Social Works Role In Adult Services

Social works’ role in adult services deals with a wide array of people from mental health to offenders to older people. With this wide and vague role a number of tensions and challenges arise. Many challenges develop in the role that result in tensions and vice-versa. The main challenge affecting all social work areas at the moment is heavy workloads and lack of time; it has been found that most effective social work practise involves an on-going assessment and regularly checking in with clients. However, this cannot occur when social workers are under strain from the high number of cases they have on their shoulders. Wrong decisions are then often made and key issues are neglected. Spending cuts increases pressure on social workers, as, not

Decision-making is a huge tension in social work practice in adult services because adults should be in charge of making decisions themselves about issues concerning their life; however when it is not believed adults are capable of making a functional decision themself, social work will intervene. Tensions may arise due to the decisions being made against their beliefs therefore in safeguarding the adult they should be involved in the decision-making process as much as possible. Finally, in recent years, the challenge has arisen concerning media and social networking. This essay will go on to further demonstrate these tensions and challenges of working in social work with adult

It was learned from the case of Steven Hoskin that, in safeguarding adults, it is crucial that agencies share information about a case. This is challenging for social work, as it requires collaboration and communication between services. This could become a tension if, for example, social work are doing all it can but other agencies hold information crucial to the case. Social workers have to rely on other agencies and trust that they will pass on information about service users that may be at risk. As reported by Cornwall Adult Protection Committee (2007) in the serious case review for Steven Hoskin, agencies had missed numerous warning signs and changes to notice he was suffering. If agencies had communicated there is a chance Steven would have been flagged up to be at risk (Flynn, 2007). Overall, adults with additional needs are now progressively expected to live in the community more. Therefore services have to collaborate social work so that these individuals can be protected from self-harm and suicide which has recently increased dramatically and also bullying like in Steven Hoskin’s case. This can become a challenge for social workers when others do not collaborate with