THANK YOU TO ALL THE OUT OF HOURS SOCIAL WORKERS ON DUTY THIS CHRISTMAS

In a profession that is filled with unsung heroes and unheralded good deeds, perhaps the most unrecognised of all of us are the out of hours duty social workers who look after our clients on evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays.

These valiant social workers are on call when the rest of us are sleeping and, at this time of year, being merry with our friends and families.

They are there to respond to emergencies at all hours and often end up placing children in care, responding to serious injuries and abuse, and being at the forefront of safeguarding in the dead of night.

Yet, despite their sterling efforts and invaluable roles, we hardly ever hear the deeds of our out of hours workers. They go about their tasks quietly and meekly, solving problems when they arise and making sure that children and their families are protected from harm.

Such is their low profile that I would somewhat embarrassingly fail to name even a single out of hours duty social worker in my very own local authority. Indeed, save for a single friend who worked out of hours for a council I worked in a few years ago, I would not be able to name an emergency duty team social worker from any point of my past decade in social work.

However, I could give you hundreds of things that they have done for the children I have supported. They have found emergency foster placements for children, taken children home to their parents after being missing, attended police interviews with teenagers, put the gas and electric back on in cold and dark homes, provided hungry families with food, supported police on abuse call outs and so very much more.

SUFFICE TO SAY THAT WITHOUT THESE WORKERS, I COULD NOT DO MY JOB, AND THE CHILDREN I SUPPORT WOULD NOT BE SAFE.

This needs better recognition as a whole and especially at this time of year. As we are opening our presents on Christmas morning there will be duty social workers who are just getting into bed after having been up all night providing emergency interventions for children at risk of significant harm.

As I sit down to Christmas dinner with my wife and children there will be duty social workers all across the world who will be responding to crisis situations.

WHEN I AM GETTING READY FOR BED, THERE WILL BE SOME SOCIAL WORKERS WHO HAVE JUST TAKEN AN EMERGENCY PHONE CALL AND ARE GETTING READY TO LEAVE THEIR HOMES FOR THE NIGHT.

Our on-call senior managers need some recognition here too. There will be service managers and social work leaders all over the land who will have their work phones on throughout Christmas day - being ready at any time to field telephone calls about emergency placements, foster care, funding, and strategy discussions.

At any time their phone could ring and they will be taken away from their family and thrust back into work mode. Uneasy is the head that wears a crown.

These stories will not be told and no recognition will be given. The only reward will be knowing they did the right thing and that, when somebody had to do the job, they stepped up and answered the call.

Then there are all the others we work alongside in safeguarding who will have no time off over Christmas either - foster carers, residential workers, nurses, and police officers, who we all rely on to keep children safe.

They will be forgoing time with their own children in order to keep other people’s children safe, and for that we owe an immense debt of gratitude. My hours in social work are often long and there are rare occasions where I have to work deep into the night.

I have never had to work Christmas Day though, and have never had to stay up all night responding to emergency situations with children I have never met before. It takes a special kind of person to work those jobs and manage those situations, and those people deserve more recognition.

Thank you to all of you who are working this Christmas - whether social workers, managers, foster carers, residential workers, nurses, police officers or anyone else who we collaboratively work with in safeguarding.

You are all heroes and my thanks go out to you for all you do. Merry Christmas, and may you have as peaceful a one as possible.