7
February 2019
“Sometimes you have to do a bit of paperwork to give someone freedom” – Think Ahead participant writes for Community Care
A Think Ahead participant has written a piece for Community Care, the leading social care news website, explaining why his attitude to paperwork changed drastically after seeing the difference it can make to a person’s life.
The participant – who chose not to be identified to protect service users’ anonymity – is in his first year of the Think Ahead programme and is learning on the job in an in-patient psychiatric unit. In the piece, he describes working on a report that aimed to support one of the in-patients to move to a unit with lower security.
He writes: “During the writing process, I spent time with the service user and carried out an interview. […] A few days later, I got a phone call from a senior social worker on the ward saying that the service user had asked to continue working with me.”
As a result, the participant worked with the person to identify friends and family who could visit them and the work has also led the person to decide that they would like to begin engaging with therapy. Reflecting on the process, our participant writes: “It made me realise how meaningful reports, and paperwork in general, could be and had been in this scenario – sometimes you have to do a bit of paperwork to give someone freedom!”