The Survival Guide For Newly Qualified Social Workers Second Edition

This book gives social workers everything they need to know to succeed in the workplace as they move from student to newly qualified worker. Easy to read and practical it tackles the key challenges they are likely to face.

This practical guide provides a wealth of suggestions to help you to hit the ground running in the early stages of your new career. It provides a range of strategies for managing your time and workload, and offers suggestions for finding support, coping with stress, maintaining job satisfaction and ways of handling difficult situations.

So, you've passed your degree and have started your first job. But are you confident about translating the theory into practice? Are you prepared to juggle the workload of a busy social worker? Do you have a plan for your continuing professional development? This practical guide provides a wealth of suggestions to help you to hit the ground running in the early stages of your new career. Fully revised and updated with the latest national frameworks for NQSWs, this survival guide provides a range of strategies for managing your time and workload, and offers suggestions for finding support, coping with stress and maintaining job satisfaction. It addresses different ways of handling challenging and unfamiliar situations with colleagues, managers, other professionals and service users. Each chapter concludes with a checklist of key points as a ready reference for practitioners preparing to face the daily challenges of their new professional status. This invaluable guide will be an essential support for all students, post-qualification and returning practitioners who need to make a smooth transition to practice and be successful in the workplace.

Formal education has finally ended, you've passed your exams and you're getting started as a newly qualified social worker (NQSW). As you make the transition from student to fully fledged practitioner, you'll soon discover a whole host of challenges as you hit the ground running in your new career. This handbook will guide you through the initial hurdles you will face in this transitional phase, helping you to fully understand your role and how to meet the requirements of NQSW status. The book explores the practicalities of starting work in a new organisation and the professional demands particular to adult and mental health services, such as working jointly with other professions and maintaining your professional identity. A range of strategies are provided for staying motivated, managing stress and developing support networks. The authors also explore the role of supervision and critical reflection, and give advice on continuing professional development. This survival guide is an essential support to students, newly qualified social workers, practice educators and post-qualification practitioners specialising in adult and mental health services.

This popular and accessible introduction to mental health is written for students, mental health practitioners and non-qualified professionals. Fully revised, this second edition is up to date with the latest knowledge on mental health conditions, good practice and the law. The authors explain key concepts in easily understandable language, accessible even to those with no prior knowledge of the subject. They detail the major mental health disorders, the issues surrounding them, and provide detailed information on: * treatment and support * risk assessment and management * mental illness and the Criminal Justice System * the Mental Health Act and the Mental Capacity Act Featuring case studies and exercises to assist learning, this is an invaluable resource for anyone working with people who are experiencing mental illness, including students and professionals in health and social care, housing and criminal justice.

Identifying the most serious challenges faced in child protection work, this practical guide offers helpful solutions for frontline professionals working with children and adults. Informed by her many years on the frontline and subsequent experience writing serious case reviews, Joanna Nicolas has identified the most common pitfalls in child protection cases. The book focuses on understanding the impact of neglect, information sharing between professionals, communication with children, working with non-compliance/disguised compliance, and the impact of multiple risk factors. It offers tips for overcoming the challenges of everyday practice, such as home visits, as well as enhancing understanding of the key issues in this complex field. The evidence-informed chapters are packed with case examples and include useful reminders of the underlying principles at play. This is essential reading for social workers, health care workers, mental health workers, education professionals and related professions, such as housing and probation.

This book provides a thorough guide to relationship-based practice in social work, communicating the theory using illustrative case studies and offering a model for practice. This book will be an invaluable textbook for undergraduate and post-graduate social work students, practitioners on post-qualifying courses and all social work professionals.

What do you really want from your career, and how are you going to get it? How do you find the right people and make the right connections along the way? What are the secrets of finding fulfilment in your work? This book is intended to help you to answer these questions - and many more. Written to inspire and motivate you as you progress through your career as creative arts therapist, it shares diverse stories and experiences spanning different career paths and decisions. The book also tackles common early career challenges including designing services, advocacy and collaborative working, exploring how adverse circumstances can be used as opportunities for growth. With creative and reflective exercises throughout to help you to identify your goals and achieve them, this book is an indispensable guide for any creative arts therapist who wants to flourish in their career.