My Job: 'Covid has made it impossible to switch off'

Image source, Ed Kendall

The easing of restrictions on work has left many questioning what they do and why they do it.

We look at how different people find purpose in their work.

Ed Kendall is a social worker. He started a new role in Westminster focused on long-term work with children and families.

All of the jobs I have done have been focused on working with children. I cared for a child with an intellectual disability and enjoyed helping them overcome a challenge. It can have a big impact on their development, even though it might seem small.

I wanted a job where the focus was on the child, and I had friends and family members who were social workers as well.

I thought about teaching. The pastoral role and the challenges of social work were attractive to me.

It takes a while to get used to the job.

Everything else gets dropped if there is a crisis within a family. Helping a family to buy furniture or food might be something you end up doing.

To get your head around the role and fit that around everything you have learned, you are slowly given different families to work with.

It is a bit of a shock to the system, and there is no end to surprises in terms of what can happen in a family's life. Working with a family who had large snakes roaming around the home, along with a parrot that was quite loud when we were trying to have a serious conversation, was one lighter, stand-out moment.

A postgraduate qualification in social work is approved by Social Work England. Two to three A-levels are required to go to university.

It takes about three years to start an apprenticeship. A degree apprenticeship usually requires four or five GCSEs at grades 9 to 4, or equivalent.

You could apply for a training programme. They are usually offered to graduates. Those who want to get into children's social work can get training from Frontline and Step Up to Social Work.

Before you can become a social worker, you need to volunteer. You can gain experience by volunteering with a charity or doing paid work.

Each family is vastly different, and you will be working with a caseload of up to 17 children.

Your job is to help co-ordinate and plan support for the children in the long-term, and to really support the needs of the children in the long-term.

It could be that you are chairing a meeting of professionals from school, mental health services or domestic abuse practitioners to make sure the plan for that child is working properly.

You could be visiting a child at school, supporting them through thinking about what's happening at home, or understanding the experience they have gone through. The life story of a child is dependent on their circumstances, such as if they are in a care placement, have had to flee different refuges, or explain what work their parent is doing.

I think the biggest misconception among the families we work with is that social workers remove children from families. Unfortunately, that can happen. We believe that families are best when they are kept together.

My friends and family do not really understand that. People might say, "Oh, that must be really difficult."

I think there is a gap in knowledge about what a social worker does. We were left off of the amazing frontline workers that were being recognised. Social workers are less thought about in society.

Referral rates dropped when schools were closed due to the Pandemic.

In my old job, I worked with 20 to 25 children, now I only work with one child. It was worrying that all those risky behaviors and families in need of support did not change. If they were locked-in with an unsafe person, people weren't able to make a call to a professional.

It can be difficult to gauge the true wishes of children when they are at home, or in an environment where they don't feel safe.

With job losses and the impact on mental health, we have seen some cases where people have started using drugs again and children have been neglected. It will have a long-term effect.

You need resilience because you are dealing with sad situations on a daily basis.

There is no rhyme or reason to which incidences are more upsetting. If you have a good team around you, it will be easier to switch off if you connect well with a family or child.

Image source, Ed Kendall

It has been more difficult to switch off during Covid. At the end of the day, you stop using your laptop, but I am still sitting in my living room and there is nothing else to do.

I have tried to maintain relationships with people I met through my training at Frontline, and I think exercising has been important in terms of keeping your mood up.

• 32,502 in England in 2021
• 16.3 - average caseload
• 4,995 - number who leave during the year, the highest number in the last five years
• 6,522 vacancies

There is no end to being surprised by what children say or do.

I am not a social worker for the parents. The children are able to achieve amazing things.

In the past 10 years, the government has made cuts that have had a big impact on early intervention services in social work. The aim for those teams would be to identify difficulties in a home early on and stop them increasing. With less funding, less services are available and that has a direct affect on the children.

It can have an impact on you, but it is an amazing job.

You get to form amazing relationships with people if you enjoy working with them.

Sometimes it can be difficult to see the good work you do. When you get positive feedback from a family that you work with, you realize that you can have a huge impact on a child's life.

For clarity, the interview has been shortened.