Research in Practice: social work in challenging times

JO MORIARTYWORLD SOCIAL WORK DAY 2016 IN LONDON BOROUGH OF RICHMOND UPON THAMES

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2Outline

Covering two main themes: What makes social workers feel satisfied at work? What examples are there of social work ‘making a difference’

Why keeping up with research helps Using two reports

Work for Professional Standards Agency (2015) Report on Social Work Effectiveness (2016)

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3Contrasting picture

Many reports about stress Fewer about satisfaction

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4Theories about job motivation

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Motivation

Intrinsic:Something you find personally enjoyable

Extrinsic: to achieve a reward or avoid

punishment

Instrumental: to be in paid work and earn moneyIntegrative: to

have a sense of fulfilment

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And looking at social work5

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6Why?

Status? Money? Interesting and stimulating? (0.028) Fits in with life experiences? (0.004) Other family members in social work? ‘A social worker helped me’

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7Stress: what research suggests

High rates of stress but risk that it is sometimes presented as inevitable If true then all social workers would feel stressed

Potential to identify risk and protective factors Why do some studies show that it is possible to experience high

workloads and high job satisfaction? Not suggesting overloading people is a good thing It’s more about how work can be made more satisfying – retaining

those original motivations

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Survey of social work educators to find out what they taught students

Help to be emotionally resilient seen as increasingly important area of teaching and learning

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Survey of social workers in New York stateProblem focused coping eg ‘talked to someone who could do something concrete about the problem’ seemed to be better than emotion focused eg ‘tried not to think about it’

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10Concluded that more evidence was needed but…Links to better retention and commitment to organisationStaff perceived employer as more supportiveGroup supervision may help critical thinking

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11Finding the evidence

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... many policy makers and practitioners find it difficult to

access good quality evidence on the effectiveness of social work

interventions

Annual report 2014

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12Searches (excluding background material)

Source Retrieved

Read full text

Included

Centre for Reviews and DisseminationDatabase

140 46 13

Sociological Abstracts 225 13 6Social Care Online 727 27 21Medline 419 26 15Journals @ OVID 161 18 11Reference harvest 38 38 26Google scholar & websites 8 8 6Total 1666 176 98

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ConcludedRecognised there are gapsPointed out that there are some situations where outcome is least worstService users and carers often have limited experience of social workersBut overall many examples of effectiveness in different areas of work

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14Why choose this example?

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15What happened?

At follow up, the group receiving social work intervention significantly reduced alcohol intake from hazardous levels, and maintained level of community functioning (for example, managing their finances and shopping)

Acceptable to participants Social workers helped them access community support Social workers combined verbal and written advice and

counselling

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16Well I would say this, wouldn’t I?

Research may match or differ from your own experiences ‘Real world settings’

May offer practical suggestions that can help Things that you might want to try

Broader perspective Not just what is happening in England

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17Saving time to find out about research

Look for summaries Helps you decide what full studies

you want to read Social Care Institute for Excellence Social Care Elf NIHR School for Social Care ‘Findings’

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18Finally, one carer’s experience

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And one of my friends I talked about … she’s had the best experience of us all … and I think the key difference there is, for a short period of time, the critical period of about a year, 18 months, she had a very good social worker. A proactive social worker, who went down to where [her son was], to his college, and met [him], and met a couple of the boys that [he] got on well with. And with a lot of input from my friend in particular, to a lesser extent the other two boys … got them a house to live in, with support going in.

Carer14

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19Taking things forward…

Helping the media and the general public to understand what the role involves

Role of anonymous blogs and similar?

Responsiveness to experiences of people using services and carers

Making research more relevant More opportunities for practitioner

research

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20Sources and references

Number Source

3 Schraer 2015: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/01/07/stress-stopping-job-social-workers-say/3 Rose 2006: http://wes.sagepub.com/content/17/3/503.abstract5 Guardian 2016:

http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2016/mar/15/why-i-became-a-social-worker & Stevens et al: http://jsw.sagepub.com/content/12/1/16

8 Grant et al 2015: http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/45/8/23519 Acker 2010: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03643107.2010.518125

10 Carpenter et al 2012: http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/briefings/briefing43/11 Romeo 2014:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/368485/Annual_report_2014_web_final.pdf

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21Sources and references (2)

Number Source13 Moriarty & Manthorpe 2016:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/policy-institute/scwru/pubs/2016/reports/Moriarty-&-Manthorpe-2016-Effectiveness-of-social-work-with-adults.pdf14 Moore et al 2014: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/02699052.2014.890746?journalCode=ibij20

17 Social Care Elf: http://www.nationalelfservice.net/social-care/18 Moriarty et al, 2014: http://www.sscr.nihr.ac.uk/PDF/Findings/RF6.pdf19 Channel 4: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/15000-kids-and-counting

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22Disclaimer & thank you

The Social Care Workforce Research Unit receives funding from the Department of Health Policy Research Programme. The views expressed here are those of the authors and not the Department of Health

Thank you for listening16/03/16