Earlier this year, Rebekah Pierre (Social worker and BASW PO) requested her care-files, and was shocked by what they contained. The below open letter is penned as a call to action, and to raise awareness about the importance of kind, caring and accurate case records, as part of National Care Leavers Week 2022.
In this blog, I wish to focus not on the appointment process, or the chair himself - rather, on the hundreds of thousands of care experienced people this review will impact, many of whom will remain forever anonymous and unknown to us.
BASW Cymru met with social worker and 20 year BASW member Jonathan Pearce this week to find out what it’s like to be a palliative care social worker in Wales.
During the first part of my time as Chair I had the pleasure of working alongside Luke Geoghegan, who was elected to Council at the same time as me, as Chair of the Finance and Human Resources Committee. After being re-elected with me in 2016, Luke stood down having become our new Head of Policy and Research, where he is developing a tremendous programme of work together with Policy and Research Officer, Godfred Boahen. Between 1998 and 2008, Luke was the Chief Executive at Toynbee Hall, the first Settlement in London’s East End, where Clement Attlee worked before the First World War. I feel a strong connection with the East End Settlements now myself, living near to them and being a frequent visitor to Oxford House and St Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green. This is a companion post to my previous “From Attlee to eligibility criteria”, in which I looked at the balance in social work between collective and individualised approaches. Here we focus on the former, beginning with an exploration of how the Settlement Movement helped to develop social work as community work.
This penultimate Chair’s Blog post has been jointly written with Karen*, a young mother whose child was removed from her care, who I have previously interviewed for an article in BASW’s Professional Social Work magazine.