Student columnist speaks out after being thrown off local authority placement

A social work degree student has spoken out after being thrown out of his practice placement just because he writes a regular column for BASW’s Professional Social Work magazine.

Second year student Andrew Ellery had been on his local authority placement working with children and families for four weeks when he was summoned into the manager’s office and told to leave. He was informed that writing for the media conflicted with social work confidentiality and that he had breached the local authority’s trust.

“I’ve written in the past how social work should embrace the media more, but this has given me one hell of a slap in the face,” Mr Ellery said.  “It’s made me think very seriously about what area of social work I want to go into and whether I want to practise as a social worker at all.”

Ellery, who is 20, said the local authority had reacted defensively and that he would never dream of breaking client confidentiality in his column. “It’s true I didn’t tell the local authority about the column before I took up the placement, but it just didn’t occur to me that it would be an issue,” he said.

“I’m not writing against the profession or stirring up trouble. I just want to provoke a professional debate and discuss some of the things students are talking about.”

BASW professional officer Ruth Stark, who has called for a more positive relationship between social work and the media, said she was “very distressed” by the local authority’s reaction.

“I think to be able to talk to the media about the reality of frontline social work is absolutely critical, otherwise how do we tackle the problems of caseload management and professional supervision?” she said.

“The media can bring pressure for reform and make the case for change, and more social workers should be in a position to use it. What happened to Andrew doesn’t reflect very well on the local authority and, as a regular reader of PSW, I can say that nothing has appeared in his column which breaks confidentiality. His manager obviously hadn’t read it.”

Ellery said that strict accountability in social work had created a blame culture rather than one in which mistakes could be investigated with a view to improving systems. “Many social work students I know are looking at alternative employers because local authorities don’t seem to be the greatest places to work,” he added.