I’m a social work team leader at Careline, Liverpool’s 24/7 social care contact service. Careline is the front door for all social care inquiries and referrals from the public and professionals about vulnerable children and adults.
As Careline is a 24-hour service we work one of three shifts: day, late or night. It is 2pm on a Friday afternoon and I am about to start a late shift which lasts until 11.30pm.
I begin my shift by setting up my out-of-hours handover sheet before I plough through my emails. At this point I am already thinking ahead. Do we have a full complement of staff? Were last night’s mobile phones returned? Are there any appropriate adults working over the weekend? Has the approved mental health professional rung in?
My anxiety, as usual, is if we have too many emergency situations. How can the social workers be in two places at once? I tell myself I have no time to worry about the what if’s and crack on with prioritising the work.
Before I know it, a day shift team leader is handing me the phone and potentially the first piece of out-of-hours work for the weekend. I can’t believe the time and once again I’m annoyed that I didn’t manage to eat anything before the shift starts to heat up.
The call is from the police asking for our assistance. They are unable to share much information due to the nature of the case but they are asking for a welfare visit based on intelligence they’ve received. While I’m speaking to the police a small queue of two call advisers and a social worker has formed. Initially, I’m not happy to proceed with the police’s request as I can’t complete my own risk assessment with such limited information. However, the police inspector reassures me that I won’t be placing the social workers at risk if they complete the visit. The police are also eager for feedback once the visit is completed.
As I put the phone down it rings again, so I direct the people who are waiting to speak to me towards one of the social workers. The call is from a children’s services area manager. She is ringing to make me aware of a request for welfare visits over the weekend that they would like us to complete. They are time specific, after 10pm. You can hear my sigh of relief; the next shift of social workers starts at 10pm and this is a perfect piece of work for them.
I have to prioritise two further pieces of work, both concerning disclosures of physical assault by children in school. They are two separate disclosures, both with reported minor injuries, both relating to children who are old enough to have capacity. There is no doubt that these calls are now the priority and will require strategy discussions with the police before social workers go out.
Five hours later, the social workers return to the office having completed six visits between them. They are busy completing single assessments and will be hoping to finish on time. Safeguards have been put in place for the two children who made disclosures, but it seems that no further action will be taken as neither child is prepared to make a statement. We will complete further checks with schools and feedback the outcome as the school was the referrer for both cases.
The two night-shift social workers are out completing a couple of welfare visits and an unannounced visit to a care home following some safeguarding concerns.
It’s now 11.30pm and the night shift social work team leader arrives. Their shift runs until 8am. It is always a pleasure to greet the next team leader! As I start my wind down I check the mailboxes to make sure I haven’t missed anything important. Throughout the evening call advisers feed information regarding referrals into a dedicated out-of-hours mailbox. Tonight includes information on children missing from care and a few adult safeguarding referrals, one that will need to be followed up on tomorrow’s day shift.
I complete the handover document as well as a statistical information form which records all the visits made during each shift. Before going home, I have a verbal handover with the incoming team leader. Just as I am getting ready to leave the office, a social worker tells me that a safeguarding arrangement that we put in place earlier has broken down. I am about to sit down and sort it out, but my colleague urges me to leave assuring me that they’ll deal with it.
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