Understanding and maintaining professional boundaries in social care work – An interview with Frank Cooper

“Professional boundaries are vital in social care work because we are working on a deep level with vulnerable people. This means that we have a responsibility to them to do things to the best of our ability and to ensure that our help and support does not damage or disenfranchise them. Working with difficult issues can also be very stressful and draining work, and professional boundaries help us to manage ourselves and our emotions.”

Delivering personalisation in health and social care – An interview with Helen Sanderson and Jaimee Lewis

“Person-centred thinking and planning helps people think about all the resources available to them, and then helps them and the people who support them use those resources to their full effect. It makes every penny of funds they receive – either from public or private sources – stretch so much further. When money is tight, it is even more important to use resources as effectively as possible. And what better resource is there than what a person (or those close to them) believes is important to them and works well for them and what they want for their lives? We can’t afford not to listen to people well and to act on this information.”

Creating Change for Complex Children and their Families at the Croft Child and Family Unit

“Through individual and group work we aim to get to know a child really well in order to identify their strengths as well as their weaknesses. We also work closely with parents and have an opportunity to see how family relationships work on a day-to-day basis. We use the information we gain from these close observations to establish a holistic, integrated understanding of all the important factors driving the child’s problems and then use this to plan interventions.”

John Merges on Social Enjoyment Groups for young people with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“Social enjoyment, as both an important life and employment skill, needs to be taught and practiced as early as possible. We need to provide our young people with safe, predictable situations to practice enjoying a social interaction. The successes I’ve seen in my own work demonstrate that social enjoyment is indeed a skill – and thus, can be learned.”

Good record-keeping matters: An excerpt from Jacki Pritchard’s ‘Recording Skills in Safeguarding Adults’

“We know that most workers are under extreme pressure with ever increasing workloads and there can be a reluctance to give recording the priority it deserves. Increasing workloads can be partly due to a lack of resources. It is important that people in positions of power argue for an increase in resources, but to do that arguments have to be put forward that there is a real need. Keeping good records can aid this.”

Working with Reluctant Clients in Health and Social Care – an Interview with JKP author Maggie Kindred

“One of the most important messages I would want to give to a newcomer is that your reluctant client will probably never [become a ‘willing’ client]. Why should s/he? Compliance with you and your rules is a massive victory. If you can rejoice with your clients when they are finally getting rid of you, this is very liberating. Social work and care does not change people’s personality fundamentally, it helps them function.”