Reflections on BASW’s Social Work Live, Practice and Careers Conference

I recently spent the day at BASW’s Social Work Live, Practice and Careers event, speaking with and learning from so many Independent Social Workers, practitioners and managers of fostering services. It was a brilliant opportunity to have conversations about practice, share what we have been developing at Fosterli and hear different perspectives on the challenges facing the profession. One particularly interesting discussion at our stand was around visibility within the fostering assessment process, what Fostering Applicants should be able to see, what information should remain with the assessing Social Worker and how we have made those decisions when designing Fosterli. These are questions we have explored extensively with Foster Carers themselves, and there is a difficult balance to strike between transparency, professional judgement, safeguarding and ensuring people feel informed and included in a process that is, after all, about their own lives. In many ways, this reflects the same principles we talk about in relationship-based practice, recognising the importance of power, participation and ensuring that people feel actively involved in decisions about their own lives, rather than feeling that assessments are simply something being done to them.

At the Independent Social Workers' Symposium, we explored a new toolkit for Social Workers that has been developed by a University, and as part of the session we were shown a video of a home visit involving an adult Social Worker. The video began by following the experience of a gentleman preparing for his visit, taking time to get himself ready, putting out biscuits and preparing a cup of tea, before becoming increasingly concerned as the Social Worker was late. When she eventually arrived, she appeared rushed and overwhelmed, clutching a huge bundle of paperwork in her arms and focusing immediately on how busy she was and how much she had to get through. The visit became entirely about her agenda, her understanding of his circumstances and her version of what support and assessment should look like for this gentleman, who barely had an opportunity to get a word in. It was a painful watch, and the reaction in the room reflected that, with contributions from people with lived experience and Social Workers acknowledging that this was something that happened far more often than we might like to think or recognise.

There was understandably a lot of criticism directed towards the Social Worker in the video, and of course, she should not have been conducting a visit in this way. As professionals, we have a responsibility to recognise when our own circumstances or pressures are affecting our practice, to be reflective and to seek support when we need it. However, what we know from research, and from the experiences shared by Social Workers themselves, is that practitioners also need to feel secure, valued and supported if they are to provide meaningful care and support to others. I found myself wondering what had happened around this Social Worker for her to arrive at someone's home so overwhelmed that she was unable to meaningfully engage with the person in front of her, and whether the responsibility for what we had just watched sat entirely with her.

I made the point that perhaps we need to be showing this video to managers and organisational leaders too, particularly those who can become increasingly disconnected from frontline practice as administrative responsibilities, performance monitoring and organisational pressures take over. When the focus becomes completing visits, gathering data and demonstrating that assessments have been undertaken, it can be easy to lose sight of the impact that a rushed, task-focused interaction can have on the person receiving support, and ultimately on their relationship with Social Work as a profession. What was particularly interesting was hearing from practitioners who work within a relationship-based approach, describing how the very same amount of time could have been used to conduct the assessment far more meaningfully, simply by listening to the gentleman's own understanding of his circumstances, exploring his concerns and making space for his perspective. Even the act of making a cup of tea could have offered opportunities to understand aspects of his capacity and independence through natural observation and conversation, rather than immediately reaching for a set of prescribed, tick-box questions. The assessment and professional analysis would still be taking place, but in a way that recognised the person as an active participant rather than simply the subject of the visit.

The central question of the discussion was whether, as a Social Worker, you should accept a cup of tea during a home visit, and it was fascinating how something so seemingly ordinary could open up such a broad conversation about professional practice. There were considerations around British culture and hospitality, safety, power imbalances, capacity and assessment, poverty, professionalism and the sense of 'otherness' that can exist between professionals and the people they support. Of course, there isn't one answer that will be appropriate for every situation, and there are many reasons why a Social Worker may choose to accept or politely decline, but what the discussion seemed to come back to was that the offer itself is often about much more than a warm beverage. It is an offer of shared connection, an opportunity for someone to welcome you into their home on their own terms, and perhaps a small invitation to show that you are a human being as well as a professional. How we respond to that invitation, regardless of whether we actually drink the tea, can say a great deal about how we approach the relationship.

Later in the day, we moved into a discussion about what makes a good Social Work leader, and unsurprisingly, the qualities people identified had much less to do with a person's title, position or seniority than with their values, their approach to practice and how they role model those values within their teams. Some particularly strong leaders spoke about how they had advocated within their organisations to retain a small amount of direct practice or clinical work as part of their management responsibilities, even when there was pressure to move entirely away from frontline work. Their reasoning was that remaining connected to the people using their services enabled them to understand the realities of practice, while also demonstrating to their Social Workers that their manager genuinely understood the work they were asking them to do. It meant they could offer meaningful support, draw on their own current experiences and advocate for their teams from a position of understanding, rather than becoming removed from the everyday realities and challenges of Social Work.

There was also a strong feeling in the room about the importance of attachment, trust and creating safe relationships between Social Workers and their managers. If someone is approaching burnout, experiencing difficult personal circumstances or struggling with a particular piece of work, they need to feel secure enough in that relationship to be open about what is happening and confident that they will receive support rather than judgement. This doesn't mean removing professional responsibility or accountability, but recognising that there will be times when someone needs additional support, when their workload needs to be considered differently or when taking time away from practice may be the most appropriate decision for everyone involved, including the people receiving support. We also discussed the value of buddy systems, where another practitioner already knows the family and the work being undertaken, meaning they can step in when needed without relationships and progress being lost, with the understanding that this support is reciprocal when circumstances change.

This reminded me of the unit model used by Frontline’s Approach to Social Work training, where a group of Social Workers collectively hold an understanding of the families they work with, regularly hypothesising together, sharing perspectives and taking time to think about the purpose of their next visit. Rather than approaching a visit as something to complete and record, there is an opportunity to consider what the relational aim might be, what they need to understand better and how their work might contribute to meaningful change for the family. Leadership in this context looks quite different from simply allocating work and monitoring its completion, with the leader facilitating systemic questioning, encouraging reflection and helping practitioners consider their own social GRACES, experiences and assumptions, and what these might bring to their relationships with families. It also creates opportunities for Social Workers to lead from the frontline, learning from one another's practice and collectively developing their understanding of the people they support. Where families have had opportunities to build relationships with other members of the unit, there is also greater continuity when an individual Social Worker is away, rather than progress and relationships being dependent entirely on one person.

What I find particularly valuable about this approach is the recognition that good Social Work doesn't happen in isolation, and that reflective practice, professional curiosity and meaningful relationships need to be supported by the wider team and organisational environment. It also raises questions about how we structure services and the systems we put around Social Workers, and whether those systems encourage collaboration and shared reflection or unintentionally reinforce a more individualised, task-focused approach. We often talk about the importance of relationship-based practice in Social Work, but perhaps we need to spend just as much time considering the relationships that Social Workers have within their own organisations, and the conditions that enable them to practise in the ways we know can make a difference.

These conversations were only a small part of what was a genuinely impactful day of practice learning, with so much of the discussion returning to relationship-based practice and the ethical principles that underpin our profession, including those set out in BASW's Code of Ethics. What stayed with me was not necessarily that we were discussing anything particularly new, but that the same challenges continue to arise across different areas of Social Work, and that so much of what we recognise as good practice relies on practitioners having the time, support and professional space to actually deliver it.

For us at Fosterli, the day strengthened our focus on ensuring that Social Workers have the tools they need to practise in a way that reflects their own professional judgement, experience and values, rather than being directed by the limitations of the systems they are required to use. We have always approached Fosterli with the belief that technology should support Social Work practice, not dictate it, and that the purpose of making processes more efficient isn't simply to complete assessments more quickly, but to reduce the time spent on things that don't need to take so much time, creating more space for the things that really matter, like being able to sit down over a cup of tea and genuinely get to know the person in front of you.

The conversations about leadership also reinforced the thinking behind how we have designed the manager role within Fosterli. We know that managers have significant responsibilities for oversight, quality assurance, safeguarding and compliance, and that these responsibilities are essential, but we also recognise how easily supervision can become consumed by updates on outstanding tasks, assessment progress and whether particular checks have been completed. By making this information readily visible to managers, and allowing them to review progress and compliance ahead of supervision, our intention is to create more space within those conversations for meaningful reflection, professional curiosity, discussion about the quality of practice and the support Social Workers may need. It's about recognising that while the administrative elements of the work are important, they shouldn't be taking up all the space where reflective leadership and professional development ought to happen.

We haven't designed anything particularly revolutionary in that respect, and perhaps that's what makes it so important. So much of what we are trying to achieve at Fosterli comes from understanding the everyday realities of Social Work and recognising the difference that seemingly small changes to systems and processes can make to the experience of practitioners and Fostering Applicants alike. Towards the end of the day, an Independent Social Worker was looking through Fosterli and commented, "I can tell you really are a Social Worker." It was such a lovely thing to hear, because ultimately that is what we want to come through in what we build, that the platform has been shaped by an understanding of practice, the people involved and the relationships at the heart of the work.

I left the day reflecting on how much we ask of Social Workers, and how important it is that the systems, leadership and organisations surrounding them demonstrate the same care, curiosity and respect that we expect them to bring to their work with others. If we want Social Workers to be present, thoughtful and relationship-focused in their practice, then surely we need to create the conditions that allow them to be those things. And sometimes that might be as simple as making sure there is enough time for a cup of tea.