Meet the social worker behind Instagram’s anonymous relationship educator…
LALALALETMEEXPLAIN
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“PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK WHEN f you’re a fan of the ‘Gram I STOPPED BEING A SOCIAL (Instagram, to those of us not WORKER, BUT I FEEL AS IF I STILL so in the know…) then the name LaLaLaLetMeExplain is one you may be AM, JUST IN A DIFFERENT WAY,” SHE EXPLAINS WITH A SMILE. familiar with. The anonymous love, sex and relationship educator has gained a massive following since launching her page back in 2017, bringing her distinct brand of no-nonsense quick wit and fierce female charm to advice and guidance on everything from porn, and abusive relationships, to infidelity, and the realities of dating as a single mum. Five years on from her first blog, LaLa - as she goes by - is now a Sunday Times Bestselling author, writes a regular column in Okay magazine, and has accrued 210,000 followers, including celebrity fans such as Katie Piper, Winnie Harlow, and Laverne Cox. But what is perhaps lesser known is that Lala is a registered social worker, with 11 years under her belt working as a children and families practitioner for a local authority.
“When I first qualified, in 2007, I’d planned to work in adult services, and had a real interest in work in prisons, and with people with HIV, which were my two placements. However, I ended up making the move to children’s, and simply never left.” It was here, LaLa explains, that she found herself getting very quickly caught up in the damaging cycle of high caseloads, high stress, and a lack of time and support which leads to burnout in so many social workers, and - she reveals - she was no exception. “I’d say I encountered burnout early on in my career - from my first week to be honest,” she confirms. “I had the privilege of working for a few years under a Labour government,
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and then for a few years under a Conservative government, and the difference was stark. I started as an NQSW with 75 families on my caseload, so it always felt like too much, but then after the Tory government came in, and austerity really hit, it felt almost unmanageable most days. We existed in crisis at all times. “I remember at my interview, I was really honest about my lack of experience in children’s services. I was told they’d provide a mentor, that I’d have an induction week, and that I’d be shadowing an experienced social worker to begin with. In reality, there was none of that. I turned up, and was thrown in at the deep end. “These days, I know things are even worse. In 2007, when I started, we had so many resources within our department - a teen pregnancy team, teen drugs team, a team for parents struggling to manage under 5s - but it all just got cut to the point it felt like we were barely functioning, and unless
