The Latest Bulletin

Now available! The Social Worker’s Practice Manual. Neil’s latest publication is not a textbook; it is a hands-on manual that distils his decades of experience in social work. Click here to order your copy now! Are you a social worker who uses Facebook? If so, why not join Neil’s Social Work Focus group? A group for discussion, support, learning and sharing. Just click here.

Some people regularly stray into arrogance territory, by which I mean that they overestimate their own importance and their own capabilities. Indeed, this is a common theme in movies and dramas: the person who annoys others with their inflated self-belief and then eventually gets their comeuppance. It makes for satisfying viewing. However, what I think is far more common is for people to go to the other extreme, to underestimate their importance, their capabilities and the difference they can make. This is often a matter of a lack of confidence (possibly linked to self-esteem issues), but that isn’t always the case. In a significant number of cases it is simply that we have genuinely underestimated what we can do. We…

A big thank you to everyone who took part on 25 January 2018 and helped us highlight some of the pressures that the UK’s youngest young carers are facing. The aim of Young Carers Awareness Day is to identify and raise awareness of the 700,000 young carers across the UK who are caring for a sick or disabled family member. By raising awareness we hope it will help them to get the support they desperately need. For Young Carers Awareness Day 2018 we carried out a snapshot survey which showed that many five-to-ten year olds, known as infant young carers, are getting up at night to care for a sick family member. There are around 10,000 young carers between the ages of…

While watching Silent Witness ... it struck me that I’m old enough to remember Ironside, the crime fighter in a wheelchair, on TV in the 60s and 70s. As a disabled kid, I loved his van - I wanted that van. I never once thought about whether the actor Raymond Burr was disabled. Which he wasn’t, of course. The first time I saw a disabled actor - an actual disabled person - playing a role was probably Sandy in the British TV soap Crossroads (also when I was young). Yet it remains a rarity, all these decades later, to see a disabled actor on TV, especially in a powerful role. So to have three disabled actors on prime time ... in a long-running BBC drama such as…

Working with someone on the autism spectrum (including those with Asperger syndrome), can be an enriching experience for managers and colleagues alike, but it may also present some challenges. Here we explain how to avoid or overcome any difficulties, in order to ensure enjoyable and effective working relationships. Many autistic people have a variety of sometimes exceptional skills that enable them to thrive in roles ranging from sales assistant to computer programmer and journalist to statistician, to name a few. However, they are often disadvantaged when it comes to getting and keeping a job because of difficulties with social communication and interaction, other people's lack of understanding, and sensory issues. Click here to read more

It's all too easy to develop a grudge, and let one bad experience inform how you view a person going forward. But as leadership expert Angie McArthur says, "The more certain we are, the more stuck we will remain." A moment of broken trust can compound into a closed mind, but to loosen up that knot, revisit the experience and ask yourself: how subjective is your narrative of the events? What was going on in your life at the time - and what may have been going on in theirs? "You can’t change people," says McArthur, "... but you can respect yourself and you can at least let them have the experience of being respected." When you start to see…