Social worker

[Charliebear322]

She’s a mental health social worker for me. She’s been nothing but trouble from day one and caused me loads of stress. Is it simple to get rid of her? Is sending an email that I no longer want to see her enough?

I think it’s too difficult to advise without a bit more context. Did you seek SS involvement? Are you deemed to have capacity to make your own decisions? And is she a rubbish SW? Or is it that you simply don’t like her conclusions about you?

Do you have anyone independent of SS advocating for you? If you wrote out an email setting out your complaint in bulletin points form, do you have someone who could read over it for you and tell you whether it’s justified or not?

I sought involvement. She is genuinely a rubbish social worker who rarely makes the time to see me and is awful with contact. I have just realised it has been 6 months since her initial contact and she hasn’t actually helped me with anything she was supposed to, but has instead caused me a lot of stress by making me contact her to chase her and having to get an advocacy worker involved because she isn’t doing her job.

Ok, well in that case, I think I’d be writing a complaint setting out her lack of involvement with you and asking her manager if you could have a different social worker allocated to you. You obviously had a need of the help, so it would be a shame to cut ties without giving them a chance to remedy the situation.

She has had it in her diary each week to see me but only come with a few minutes left of the session or not come at all, she goes weeks without seeing me or a month at a time. I think she has been pretending to see me in order to get paid more, but not sure if that’s how it works.
I don’t think I want to waste time writing out a complaint of all the ways she has done wrong and to be honest this experience makes me want to not ask for a new social worker

SW do not get paid on the amount of clients they see. She also isn't pretending to see you because that would have to be evidenced in case notes.
It might be that what you want support with, might be unachievable but only you know that.

It’s only unachievable because she hasn’t got the time to see me so why would they put me on her case load?
she does for her other clients what she is supposed to be doing for me. I’m not asking her to do anything more than her job.

SW are routinely given more cases than they can physically manage even if they never slept and worked 24 hours a day. I wouldn't blame the individual SW but speak to your MP about the lack of local authority funding.

How do you know what she’s doing for her other clients? I’d start by following the complaints process, she’ll be required to evidence her work with you.

She told me in her initial meeting what she does for her other clients I thought that’s great I’ll finally get the help I need. six months later, crickets. She has not actually done a single thing, it’s all been talk
If she has to prove her work with me, ill ask my advocate for help making a complaint

The first disability social worker we had for our son was a total waste of space and actively caused me more hassle dealing with her, so it sounds like a similar situation! I complained - again, it is work to do but it was quite cathartic! And I don’t know if she got into trouble but we got a new one who was much, much better (and who has now unfortunately left! But that’s another story). We need a social worker involved because that’s the only person who can arrange respite etc so that’s why I persevered but my experience is definitely not to get put off by one bad social worker.