Not just heroes anymore

Not just heroes anymore

“Our stories can help us learn from one another”, says Peter Hay, chair of Trustees of the Social Worker of the Year Awards.

As we have moved through the pandemic, the hero narrative has been strong.

We have rightly paid tribute to key workers across all manner of roles who have supported us through the lockdown. From those working in the NHS, workers in food production, teachers, those who kept our utilities working and have delivered food, shopping and mail to our doors.

Social workers, particularly in the care sector, have been a huge part of this collective effort.

Of course, there have been acts of courage and there are heroes. Yet if we built a library for just heroic tales it would be a small one that would miss so many stories.

If we just collect heroic narratives, we downplay the isolation and loneliness that has been some people’s experience and skip over the deep-rooted inequalities and racism that the disease has laid bare, particularly in the UK and the USA.

Opportunities to grow.

A heroic narrative can also be used to divert our attention which, when combined with our natural desire to want to move on, can silence the voices we need to learn from most. Human rights and social justice sit at the heart of social work and should be the warp and weft of our narrative.

I have heard stories of struggle - of social workers taking on issues that have been hitherto unknown.

These are not people who see themselves as heroes, but as limited mortals desperately trying to assemble a response to the overwhelming odds facing people. Their stories are powerful opportunities to learn and grow professionally in offering compassionate, kind social work. Some examples include:

• The sorrow of a senior leader after she had admitted an elderly man with dementia to residential care. His previous package of community support included meals at a local pub. Dementia left him unable to process the changes that have taken place in his community and he was apprehended trying to break into the shuttered pub for his meal.

• Amazing efforts made to communicate with children using videos, pictures and photos. One social worker was setting a child in care daily tasks with a video call each afternoon to see how this was going. When this became mutual, the social worker suddenly had to find out whether she could match the number of keepie-uppies.

• Social workers giving evidence to courts via video link and patiently moving through their evidence to allow parents to fully participate.

These stories - and many others - matter. They tell of a reflective and thoughtful profession that is trying to find ways to practice in accordance with clear values at a time when many people are experiencing great stress and pressure combined with systemic injustice.

Each of us is holding a story. It might be heroic, it might be of struggle and uncertainty. It doesn’t always have a happy ending. It might be a story which speaks truth to power. The point is that the stories that each of us is holding matters now more than ever.

Telling your social work stories.

At the Social Worker of the Year Awards, we have launched Social Work Stories, across our website and Twitter account, as a means of capturing and sharing the lived experience of social workers of all kinds during a time that will change us as people and professionals for the rest of our lives.

Normally our annual celebrations are an opportunity to highlight best practice and our award winners are held as a gold-standard in professional excellence. But now is not the time to single out ‘winners’ - this is not a time to separate people through judging - it is a time and an opportunity for voices within the profession to articulate its many stories.

With these stories we want to broaden public understanding of social work, the eco-systems its professionals work in and the positive and lasting change you bring to individuals, families and communities.

Tell your story.

Email us at stories@socialworkawards.com and follow us on Twitter @SocialWorkAward.