From Social Work to Social Work Sorted -About me

Its been nearly 2 years since Social Work Sorted was founded. 

As Social Work Sorted: The Podcast grows and I move into Training & Consultancy, I wanted to reintroduce myself and share an insight into my social work journey, why I started Social Work Sorted and why I love working with New Social Workers. 

A huge Thank You to everyone who has listened, shared, rated or reviewed. 

I really appreciate your support and kind words.

Vicki 

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Transcript

Hello. And welcome to Social Work Sorted: The Podcast podcast. I'm Vicki, Shevlin, and I host this podcast as well as running social work, sorted an online platform for newly qualified social workers. This episode is slightly different because I'm going to talk to you about my journey into social work. A lot of you asked me about this and if you haven't been to my training before. 

You might not have much insight into my social work career and how I went from social work to Social Work Sorted. And some will message me the other week to say Vicki, you always ask people about their social work journeys. But I don't actually know what yours is. So I thought it would be helpful to share a little bit about my social work career. 

The jobs that I've had, what led me into social work and the reason that's important and the reason I want to share it is because so many of you. Follow me on Instagram. Read articles that I've written access to the blog. Listen to these podcasts, get into it with me. Some of you, like I said, attend training and master classes. Maybe you access the free training. Maybe you've bought the guide. 

It's important that you know about me and the reason behind what I do and why I do it. So as brief as possible, I will try and give you  an insight into my social work journey, which started long before I even went to university. Long before I qualified 

I would say it probably started with having lots of family members who worked in caring professions.  So my mom. Was and is a nurse, I had lots of family members who were nurses who worked for the NHS. I had an auntie who was a  social worker. I was around and in lots of conversations that talked about caring professions and whilst at the time, 

I probably had very limited insight into what social work looked like. It wasn't something that I'd never heard of before. I actually went to university and studied drama and theatre arts. And that was because that was my passion. I was really interested in drama in theater arts, and I was able to focus my studies in ideas of drama therapy and community theater. 

So. Whilst drama and theatre might not seem as connected to social work. I'm very passionate about how creativity and the creative arts can be used for positive change in communities and with marginalized communities as well. 

 And after I graduated, I have two jobs. 

One of those jobs was with a community theater group.  We were based in a hostel and worked with adults impacted and affected by homelessness. It was an amazing job. It really. Embedded theory and practice for me, 

I  lead sessions with people. I watched people transform as they took on a different role . I saw people come to life when they were being creative and they were in a group situation. And they were able to escape for even just half an hour from whatever was happening in the rest of their lives, to just be part of something, part of creating something. 

I know that might sound really idealistic. That's genuinely. What I saw in my experienced the flip side of the idealism was that there were obviously times when people would come into the sessions and what they needed was for their basic needs to be met. They needed to eat, they needed to drink. They needed to sleep. 

They needed to shower. And so I really saw the comparison between maybe what we want to do as practitioners or the work that we know is helpful. But how we need to look at what people need in the moment as well. 

I learned a lot about listening. I learned a lot about being flexible and learn a lot about. Being creative in so many different ways. 

And alongside this job I also worked with adults in a residential setting. Who had complex and profound physical disabilities and life-limiting illnesses. And that was also a job that I loved and was really passionate about. 

I had experience working as an agency support worker. And so I saw lots of different care settings. And so in comparison to those where I, where I worked and  or kind of permanent role. 

The staff were so committed to creating a real homely environment, real nurturing environment. That was fun. There was laughter. There was an extremely high standard of care and support. And I learned. Again, so much that I have taken with me into social work. What a privilege it is to care for somebody, and the training I received was at a really high level. And like I said, I loved that job. I was so happy, happy memories of that job and the people who I met and the people I was fortunate enough to work with and support. And it was really in that job that I started to come into contact with social workers. 

A lot of that was around mental capacity assessments and care plans and best interest meetings. 

And I started to think about the next steps for me and how I could maybe progress my career or do something different. 

At the time they were NHS bursaries available for people who were applying for master's degrees in social work. And so that's what I decided to do. 

It's important that I mentioned that because my social work career was made entirely possible by having access to an NHS bursary. And the career direction and opportunities  for students, social workers now is completely different. The landscape has completely changed. 

But that enabled me to be in a position where I could apply for a social work master's and fortunately got into that social work masters and really loved university. Really loved being part of that course. I enjoyed having insight, not just into one area of social work, but in lots of areas of social work. 



And. I loved my time at university, I've talked a lot to different podcasts, guests around social work education. What that looked like for them, how prepared they felt for the career of being a social worker after the university degrees. And there's lots of different responses and it's a big topic that I love to think about. 

But what my university degree gave me was a foundation. It was really important for me to know and understand the political context of social work. It was important for me to understand and learn about the welfare state. They were ideas that had maybe been on the periphery for me. 

But nothing that I had looked into and critically examined and reflected on, and they are ideas that. Changed and impacted the way that I practice, 

 Learning about systems, learning about different areas of social work, learning about ideas and approaches and theories. Helped me form who I am as a social worker. 

 It's feels relevant for me to share with you because so much of what I do is about skills for practice. And I always say, if you've heard me on podcasts before. What I do is not instead of it's as well as. It's not to replace a social work degree. I don't think skills based courses can replace the kind of education that you get from a degree. And I don't think they necessarily should. 

What I do is always going to be as well as one degree cannot cover everything. But it's really important to think about what you are going to get out of it in terms of your thinking and your approaches, because all those things will impact the way that you practice, whether you realize it or not. So when I was on my social work degree, my final placement and. 

And I'd always by the way, wanted to work with adults because they were the jobs that I had before I entered my degree. So my final placement was in a frontline child protection team and we cover duty in assessment, child in need and child protection. And. I really enjoyed that work. I liked the way that I could work with children and adults. I liked learning about the processes. I like learning about the law. 

I liked the complexity of it. I suppose. I enjoy learning new skills, trying to balance that theory and practice and legislation and where we sit in all that. 

I enjoyed the pace of work at the time I was a student. So we obviously didn't have an extensive caseload. And I had a lovely team around me and a lovely manager. Who I think I might have spoken about in podcasts before, but he always used to go for a walk. Every single lunchtime, he would go for a walk. 

And that modeled something really positive to me at the time and something that I still try and maintain. If I'm struggling, if I'm having a hard day or things, getting too much in an office, I will always make the effort to go out for a little walk to clear my head. So after my placement, I got a job in London and completed my ASYE in a  local authority. Again, I was in a locality team. It was duty and assessment. child in need child protection and care proceedings. 



When I was in that team, I was trained in signs of safety. So signs of safety at the time was something that was being rolled out. It wasn't an approach that I learned about at university and it really changed the way that I thought about social work. It changed the way that I thought about safety. 

And I think the thing about approaches is there's not always a one size fits all. And there were lots of elements of signs of safety and different approaches that I don't agree with. And I think have been misused and  if you've listened to why I don't. Use the three houses in practice. That's a whole podcast episode that you can go and listen to. 



But thinking about what signs of safety gave me, it was the connection with language  thinking about language and how we use language in social work and how we over complicate things when we could simplify things and that writing or that way of writing this. And I've tried to take with me. I worked in different local authorities up until the point of being a senior practitioner. 

So as well as signs of safety, I trained in foundation of systemic family therapy. I've worked with restorative practice. and, most recently from being a senior practitioner. I  moved into becoming a child protection conference chair. Which again is a job that I really love and really enjoy. It's so interesting to think about the difference between practicing as a frontline practitioner in social work and then being one step removed. And having oversight of things, 

it gives you a shift and a change in perspective. 

And whilst all this was happening, all these changes were going on in my career. We had the COVID-19 pandemic. Which massively shifted social work, as we knew it. Prior to COVID-19. I was doing practice education. I was supporting students, supporting new social workers in my team. 

Starting to build on resources that I had created for myself really, and changing them to share with other people. I'm really post pandemic, whether they're even as a post pandemic. I started to notice that new social workers. were. Even more impacted by those feelings of. Imposter syndrome, the lack of confidence, not feeling comfortable with the skills that they were developing and it's because new social workers or students at the time of COVID. . I had to learn in an environment that was so different to I had when I was a student and a new social worker. And hybrid working meant that new social workers couldn't have that intensive time with families home visits were doing with PPE on if you had PPE provided to you in your local authority, which I know some people didn't. 

Home visits have to be done in crisis situations. 

It was so difficult to build relationships visits that weren't deemed as urgent or as high risk. You had to do them virtually. So , you were speaking to people over the phone. Meetings weren't in person. So while those interpersonal skills were completely lost and new social workers and students weren't learning from being in an office environment, listening to people and soaking up those skills. 

They were alone at home. On a computer. And so the shift from this way of working back into more face-to-face work or back in the hybrid models. Has left a lot of new social workers. Feeling very lost, very isolated. And like they can't ask the questions that they want to ask or the questions that they should have had answered. 

When they were at the early stages in their practice. And all of this was really why I started Social Work Sorted. I wanted to write a guide for new social workers, wanting to write lots of guides for new social workers. I started with one and one of my friends, suggested that in order to promote that and share it. 

I go on Instagram, which I did. I started the Instagram account and I started to share. Ideas for social workers, students, and new social workers. And as I started to share. And talk to those of you who are on the platform who were following me. 

It became more apparent to me how much, what I do. Was needed. And for me. joining Instagram was part of meeting new social workers where they were at because I was on Instagram, scrolling through. So for me, if I could. Put a note or a guide or a little piece of advice or something to trigger a thought for new social worker who might be scrolling through, on their lunch break or at the end of the day. 

Then for me, that was a really good way for them to be able to access a piece of information that could change their practice. Where do you sit on a home visit? How do you ask certain questions? How do you make sure that you're safe? How do you explain what an assessment is? All these little, how to is that for new social workers? It's very difficult to, soak in if you were getting that information from a giant book that you don't have time to read, but if you have a couple of seconds to scroll through Instagram, or you have 10 minutes to listen to a quick podcast, it can be the most helpful thing for your practice. 

And that is really how Social Work Sorted has grown. I then started to offer training. I do consultancy with local authorities. I love working with new social workers because you are so passionate about what you do. 

You care so deeply about what you do. And you're so honest, ready to learn. and ready to think about the way that you practice and how that could be different.  

It's important to me that new social workers have access to somebody who will just say something, how it is, put it in a simple terms as possible. Not because you can't deal with something that's over complicated, but because you don't have time because you're in a rush because you need the information and you need it now. 

And my hope is that for new social workers who are completely overwhelmed, Who has stepped into a new job role and trying to manage learning so many new skills, being in a new environment, meeting new people, managing the complexities of different cases and different interpersonal relationships. It's so difficult then to focus on the theory on the reflection on involved in research, on thinking about why do ideas of training. 

whilst you are just trying to do the day-to-day. And  if I can support you through a home visit, if I can support you through an assessment, if I can support you through chairing a meeting. Then as a new social worker, you are going to eventually have the Headspace to focus on the things that you want to focus on. 

Specialize in certain areas. Access certain parts of theory. Hone your skills. So you can do more in-depth and intensive pieces of work, but you can't do that. If you don't have the basics to start with. 

And that's why, like I said, at the beginning, Social Work Sorted is as well as it's not, instead of it's to support you on your journey as a new social worker. Giving you, the information you need in the way that you need it in a way that connects with you. And what's been so lovely and amazing about this is the feedback from you all. 

Those of you who listened to this podcast, those of you who follow on Instagram. 

Those of you who have attended training. The feedback that I get from you is that. This is needed, is that you want somebody to tell you how it is in practice.  You want somebody, who's going to be honest about the challenges that you face. You want somebody who's going to say? I don't know it all and that's okay. But I will find out the answer to your question because that's what people want from social workers as well. 

So it's about being able for me to model that to you. And then for you as new social workers to soak it all in and let it impact your practice. 

This podcast has been the best decision that I ever made. Not just because I've been able to speak to incredible guests, but because I've been able to. Share the information that I know you need. In such an accessible way. It's not accessible for everybody. Don't get me wrong. There are transcripts available. If people need those as well. 

But for social workers who are busydarting around going from visit to visit or meeting to meeting. I know that that 10 minutes or 15 minutes that you have in your car. I might be your only time for learning and reflection in a day. So I am very grateful to all of you who have listened to the podcast this year. 

I think we're onto around 15,000 downloads, which is so hard to even. Think about or conceptualize, but I am very grateful to you for listening. The sharing for getting in touch with me about ideas of what to cover, because that happens all the time as well. I'm really grateful to all of you for continuing in social work, because it is an incredibly difficult and challenging career choice. There are so many difficult days. 

We are dealing with systems that are not supporting the people that we want to support and want to help. 

And you are continuing to do that and striving to be better. So, yeah, just wanted to say a big, thank you. I hope that gives you a little bit of an overview. Of how I went from social work to social work sorted. Um, very excited for the podcast. Coming up for the rest of the year and going into 2023. 



There were so many exciting things happening. But I can't wait to share with you. And if you have enjoyed this podcast, not just this particular episode, but if you've listened to lots of the episodes, you found them helpful. Then, please let me know. Get in touch. Send me a message. Send me an email. You can rate, you can leave a review. 

Make sure you subscribe. So you're on to next week's episode. And thank you so much for listening. I'll end this podcast. Like I end every single podcast. with just encouraging you to slow down. Take a pause. And breathe. It might be the only time that you got to do it today. So just enjoy your moment for you. 

Thank you so much for listening and take care.  There.