Any social workers on here who work part time?

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Hello, I’m a social worker and hoping to reduce my hours when I go back to work from Mat leave.

Has anyone else reduced their hours to 3 days a week? If so how do you manage a caseload on 3 days?

What do you do if there are meetings/court on a day you don’t work?

Bump

I work 4 days currently and in the past I’ve worked 3 days and some of my colleagues do. When meetings are booked in I say I can’t do that day, I don’t even say it’s my non working day I just say I’m not available on that day and the same with court; in emergency situations for court I will sometimes switch my days or my manager will attend for me. It’s not far different from it you’ve got annual leave booked then you’d just say you can’t do that day or if you were in court on another case.
I currently don’t work on child protection though although still attend court which now makes it easier but I managed it while in child protection; a supportive manage is key though.
in my local authority there are a lot of social workers with young children and they’ve had to adjust to part time working to retain them

Thank you so much for your reply.

I guess I’m worried about being a burden to my colleagues.

Also about how practical it is to case work the harder complex cases part time. When I’m the throws of a chaotic case, there have been times where I’ve been out on emergency visits last minutes etc. Don’t know how this is going to be possible on a 3 day week.

I also would on the odd occasion be stuck in an emergency situation past 5pm and end up there as late as 8/9pm. That’s now not feasible.

Have you ever had incidents where this has happened? How was it handled?

thank you for your reply xxx

A bit different as I work for cafcass rather than LA but I try to be as boundaried as possible and anything arising on a non working day is generally dealt with by management in my absence though I will do the odd bit and on one occasion was compelled to attend a hearing but generally find people accomodating

Thanks for your reply. Guess will have to be really strong on my boundaries and not let myself to get caught up in chaotic cases in regards to maintaining my time.

Im known to be allocated to chaotic/complex cases within the teams. So this will be a big change for me and even management I think. I’ll still happily pick them up but I won’t be able to give the outcomes I previously did I don’t think, as it required me to ho above and beyond working hours when full time. Now it’s just not possible.

I left case holding safeguarding work over 10 years ago when my oldest was 2 as found it difficult to make it work for me and the team I was in at the time. I'm not saying its impossible but it is hard. Having a supportive manager makes is much easier.

I have worked in quite a few part time roles over the last 10 years and supervised quite a few part time staff. These are some of the roles which I think have worked best as part time if you ever decide to change roles

• Fostering supervising social worker
• Post adoption support social worker
• Early intervention teams
• IRO
• Family group conference coordinator

Good luck when you go back but do know there are other roles and options where part time is definitely manageable and you are unlikely to be in a crisis situation and working into the evening.

Different as I worked with adults but I found 3 days stressful because as you say… things still happen on cases and the gap between say leaving on a Wednesday and coming back on a Monday can be very long.

it worked better for me to be permanently on Duty whereas others covered duty on a rota at the time. Then I kind of started and ended the day with a clean sheet but did also give Duty some continuity.

once my kids were older and at school I preferred to do more days but short days. I could pick them up from school and it was easier with getting hold of people, returning calls etc as I was in more days. I also had more of a presence in the office. But then of course I couldn’t do emergency visits which were going to go on last 3pm so that was a bit limiting.

i think if there are any roles in your team where you don’t have a case load as such eg duty or reviews or a project then that works better

All the social workers in my team are part time and so that makes it easier. No one covers each other's case load but there's always someone in to deal with things in emergencies at least.

Morning
I'm a social worker. Frontline CP for 20 years. I tried 3 days and week and it was impossible. What type of social work are you in?