Public Involvement Q&A Panel – What an effective practitioner looks like

February 17, 2025 admin

Date:

March 26, 2025

Time:

10:00 am - 11:00 am

This online panel event gives you the opportunity to find out from people with lived experience of social work what makes a positive social work experience. This co-produced event welcomes representatives from Focus On Involvement (www.focusoninvolvement.co.uk), who are available and eager to answer your questions on what they look for from a their social worker and what makes ‘you’ the right person to support them.

During the panel Q&A session:

Each panel member will provide a brief introduction and share their lived experience

Answer questions from those in attendance

Answer questions submitted ahead of the event

ABOUT THE PANEL

Sally Kellet – As a carer for nearly forty years, I have experience of interacting with health and social services. I am a carer for my daughter who has a rare medical condition, and I previously cared for both my mother with Alzheimer’s and my husband with MND until they died, I have a vast experience of the role of a carer and the support/ help required. I have suffered from depression from the weight of my caring role, along with living with my own health condition of epilepsy.

David Wilson – Lived experience: Carer for late wife. Personal experience of chronic fatigue syndrome, anorexia and depression. Supported by various professionals over the years

Esther Grace – Care system experiences (aged 1-18). Young carer of mum and brothers. Child & adult mental health services (including in-patient experiences). Alcohol misuse, and recovery.
Esther has accessed many services, with a mixture of good and challenging experiences. She now talks about these experiences, to help inform, inspire and impact others/services.

Roy Havery – Lived experience: Surviving several suicide attempts and living with chronic depression and anxiety. Experience in several specialist mental units and lived through the different and intricate stages of recovery. Surviving this and learning to live independently with support from mental health services, social workers and community psychiatric nurses.

Manoj Mistry – Lived experience: 30 years’ experience as a family carer and working with/ receiving support from NHS health professionals. Mother was both mentally ill for more than 20 years whilst physically disabled in the last 6 years of her life. Sister remains both mentally and physically disabled. Accesses support and services to support carer’s role.

Lynsey Harmon – Lived experience: Bipolar, EUPD. ADHD and neurodivergent. I have 25 years’ experience dealing with mental health services including as a inpatient. Primary care and secondary care. Including being sectioned under mental health act. Experience of different therapies including CBT, DBT and the use of medication. Support from lots of professional’s psychiatrists, psychologists, support workers, occupational therapists and community psychiatric nurses.

To register for this event, please follow this link Public Involvement Q&A Panel – What an effective practitioner looks like Tickets, Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 10:00 AM | Eventbrite

About the Author

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Race & Inequality

How is racism understood in literature about the experiences of black and minority ethnic social work students in Britain? A Conceptual review.

Dr Dharman Jeyasingham and Dr Julie Morton (Social Work Education, 38 (5), pp 563-575)

Abstract

This article presents findings from a study which explored the everyday ways race works on social work programmes in England. The study focused on how race was spoken about and conceptualised, how people were categorised and ordered according to race and the social interactions where race was understood by participants to be significant. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight social work lecturers and nineteen black social work students at two universities in England, to explore the following topics: classroom-based and practice learning, assessment and feedback, interactions between students and between students and educators, and university and practice agency cultures. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and the following themes identified: the routine interpellation of black students and communities in terms of absolute cultural differences, black students’ everyday experiences of marginalisation, hostility and othering, and the racialisation of black students in judgements made about their academic and practice performance. The article concludes that social work education must engage more deeply with contemporary theorisations of race and culture, and that social work educators need a reflexive understanding of how notions such as diversity, equality and universal academic standards are put into practice in ways that marginalise and devalue black students.

Link to Research Article:
https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/64217/?template=banner

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Children Social Work and Agile Working

Children’s social workers agile working practice and experiences beyond the office

Dr Dharman Jeyasingham, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 49, Issue 3, April 2019, Pages 559-576, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcy077

Abstract

Agile working (flexibility around practitioners’ roles and the location and time of work) is increasingly common across local authority social work in the UK but there is little evidence about the practices it entails, with the small amount of existing research concerned largely with its impact on office environments. This article presents findings from a qualitative exploratory study of eleven social workers’ practices and experiences when engaged in agile working away from office spaces. Data were generated through practitioner diaries, photographs elicited from practitioners and semi-structured interviews, and were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The study found practitioners engaged in agile working in a wide range of domestic, leisure and formal work environments across the public–private continuum. This gave them superficial control over how they worked, in particular the freedom to work in solitude and establish distance between themselves and perceived demands from service users and other practitioners. However, agile working also involved a wider range of material practices and affective experiences for practitioners. These changes provoke questions about data security, increased visibility and unanticipated encounters in public spaces, and the shifting relationship between information-management work and elements of practice involving face-to-face interaction with others.

Link to Research Article: Seeking Solitude and Distance from Others: Children’s Social Workers’ Agile Working Practices and Experiences beyond the Office | The British Journal of Social Work | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

Dr Dharman Jeyasingham of University of Manchester was the lead the ESRC funded project “Becoming agile in local authority children’s safeguarding social work services: examining organisational and individual change in public sector social work”. Details on this project can be found here: GtR (ukri.org)

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