The heart of social work

The festive season can be a time for reflection, a time to turn our attention to homelife and spending time with family and friends. It’s a time when relationships are often in our thoughts.

Many social workers find themselves needing to go the extra mile at Christmas. This can be such a difficult time for people we work with.  Struggles for individuals and families often intensify – emotionally and practically.  The impact of poverty, poor housing, relationships and health difficulties can become even more stark. 

While most social workers will take well deserved time off at Christmas, Emergency Duty Team and other out of hours Social Workers continue to work through nights, weekends and holidays, offering social work in emergency and urgent situations, alongside colleagues from other disciplines. 

This festive season we want to remember our colleagues working out of hours - often under pressure, supporting people in crisis, people who may be alone. 

This is one of the many places we see the heart of social work in action. 

Sometimes social workers are unsung and invisible -  but we know you are there, empowering people and upholding their rights 24/7.

Ruth, Gerry and all at BASW

Ruth Allen, CEO BASW and Gerry Nosowska, BASW Chair.

Share your stories

We want to hear from social workers that work over the holiday period.  Please do contact us to share your experiences and we will publish with your first name and city / county.  If you prefer to remain anonymous, please just let us know.

Becky, Staffordshire:

Christmas Day- just another day… or it is? Across the country, social workers will be providing emergency social work interventions on Christmas Day and across the wider festive season.

Having been a social worker on an Emergency Duty Team (EDT) I have experience of delivering emergency social work assessment and intervention on an out of hours basis.

This Christmas will be the first Christmas in several years I have not been offering emergency social work interventions across the festive period.

The EDT where I was based covered 131 hours per week plus bank holidays providing out of hours services across children and adult’s social care in addition to Mental Health Act assessments and emergency housing applications.

The literature has referred to out of hours social workers as ‘generic dinosaurs’ or ‘night watch’ – both descriptions I would strongly dispute.

The knowledge, skills and experience held across a team who specialise in crisis intervention is immense and the ability to keep this knowledge current a real challenge.

This year I ask, as you tuck into your turkey, rip the paper from your presents and sit back to enjoy the queen’s speech, lets spare a thought for the social workers who are still supporting those in crisis throughout the festive season.

Sat, Walsall:

"It is always a difficult time at Christmas when offices are closed but even more challenging on Christmas day when shops and most facilities do not operate.

Resources are limited generally across the board but when you are faced with the elderly who are struggling to take care of themselves, they have not eaten it is not simply a case of signposting them to the nearest soup kitchen or shelter to ensure that they have a hot meal, often we dip into our own pockets and deliver a food parcel to ensure that they manage to get by until services resume, attempts are made to resource carers to pop in or even help people heat up the food but that is not always possible, and when you are lone working and the phone is ringing off the hook it is not possible to go out and undertake personal care,

It is one social worker alone to ensure that they keep their borough safe per evening."

Thank you for all your contributions.