Category Archives: mental health

What service users want from social workers

May 3, 2012   Carers, Depression, disability, mental health, social workers
Good social workers are essential
Peter Beresford
Friday 27 April 2012 15:43

What do service users want from social workers? Social work academic and mental health service user Peter Beresford says that research points to four crucial qualities. He will be speaking about the future of adult social work at Community Care Live on 16 May.

 

The crucial importance of the social work relationship

Above all else the evidence highlights that service users value the relationship that they have with social workers. It is seen as the crucial starting point for getting help and support on equal terms; for working with rather than on people. Service users talk of relationships based on warmth, empathy reliability and respect. It is the antithesis of form-filling approaches to assessment, which reduce the contact between service users and practitioners to a formulaic and bureaucratic contact.

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As sickness benefit cuts take effect, thousands face hard times

April 29, 2012   Cancer, Carers, Depression, disability, mental health

Fears those too ill to work will be unable to meet basic living costs as government limits contributory allowance to 365 days

 

Jenny Wheatley who was made redundant due to her anxiety and depression will lose her ESA as her husband earns £18,000.
Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

It all began with a telephone call. Earlier this month, Malcolm Parker, who has not worked since his spine collapsed three years ago, was rung out of the blue by an official from the Department of Work and Pensions. There was only one question: did his wife work more than 24 hours a week? Yes, said Parker, reasoning honesty was the best policy.

A fortnight later a letter dropped on the Parkers’ doormat. The department wrote bluntly to say his contributory employment and support allowance (ESA) would disappear on Monday.

Parker was taken aback. Having worked for 44 years in the construction trade and diligently paid his national insurance, he had expected to be protected should the worst happen. His wife Ruth was at first perplexed and then increasingly angry. Although her husband can visit the toilet by himself, with some difficulty, she comes home every lunchtime to feed and check on him.

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Britain on the breadline as thousands face food poverty

April 26, 2012   Carers, mental health

thousands face food poverty

 

 

 

 

Two new food banks are opening in Britain every week as people struggle to make ends meet

 

 

 

The impact of Britain’s economic downturn is forcing tens of thousands of ordinary families to queue up for food handouts.

One charity said today the number of people going to foodbanks has doubled in the last year.

Our Social AffairsEditor Penny Marshall has been to one in Coventry, which is among the fastestgrowing in the country:

Not many families say grace anymore, few even eat together. But as the church intervenes to guarantee thousands of families don’t go hungry, perhaps a few are whispering it under their breath.

The news that two new food banks are opening in Britain every week as people struggle to make ends meet should make each and every one of us pause and think.

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