Jake Mills doesn’t hold back when he tells the story of his battle with depression that led him to attempt suicide at the age of 24.
“I don’t see the point,” the stand-up comedian, writer and broadcaster says. “If I’m doing it I might as well tell you the whole thing.” Social workers and other professionals appreciate the honesty. “Usually they’ll say it’s stuff they’ve never heard before. They don’t want to hear about statistics and graphs and case studies – they want to hear from actual people.”
It’s an approach that fits perfectly into Barking and Dagenham’s new masterclass programme - a series of two-hour workshops for social workers that seeks to challenge and inspire staff with fresh thinking and cutting edge research.
Mills is delivering one of the upcoming sessions.
“We deliberately looked to see who was out there that would be different,” social care workforce development manager Linnett Whittaker explains. “These aren’t standard workshops. We’re hoping we’ll see some real new areas of knowledge that people haven’t come across before that make them think about their practice in a different way.
“It’s those powerful messages we really want to get through to staff, so they’re not just thinking about the process and deadlines they have to meet, but about their communication skills, engagement skills and the impact of everything they do with service users. Staff will get protected time to come to the workshops and hear from top people in their fields, including speakers they wouldn’t normally get access to.”
Barking and Dagenham prides itself on maintaining a strong commitment to social workers’ professional development, even in an era of severely reduced budgets for local authorities.
“We try to put some real quality into the core offer, but we don’t just stick to that – we try to go over and above it,” Whittaker says. “Anybody coming to work here can be assured that there’s commitment and investment in social work practice. Staff surveys and Investors in People findings show that our social workers see learning and development here as a real strength.”
Reduced caseloads mean there’s more time for training, says care management team member Katy Sweeny. “We’re always given the opportunity to go out on training. They’re constantly encouraging us, and in supervision we’re asked what we’ve been doing.”
Anthony Elston-Smith, a senior social worker in the multi-agency safeguarding hub, has found that because the training on offer is responsive to the diverse and changing community in the borough, it doesn’t get stale. “I’ve been on loads of training since coming here last year,” he says.
As well as providing open access to becoming post-qualified with either a specialist award in social work or an award in practice education, the most talented and committed staff are also offered the chance to gain advanced and higher awards.
Recently the borough has invested in a programme of four workshops on attachment and relationship-based practice for all permanent social workers with the University of Kent’s Professor David Shemmings.
The learning focuses on building confidence in the transfer of new knowledge and skills. Whittaker says: “Professor Shemmings OBE sets tasks which the social workers are expected to try out in between workshops. When they come back to the training he asks them to share how they put the new knowledge and skill into practice.”
Mills, who has set up his own mental health charity, Chasing the Stigma, and is creating the UK’s first nationwide mental health database, will speak frankly about his experiences with the NHS, police and counselling services, with the aim of showing social workers how professionals can respond better to people’s mental health problems. In particular, he will highlight the importance of a joined-up strategy, and not adopting a one size fits all approach.
“I feel personally that a lot of development on offer to social workers should hone in on communication skills and direct work with children and young people,” Whittaker says. “In a job that’s very pressurised, social workers need opportunities to come away from practice to reflect and share their practice experiences with other professionals. This helps them to feel supported, builds resilience and develops their knowledge which is absolutely essential for their practice.
“The end goal is that service users – parents, carers and, most importantly, children – are getting the best possible service we can provide them with, and that we get to protect them as early as possible so they’re not suffering abuse, neglect or anything else that’s damaging to their future.”
For more information about working in social care in Barking and Dagenham, click here.
Content on this page is paid for and agreed to a brief with the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
- In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here
