Dear SWU members,
Thank you sincerely for your continuing membership and engagement with SWU. I wish you a peaceful and relaxing festive period and end of year and I look forward to your continued membership and support in 2024.
I would also like to thank the engine of SWU which is the Executive, staff and the hard working, knowledgeable and skillful Advice and Representation team who are by far the reason a lot of members join SWU and BASW. Unlike other trade unions, SWU is able to offer you representation if eligible from a qualified Social Worker and someone who understands the competing demands placed upon you by your employer and the Code of Conduct, and what it’s like to be a practicing Social Worker. No other social work union can guarantee that you will have an A&R officer providing advice and, if needed, representation at the highest level.
Have a great festive break and somewhere there will be social workers working hard over the festive period providing a side to Social Work that the public rarely sees or media reporting on the great work we do 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year.
John McGowan, SWU General Secretary
A festive message from the SWU Chair
SWU Chair Dave Callow shares his reflections on the importance of solidarity and kindness at the beginning of the 2023 festive season.
As 2023 draws to a close I would like to begin by thanking all the social workers out there whose empathy, understanding and perseverance is perhaps not acknowledged as much as it should be. SWU not only supports you but, as people qualified in social work, we empathise with you as you continue to be all things to all people in a cost-of-living crisis and somehow also find time for the people that mean the most to you.
As I write this in my capacity as Programme Lead for the MSc Social Work at the University of Lincoln, 16 Social Work students will very shortly be registering with Social Work England following successful completion of their 2 years with us and as such are now about to begin the role they were brought to or guided to for many different and individual reasons.
There must have been times in the last two years when I appeared to be bursting with pride at some of the comments they made. Including the recognition that structural inequalities are fundamental to the behaviours we observe in society and that what we expect to see in any practice situation and how it actually appears perhaps says more about us, our own privileges and potential biases – essentially our self-awareness. Witnessing the development in their self-awareness as future social workers is something I will remember now and then and of course is as equally important to social work practice –
The beauty of social awareness is that a few simple adjustments to what you say can vastly improve your relationships with other people.
– Travis Bradberry
I thought about what I might say to our departing cohort of students, and I would like to share it with our members as well.
Dear students,
I am pleased you have now arrived at where you planned to be. And yet this ending is a new beginning. I wonder how you will find the role that must have seemed on the far distant horizon when you first joined us in January 2022.
I hope you join SWU, as this will be a companion in tougher times and may remind you that you are not alone. I would encourage you to become active in SWU and perhaps find your way onto the executive committee to influence your union or take up the union contact role and become that visual SWU supportive element in the office or team.
One thing that is constant is change. However, the profession you are entering still needs social workers with empathy, self-awareness and principles of social justice at the centre of their approach. To practice from a foundation of empathy is not always an easy course. Competing demands in your social work role, personal relationships and your own growth and development add further complication. This is when supervision can allow you to make sense of any value conflicts that may arise; we are after all only human.
Most of all be kind – there are lots of people out there who you will be working with, that are disconnected, left behind, lost, scared children pretending to be adults and adults who feel like scared children.
“People start to heal the moment they feel heard.”
– Cheryl Richardson
I know that some of you are confident in your future role while others are unsure about your position and what you will experience, and that is fine. The development of you as social workers is now beginning a new chapter.
Please remember –
- Ask questions.
- Ask for help if you need to.
- Make sure you take your lunch break.
- Join SWU.
- Enjoy it!
And make a difference.
I wish you all a peaceful holiday.
In solidarity,
Dave Callow, SWU Chair