came into the job when they're sitting at a computer typing stuff up but actually it has to be why you come into the job because what you're doing in record keeping is you are holding that person's story and it's a great privilege to be doing that recording and many of you if you come to lots of the webinars we'll know and our great
• 76:30 - 77:00 friend yousef mccormack and this this photograph here is of yusuf's case file 18 years in care and that is what he was given you know he says 12 millimeters represents 18 years of my life and it's not enough and so um yusuf was was also a foster carer and yusuf always said i take great pride in what i write about the children who i care for and i see it as a great privilege as being a foster
• 77:00 - 77:30 carer and i think that's the thing it's you know i hear so many social workers being really negative about recording as oh it's not part of the job it's the part i don't like or but actually it's a key part of the job it's a part of the job that is a great privilege so we would invite you to think about record keeping and use that privilege to be the difference mary talked earlier about a golden thread and what might what people might repeat and although we did all meet last week just to check all of our sound works and everything it was
• 77:30 - 78:00 really technical it wasn't everybody knowing what everyone else was going to say so the golden thread has come out through the evening but what we did do as a group was put this together spelling out recording some of the key messages that we wanted to bring that i think sits through most of the presentations remember the why as well as the what and the how why am i doing this why why am i writing this record emotions you know as ian showed think feelings think about how people will feel if they read what you've written about them
• 78:00 - 78:30 clarity comes when you avoid jargon you know i think alex saying about icpc i think that was very helpful opinion has to be separated from fact that's very important respect and representation are core getting the person's voice representing what the person says our core in in what we do as social workers all of the time and therefore that should be core in our record keeping decisions should be clearly identified and you should be able to
• 78:30 - 79:00 recognize why of those decisions been made where they come from impact lots of people tonight have talked about the impact of what we're gathering it's kind of a key part of the analysis is to think about impact names are important i mean if you can't take that from what ian said what everybody else said to but the other reason that names are important you know is that if you've misspelled somebody's name there could be two lots of records being kept about the same person with a different spelt name and that has happened to me a great deal as a mental health social worker in the past i would uncover
• 79:00 - 79:30 that actually there was a whole other file here about somebody but the name was just spelled differently so names are important get them right grammar matters we've said that you know spelling and grammar matters in terms of finally their final hints and tips spelling out the word reports read it before you send it i think that was one of mary's key points but it is really important just read what you've written before you send it educate yourself on the requirements what what is what what's needed in this report you know
• 79:30 - 80:00 what what should i be including in this report think about the four ps i think pharah starting us off with those four p's was fabulous think about the purpose point prediction and plan i think that's a really good way of just thinking have i covered it all in this record think about outcomes recognize the privilege that you have of recording people's lives you are the storyteller of people's lives and those records are really vital and it's a great privilege think about your audience
• 80:00 - 80:30 and strengths matter you know we've said throughout i think alex concluded they're talking about a strength space but we've talked about strengths and exceptions throughout tonight and how important those things are so it really just remains for me to say thank you so much to our guests for giving up their time and putting things together for top tips for recording i'm sure that in our next season we're going to be following up and picking out key parts of this and this is just the beginning really i think of some overall ideas and hints and tips around
• 80:30 - 81:00 recording i know lots of you like to know what's coming up and to have the link to join put into the chat so next week we will be doing a session on imposter syndrome and that's based on team members personal experiences so it's the student connect team that are delivering that together next week then we're looking at co-production at our kitchen table and then we're back to the basics building a body of theory and the theory that you use in your practice so thank you ever so much
• 81:00 - 81:30 to everybody for attending tonight i know it's a slightly longer webinar than normal but we've had six fabulous guests and actually who stuck to time really quite well it's really tricky to get through as much as we've got through but i think thank you so much to our guests i can't see what's going on in the chat when i'm doing um screen sharing but i'm going to read the chat later because i'm sure there's been lots of interesting things and i have seen lots of questions popping up but lots of people answering the questions as they've come don't forget that culture and i will put
• 81:30 - 82:00 together an email and send you on any resources that our guests have talked about and that will go into the email address that you registered with so check your spam if you don't get it it usually goes at the weekend so thank you ever so much to everybody and good night