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Bridging th
‘S
ocial workers are not expected to be specialists in substance use
in the same way alcohol and drug specialists are not expected to
be social workers,’ said Dr Sarah Galvani when she launched the
British Association of Social Workers (BASW) special interest group
on alcohol and other drugs’ pocket guides on substance issues
(
DDN
, January, page 5). ‘But we do still need to know enough to confidently ask
about substance use and its effects on our clients and families.’
She set up that group and remains its chair, as well as being assistant
director of the University of Bedfordshire’s Tilda Goldberg Centre for Social Work
and principal research fellow at its Institute of Applied Social Research. Her
determination to improve knowledge and understanding of substance issues in
her profession also led her to develop the
Social work, alcohol and drugs
website
(www.swalcdrugs.com), where it explains how working with substance use is
still often not seen as the social worker’s remit. Is that beginning to change?
‘I think currently – and probably since
Hidden harm
– there’s a sense that
parental substance use needs addressing,’ she says. ‘But I think social work as
a profession has been very slow on the uptake. There are more moves within
children’s social care than adult social care to recognise that it’s an issue we
need to be involved with, but I don’t think we’ve got to the point yet of
thinking that it’s our job. It’s very much still “yes, we see it all the time,” but
from what I hear from social workers they don’t feel confident or competent
in how to identify it, what questions to ask, how to respond.’
People need support to ask the right sort of questions, she stresses. ‘They
need the knowledge, so they know what to ask and what the answers might
mean, and they need the supervision and leadership. I don’t think we’re there
at all yet – we’re a long way off having all social workers trained in even the
basics of substance use.’
*****
Joint working has long been a mantra in public services, but the reality
usually falls short of the ideal. How good is collaboration between drug and
alcohol services and social work departments? ‘There is good practice – I’d
hate to tar everyone with the same brush,’ she says. ‘There’s some good joint
working in some places, but it’s very much at a local level and it’s usually
about having dynamic and creative leadership and commissioners who can
see the benefits of funding particular services. But generally joint working
16 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| April 2013
Profile |
Sarah Galvani
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Sarah Galvani has spent much of
her career promoting awareness
of substance issues among social
workers. She talks to
David Gilliver
about bringing the fields together
suffers because of a lack of resources.’
If social workers and treatment professionals were really to ‘joint-assess,
joint-visit and joint-manage’ everyone with overlapping issues there wouldn’t
be enough resources on either side, she states. However, a survey by her special
interest group found that when social workers do approach a substance use
service they find it ‘hugely helpful’.
‘Certainly, they feel they’ve shared a burden. The other side is a minority of
social workers who find that substance use services are unhelpful if service
users don’t fit the right boxes – if people have learning difficulties or particular
disabilities that prohibit access in some way, if they’re an older person who’s
going to feel embarrassed about going to a service or a parent who wants help
but there’s no crèche facilities or outreach. So there’s certainly very positive
feedback about joint working when it happens, but we also hear that services
can be restrictive in terms of who they’ll see.’
Is she hopeful that things might improve with the increased focus on
localism? ‘It could – if we’re looking from a glass-half-full point of view – present
some real opportunities for better joint working, joint service delivery and a
much more holistic approach to dealing with the complex needs that people
often present with. But again it’s about local leadership and commitment to
what are often marginalised services, ensuring that the commissioners are able
to secure that funding. If you have a health and social care group that works
closely together and agrees those kinds of priorities and funding arrangements,
and is creative in its leadership, then I think there are huge opportunities.’
The flipside, of course, is that where those things don’t exist it will be a case
of ‘traditional one-to-one services based in community offices – if you’re lucky
there’s a community detox, there won’t be much conversation between the
two, and there’ll just be a postcode lottery,’ she says. ‘Only time will tell.’
*****
Her interest in substance issues started when she was doing voluntary work for
Crisis at Christmas in the late ’80s, at the same time as temping for the
Financial Times
. ‘I saw a lot of people who had alcohol and drug problems as
part of the reasons that they were homeless. I used to go from work to the
shelter and do a night shift and then go back to work, and every other night I’d
go home and sleep. I did that for a couple of months and realised I was getting
much more out of my voluntary work than my day job.’
When the Bruce House hostel in Covent Garden opened soon after she took
a full-time job as a project worker – ‘I was in social care and homelessness and
substance use, and it seemed the right place to be’ – before choosing to do her
social work training at the University of Hull because it had specialist
substance use modules. Seven years ago she made the move from social work
and social care practice to full-time research, becoming director of the Tilda
Goldberg Centre in 2009.
She’s still a registered social worker, however, a profession that can be a
favourite target for some newspapers. Can that affect morale? ‘It’s probably more
frustrating and irritating than anything else. Negative media profiles never
reflect the reality of a social worker’s role and decision making, and of course
social workers aren’t allowed to stand up and say, “actually that’s wrong – this is