Well, I've returned to work for 10 days only and its like i never left. I am yet again back into the familiar situation of finding myself around a small table in a internal window lit room, with a couple of hostile parents and a sullen teenager who is in the process of being delivered into our care. My job is to get them to leave again as a happy family unit, the sooner the better. However, when the kids are badly behaved, they are very rarely apologetic either, and their goading and attitude doesn't help. This situation has happened three times this week.
My job is so full on that often i don't talk about it, as it so quickly ends up in these ridiculous stories that just seem unbelievable and a world away from the existence of me and my educated, healthy, loved, friends born into families with relatively few life altering traumas or histories. My second day back at work i left a house in a hurry as the 15 year old ADHD boy had begun pacing his empty house, hurling baseballs, tennis balls, coke bottles (in fact anything that moved easily) indiscriminately and swinging a baseball bat at the walls in a rage. These days things like this don't even raise any adrenalin in my system, i simply turned to my colleague and suggested we leave. We then called the police from a safe distance. Simply another visit to write up.
One of the great things about having been away for so long travelling, was that i forgot my kids. I was away for so long, i stopped worrying whether A would succeed in committing suicide, whether B had been sleeping rough, or whether S would remain in her foster placement. I forgot about it all, and it was glorious. But part of being a good social worker is caring about your clients, really caring, not just caring about what boxes they tick on your reports. On Thursday i met my first new client that made me care again, and started me on the slow emotional pull back into my job. Welcome back. I know caring makes you a better worker, but does it really have to hurt so much? This year is a new experiment to see if i can care, but not after 6pm at night. Can i be really involved in such vulnerable peoples lives and yet remain unaffected? This is yet to be seen.
I think i am successful in my job, if for no other reason than despite the fact that i work for 'the social' (often synonymous with 'the enemy') my clients still call me long after i have finished working with them to ask for help. When i finally got my work mobile answer machine running, there already on the machine was StaceyG's mum, asking me to call. When i phoned her back, she wanted help with locating a sixth form for her daughter to attend, and then suggested that we meet up sometime for me to see her now almost adult daughter. I probably wont meet them as its not accepted for a professional relationship to become anything else, but despite it not being my job to look for colleges, and even though i am really busy. I'll find her some courses and call her back, because i still haven't stopped caring about Stacey.
No comments:
Post a Comment