Another day at the placement. It was a tiring and long day. Had three sessions today. I think the most challenging bit of it was the digesting of how my hands are tied as a family therapist trainee.
I had been informed over the past two weeks that a couple of my cases will be transferring out from me to the family support team as they do not present any further safeguarding concerns. This will take effect in the next two to three weeks.
While I can understand the decision from the perspectives of the department and social work unit's perspectives, I still struggled with the situations.
I do not fully understand the connection between the family support unit and the child protection unit. I came to realise that I was not the only one. It appeared that several practitioners in the department are not totally aware of the work done by the family support unit as well. This was somewhat appalling to me given the systemic nature of work that Hackney was to be known for. From my perspective, it will be important for the key functions of the teams to be known across the practitioners especially when we are the ones making the recommendations to the other unit. I was surprised that the responses I had from several individuals were they were not too sure what would the unit be doing exactly. I cannot help but think if this is indeed client centric.
Lots of what happened today made me questioned on how client centric the work that I had been doing has been.
I had a few cases which required me to conduct an assessment on the family relationships and dynamics, their need and potential for further work under the purview of the social care.
I understand that if the case does not pose any safekeeping concerns, it is unfair to keep the family under social care instead of providing them community support. However, I found it hard that after we had established rapport with them and had started to explore certain deep rooted issues, we had to inform the family that the case has to be transferred out to another unit. I am definitely coping with my own loss with regards to the aburpt disruption to the therapeutic work. I cannot help but think what does it mean for the clients who took time to connect with the therapist and open up only to be told that they have to redo this with another caseworker.
It definitely did not helped when the practitioners working with me on the cases told me that this was how things worked here. They were caught off handed as well but did not think there was anything else they can do about it. Perhaps given my social worker's background and personality, I found that quite an unacceptable reason. While I understand that there are rules and a larger system that we all operate within, I hate to think that we are subjected to rules which are not necessary helpful and can in fact bring harm to the very people we are out to serve.
I thought that better communication can at least take place between the two subsystems to ensure that both parties know how the work will look like in order to best prepare for the transition; be it a case transfer or closure. A conversation on the timeline and the expected work needed sure does not sound too difficult a task to me.
[Post-script: I had brought up my thoughts with my supervisor and she had raised the concerns with the head of department. I was really glad that the viewpoints were concurred by the head and she had indicated that the welfare of the clients should be the priority over protocols. When deemed necessary, the clinical team should be allowed to request for an extension to conduct some ending work with families. That was definitely a relief to me. While it might be too late for some of the cases I had on hand, I did manage to secure an extension for one case which I thought will benefit from at least one to two more sessions to place a good punctuation to our work thus far. On the other hand, I cannot help but wonder what if someone had raised this concern in protocols up earlier?]
I thought that better communication can at least take place between the two subsystems to ensure that both parties know how the work will look like in order to best prepare for the transition; be it a case transfer or closure. A conversation on the timeline and the expected work needed sure does not sound too difficult a task to me.
[Post-script: I had brought up my thoughts with my supervisor and she had raised the concerns with the head of department. I was really glad that the viewpoints were concurred by the head and she had indicated that the welfare of the clients should be the priority over protocols. When deemed necessary, the clinical team should be allowed to request for an extension to conduct some ending work with families. That was definitely a relief to me. While it might be too late for some of the cases I had on hand, I did manage to secure an extension for one case which I thought will benefit from at least one to two more sessions to place a good punctuation to our work thus far. On the other hand, I cannot help but wonder what if someone had raised this concern in protocols up earlier?]
