Social Work Intervention

The rationale as to why this particular topic has been chosen is through both professional and personal reasons. Professionally, there is much research highlighting negative outcomes for care leavers, and so inspiration to further evaluate this, is of interest. There is strong association to social work, in that before someone goes into care, social workers are already involved with supporting the family, and whilst the aim is to keep the family together, social workers are largely a part of decisions to remove children, and put them into care (Cocker & Allain, 2010). Therefore, it is fair to say social work intervention exists right from the start, throughout a child being in care, the transition period, and after leaving. Feelings of having
no-one to confide in and increased potential for isolation, often occurs when leaving care, which consequently, can lead to many other complications, such as involvement with gangs and failure within school (Coman & Devaney, 2011). These issues identify a social workers role as being key in providing individual support, respect, and empowerment, to help young people’s life opportunities be maximised (Guishard-Pine et al., 2007).
From a personal motivation, this subject was chosen because I am interested in a potential future carer working within adoption and fostering teams. Furthermore, during my second year placement, I worked with looked-after children, where key-working sessions opened opportunity for the young people to express how they felt regarding their transition leaving care. The experiences heard by most did not reflect a positive one, as they did not feel a part of what was going in their life, and the decisions being made about them. They also highlighted feelings of anxiety regarding their transition, and how they knew once they turned eighteen, they would be on their own and not ready. This provided inspiration to further research the topic for the dissertation, and evaluate the support that is meant to be provided for care leavers.