• Social Care worker talks about experiences of social care

Social Care worker talks about her frustrations working in social care, and her thoughts about being a 'professional friend ' to those who need it, and talks about her responsibility to engage with people - and not talk about their failure to engage with services.

people who use services should be at the heart of service, design, delivery and evaluation rather than setting kpi s and monitoring targets that aren't actually in the best interests of people who use services, People talk about the revolving door and and people going around around the system. The revolving door is perpetuated by people being Sinpo Sted services that aren't the right shape for them. And that then puts people and what I've now turned the corridor of despair, where they're wandering up and down, trying to get the right services for them. And each time there's a door shut in their face saying You're not quite the right shape, you're not quite the right, you know, we're not quite the right service for you or you're not

You're not bad enough for you don't meet the threshold or whatever that may be. And actually at the bottom of the cliff before you get help. Yeah, yeah, absolutely

And and then, actually, what that then does is mean that people, by the time they are in crisis, are so disengaged with services that they don't want to. There's barriers to engagement, and what we're not looking at is what the real barriers are. So, for example, lots of services offer to phone calls, and if you don't pick up or respond, then to close the case on you

But actually, for people that have got anxiety or vulnerable or just in any sort of crisis situation, that's a really unhelpful barrier to them. Um, and that then means that they're less willing to accept the help the next time or the next time somebody suggests going to a service, they will feel that they won't be listened to. They won't be heard, and actually their needs aren't met

And we need to really, really give time to the individuals and and the people working in services to be creative and and to, you know, do whatever it takes to engage with that individual. We talk about hard to reach case people. People aren't hard to reach that they've been, they've been beaten up by the services there, there are there to provide for them and and actually it's really, really hard for people to to engage first time and that sort of thing

People in crisis situations they can't follow through on sequential actions we need to provide that hand holding support that actually gets them through it and build relationships of trust and build really meaningful relationships with people. I like to use the term your professional friend, your that friend there with somebody that hasn't got somebody else to to do the hand holding support that they need and to challenge them in the ways that actually, most of us would have from our friendship groups. People are lonely and isolated

I haven't got that. I think the biggest barriers are people's perceptions around them. So actually, you know, if it takes you if you spend eight hours trying to engage somebody, for example, um that that's a lot of people would see that as a complete waste of time

But actually, for that individual, that's the right thing to do. Um, I'm really, really keen. I think we, as we as providers can can blame people who use services far too often

Um so, for example, people say, Oh, they didn't want to engage and actually it's our job to engage them, and we need to change that mindset and really simple language changes such as that and saying, Actually, I failed to engage with that individual. It changes the changes, the onus of blame. Doesn't it changes? It changes what we do, because as soon as we were saying I failed to engage rather than they didn't engage, then actually, we got this slight mindset shift, and I guess for me as well

We provide a lot of time limited services because the focus is always on capacity building. But actually, some people were never going to be able to build the capacity to the point where they can manage by themselves. So we have this situation where people are going

We help them to get a bit better. They're better able to manage their own lives and then services withdraw. And then we have to wait for them to get bad again

And then quite often that service isn't available to them because they've already been into it. So then what? And we talk about co production, and for me, a lot of the time people, people's view of coal production is all we do. A newsletter and things like that

We shouldn't be doing newsletters That's not meaningful co production. That's token. Mystic

What can we do differently? Do you know if we're really meaningful about coal production. It's about having the people in in the rooms, sitting within the commissioning teams and actually commissioners using the people that are using services as as the evaluation, not the tick boxes that services are currently set up to do.

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