GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

Last night I was watching Dr Who on TV and I have got an 11 year old boy and

I said to my boy, “Look, I’m coming to Stratford, have you got any good jokes

about Shakespeare?” He said, “Dad, I’ve got a good one for you”, so if you all

promise to laugh at his joke, it is coming up next. Shakespeare walks into a

bar and the bartender says, “You can’t drink here, you’re barred!” (Groaning)

If that is okay I will share that with him when I phone him tonight and say you

all laughed at the joke. (Laughter) Hopefully that is okay.

I will just take you through the journey of social work. Social work is an

academic and a practice based discipline, so our roots are really if you think of

the dimension of psychology, sociology, social science and political science, so

we have a clear academic framework, but also we work with the most

vulnerable group of individuals that you can imagine, so we have got a lot of

skills in relation to interviewing and report writing and court working and we are

working from children to adults, so the whole scope of, I suppose, the most

damaged individuals in society is part of our work basis.

Our principle then, we engage with people and structures to address life

challenges and we try to enhance wellbeing. That is rooted in our profession.

What we do. Social work promotes social change and empowerment of

people, family and communities. The main line I tell my students is that social

work is about promoting change, making that small difference in somebody’s

life or a family’s life, that is what we strive for.

A practising professional with a degree in social work is called a social worker,

but ironically that title was not protected until 2005. Prior to then anyone could

call themselves a social worker and, indeed, I have been in the back of many

taxis prior to 2005 where the taxi driver seemed to be a social worker, but since

2005 if anybody calls themselves a social worker they are in deep trouble

unless you have got that qualification.

Who are we then? The Social Workers Union is a trade union. It is dedicated

to social work professionals. Unlike other trade unions who represent social

workers and this is not about competition, because we welcome anyone who

joins a trade union, but I would argue that I suppose part of our remit is that we

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