Tell me about your day as a Family Support Worker

[sleepingpsycho]

Please

I've recently been approached about a Volunteer Family Support Worker role with the Local Council, my aim is to get enough working experience to find a paid position after a Year and continue with my current job in the meantime.
If you are a Family Support worker - would you mind summarising your role?

Thanks!

Hopeful Bump 🤞

There are family support workers at the local authority where I work but it's not a volunteer role. It's very demanding, it's only one grade down from fully qualified social worker and to be honest half the time the work they are doing is the same work as a social worker. They work with families to address concerns and help them improve outcomes for their children. This can involve things like budgeting; healthy eating; parenting skills; household cleaning routines.

It would be helpful to know more about the volunteer role as it may be quite different.

I'm shocked this is a volunteer role.

I'm not a family support worker it have experience of them as I have a high needs Sen child. Many of my friends have struggling autistic children out of education as no schools can meet needs and Sen schools overwhelmed. My kid runs I to traffic, attacks people, soils himself, smears, violent meltdowns etc etc. Being allocated a FSW is insulting as they just give advice no practical support and then refer you to social services anyway due to the violence his siblings live with. Social care do an assessment and pass is back to FSW. Round and round it goes. Each time it's harder to be nice to the poor FSW just trying to do their job. I declined the service now.

I'd previously had contact with them when I made a MASH referral about a child and the FSW phoned me to discuss it. She was clearly stressed and knew the family needed help but couldn't help anymore than she had already done.

It looks to me like a very difficult job where you will deal with stressed and difficult people without the resources you need to help them. No way should that be unpaid

I cannot believe they are trying to get anyone to do this role and not paying them. It is underpaid at the best of times, stressful, demanding, emotionally charged…Often FSW are doing SW work without the pay because the SW are stretched so thinly. It is a varied role - attending court, masses of paper work (with no allocated time for it), supporting families with young children teaching them how to play, organising and assisting meetings at contact centres etc.

I'm also astounded that this is a volunteer role. I work with social workers and family support workers. Unless this is a completely different role, I entirely think you should be being paid for it!
Do you have a list of responsibilities for the volunteer role?