Learning from History : Lesson 6 : The Dangers of Change

In the August 2007 edition of the Webmag, we explained that a study of social work files covering the last three or four decades had suggested that there were lessons for today’s practitioners. For the purpose of this series, six topics were chosen, and in each case, David Lane has described what he has found out from the files, and Chris Durkin has commented from the viewpoint of current practice and teaching about social work. The first five Lessons covered the need for good standard practice, the value of comprehensive assessments, forms of abuse, treating abuse and realistic expectations. It should be emphasised that the Lessons all focus on general issues, and do not disclose any confidential information

David Lane :

Social workers move

In the cases with which I have dealt, there have been two or three social workers who remained with families over a decade or more, and there have been some where there were significant gaps with no social worker allocated, in one case because of a trade union boycott. The typical pattern, however, has been one of steady turnover, with social workers carrying a case for anything ranging from nine months to two and a half years. A child in care throughout his / her childhood might therefore expect to have seven or eight social workers during that time.

Social workers move on for all sorts of reasons. A small percentage of changes are the result of re-organisations of authority boundaries or departmental restructuring. Quite a few are caused by ill health or maternity leave (which appears to have been catching in some teams).

Most moves, however, appear to result from promotion or job changes. In the event of internal promotion, continued knowledge of the family by the manager can prove helpful, and sometimes social workers move around within an authority and in other capacities they come across young people whom they had known as little children.

Typically, though, the moves cause disruption, and in a small minority where close relationships had been formed, children have found the loss of their social worker very distressing indeed.

It is not clear what can be done about this, and it may be necessary to simply wait in the hope that the services settle down and workers move less. Greater stability would presumably be of help to children and young people in increasing the likelihood of developing a long-term trusting relationship. In the meantime, it is obviously vital that case records are well maintained and well read in order to maintain continuity.

Changes of system

At a different level, in the period I have covered, there have been numerous changes of central Government Ministry responsible for the services, frequent appointments of new Secretaries of State and Ministers, new legislation, changes in central Government inspection systems, regular updates in guidance, wholesale changes among civil servants, new local authority departments, new systems of funding, complete new hierarchies of senior managers, restructuring at lower levels, new consultation systems and partnerships, closures of some private agencies and growth in others, experimental services set up by children’s charities, new staff training systems……

As they say, the only constant is change, and all these changes have created a most unstable setting for social workers and others to create stability for children and young people. Experience in the past has shown that changes which affect social workers inevitably use up their energies and divert them from clients.

Whether initiated by the Government or reflecting developments in professional thinking, the records indicate a cycle of change in which go-ahead authorities introduce new ideas ahead of Government guidance, while others lag for some time after the guidance has been issued.

In one case, a total reorganisation took place in the course of the case which I was studying. It resulted in the creation of new teams and the wholesale reallocation of cases. It was to the credit of the authority that it developed a reviewing system in which cases were handed over systematically, and the change appeared to have no impact on the family in question.

I suspect that this was the exception. There were other instances where staff were cobbling over gaps, with senior staff keeping an eye on cases and without the necessary level of supervision or record-keeping.

It has made me suspicious of change. There is also danger in stagnation, of course, but too many politicians and senior managers think that restructuring will be a panacea, when what their troops need is a degree of stability, to be valued and supported, and to be allowed to get on with the job.

Chris Durkin:

Managing Change

David focuses on a very significant issue and one that affects all of us. All of us at times will struggle to cope with change; it is human nature, most of us pray for certainty. Social work is a profession that suffers from high turnover of staff. I would suggest that at times this high turnover is not surprising given the nature of the work.

However, I would also say that in my experience most organisations manage change badly. The cynic in me thinks that often change is ‘inflicted’ on weary teams to ‘keep them on their toes’ rather than for any sound rational reasons. Change needs to have a purpose and the aims need to be clearly spelled out.

Organisations, however, do not exist in a vacuum; they exist in a fast changing environment. In part, this poor management of change is a result of poor communication and a lack of proper consultation with staff. Often we get so caught up in our own concerns and agenda that we become inward-looking, worried about what is going to happen next. The response of a team to a reorganisation, for instance, can be for staff to focus on their own needs and become insular; they withdraw into themselves – an understandable tactic of self preservation.

Sociologists refer to organisations as social constructs, set up for a purpose – with a vision. In recent years some have gone further and described organisations by way of stories. If we pursue the analogy of the story further we could suggest that in the social context, one of the main characters is often marginalised. It is like an author who introduces the main character of the story at page one and does not mention them again until the last page, which in this context is signified by a young person leaving care. In looking at organisational change, so often the very people we are trying to benefit become a mere add on.

Consultation is vital.

Good management will institute change by consulting stakeholders (including carers and young people), listening to their views and trying to explain the rationale and the purpose. In this context, when I talk of management, I use the term in a very wide sense. All social workers are managers and we forget that, if we are leaving or the team is going to be reorganised, these changes will not just affect us as employees but will also affect children and families.

A systems or an ecological framework advocated by Every Child Matters is pertinent in this context, because at its most simple we need to recognise that if we change one part of the system, (for instance, if a social worker leaves) that will have an affect in another part, (for instance on a child living with a foster family). As Warren Bennis once said, “Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery” .

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