Social worker working hours

[Followthestarsxoxo]

I’m due to start my social work degree next September. I have 2 small children and when I graduate I will only intend on working between 20-30 hours a week.

I have 2 small children but by the time I graduate they will both be in school full time.
I know it depends what work place I go into and their working hours but just looking for other social workers advice and what job they do using their degree with part time hours?

My advice would be to go into adult social care not children and families. C and F, the emergencies seem to happen at school finish times, you end up placing kids miles away, school meetings etc etc. Not easy to manage if you’re the primary carer. It’s quite hard getting a part time job as a newly qualified social worker in my experience by the way. It’s also a horribly stressful job if you’re in any setting.

Occupational Therapy has much more family friendly hours and opportunities with very little emergency work and far less stress. I’d switch to that if you can.

Also placements whilst studying are usually full time.

To build your career you need to go into a statutory team ideally when you graduate. Often people get offered a job in the team where they do their final placement.
As mentioned and I'd say this is across all areas, being available for visits after 4pm is pretty essential.

My local Council has a duty social worker covering on a rota basis 24/7 for emergencies so even the 9-5 staff have to take their turn with weekends occasionally.

Yes, social work isn’t a particularly family friendly career

you can do part time hours but this usually means just doing less hours over the week, it doesn’t mean doing 9-2 every day. I know a couple of part time social workers (30 hours seems quite usual) but they all work nights, evenings and weekends, just fewer of them

I work in adults 9 until 5pm don't work any extra than Monday to Friday.

Being a social worker is amazing but as previous posters have stated some roles are more intense than others, in children’s the only statutory teams where you will have a 9-5 role are MAST and disabled children’s team in my opinion, in adults sticking to 9-5 is easier in most statutory teams as long as you are not working in an adult learning disability team. I have spent the last 7 years of my career in an adult LD Team and absolutely love it but it is the most intensive role I have undertaken in my career (even more so than children’s roles) and ultimately I end up playing catch up in my own time fairly often as there is a high level of safeguarding and court work with this role.

Placements are generally full time.
you can do part time in childrens but as pp have said, this is generally compressed hours / fewer days.

I have colleagues that have young children , and they need to be home to collect them from childcare etc. they know that if they are in a situation that may run into post 5pm they need to ask for back up or if it’s an emergency and no one in the team can help then ask the out of hours workers to tag in. (We don’t do evenings or weekends, out of hours is a separate team).

I do often work later than 5 , so if my kids were younger I’d need flexible childcare.

This is really helpful thank you, with the placement they advised it was 70 days in the 1 st year and 100 days in the 2nd year, for yourself did you end up doing 9-5 Monday Friday?

I have 2 children when I qualified they were both in primary school. I worked as a SW in the Transitions/Leaving Care Team for 3 years after qualifying. I was contracted to and paid for 3 days but worked a lot more. My case load was 24 young people, if they had an event such as court, placement change, dwp appointment etc on my non working day I would need to swap my day to support them. I would drive hundreds of miles to visit at secure units, prisons and university. When I had a student shadowing me they would come to.
I found that the young people on my case load were impacting on my own childrens time with me so I left.
I now work in Childrens Strategy and Sufficiency, I work full time but work from home 3 days a week. I am paid a higher grade than my SW team manager was and have very little stress.
Out of my other SW friends not many work in the team anymore, one works at a university completing assessments, a couple are now IRO's working 9-5 and one works 2 night-shifts a week on the Emergency Duty Response Team. They get to hand everything over to the SW team at 8am.
For me my SW qualification opened doors to other opportunities, Im pleased I completed it and really happy where I am in my career but I know many others who aren't.
Do you know anyone working as a SW at your local council, or anyone who has completed the degree?
It's hard going especially with young children.