One of our trainees 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 trainee – who chose not to be identified – is in his first year of our 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.
“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.”
The trainee worked with the person to identify friends and family who could visit them and, following their work together, the service user has also decided they would like to begin engaging with therapy.
Reflecting on the process, our trainee explains: “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!”