The future of social work in times of change

Kathryn Lindsay is the Director of Children, Families and Justice Services and Chief Social Work Officer at Angus Council. In this blog post, she discusses how social workers can use their voices and experience to drive and adapt to change and support each other.

How students are helping to shape University-led and peer support for students with care experience

Sam Upton, President of the Strathclyde Care Experienced & Estranged Students Society, shares her thoughts on the support on offer to students with care experience at the University of Strathclyde.

Don’t Pity Me! Thinking Differently about Vulnerability

Retired teacher, adoptive parent and blogger David Woodier explores the disuse of the word vulnerability and wonders if we need to look a little deeper at what this means.

Grappling with the implications of The Promise for teaching social work in Scotland

Dr Autumn Roesch-Marsh, Professor Ruth Emond and Dr Helen Whincup draw on their experiences in teaching Social Work students to consider how The Promise should be incorporated into courses to ensure that new social work practitioners are equipped with the knowledge and skills to understand and support the changes The Promise calls for.

Change is happening - but more needs to be done for children and families

For all of us involved in supporting children and families, the pandemic has shown that building back better from COVID-19 doesn’t mean returning to our previous ways of working; it means resetting them. Now, as I reflect on the last 12 months, it is clear that Scotland is on the path to making the changes and improvements that need to happen – and are already happening – for our children and families.

The cost of the implementation gap for young people

Megan Sutherland is Vice Chair of Who Cares? Scotland. She recently moved home and found it wasn’t easy to register as exempt from paying Council Tax as a care leaver. Here she discusses what she feels needs to change for care experienced young people in Scotland.

More than a promise: the imperative to make change happen

Claire Burns, Director (Acting), CELCIS – Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection, marks the first anniversary of The Promise.

The national Children’s Hearings advocacy service

The introduction of the advocacy service is an important additional support. It’s already the case that hearings must consider views of children and young people as far as possible and they are able to do this in a number of ways – through the child, their parents and families, through social workers and other professionals.

Reimagining the way we nurture and stay connected during COVID-19.

Food and other essential items are something that we have always had available for our young people in the Youth Team, Aberdeen but we were aware that when COVID – 19 hit that we would need to be more creative about how we made sure food was available for young people in a safe and structured way.

The Care Experienced Student Bursary – helping to change lives in East Renfrewshire

How the Care Experienced Bursary is making a difference in the lives of care experienced young people.