Social workers - advice needes

[Notsandwiches]

Are social workers able to eat/drink with their clients in the course of an assessment within the family home. Is there guidance?

Social worker here. We are working with very strict rules/risk assessments around home visits, and it’s quite different to pre-covid visits. Some of the changes mean that’s we’re not able to do things we would normally do including
accepting food or drink in service user’s homes. We also are using PPE at every visit, usually a mask and gloves. We don’t expect people to wear masks etc in their own home, but we do to help protect them. We do ask service users to wear masks at office visits (we do too) unless they have a medical or other issue that means they can’t wear one.

Of course the guidance may be different in your area as the risk assessment and guidelines for staff should take account of the needs of the service.

I'm not aware of any official guidance in my local authority.

As a general rule of thumb though I think most social workers decline offers of a drink/ biscuit even precovid for a whole host of reasons.

You never know when you are going to get a loo break next sometimes for example.

In some circumstances it might be appropriate to accept a drink and a biscuit but I can't think of many circumstances where it would be appropriate to e.g. sit and have lunch in the family home.

Yes, we would never have a meal in someone’s home. We might accept a cup of tea and a biscuit depending on the circumstances, and sometimes people would be offended if we said no. I usually decline politely and thank them for the offer. At the moment however the rules are that we can’t accept even a cup of tea.

Retired SW here. I used to accept a cup of tea in very select homes. Many of them I wouldn't even sit down in never mind accept a drink! I think in Covid times I wouldn't be accepting any offers of drinks. I certainly wouldn't eat with service users in any circumstances.