Hospital Social Workers

Luckygirl. It would certainly seem that the old ways were better. What is going is just crazy. Everything changes from one minute to the next. One minute this is the plan the next it is all changed. None of them seem to know what the other one is doing and the stupidity is ridiculous.
The irony is that the SW keeps leaving her own handbag lying around and then returns to collect it. We are not criminally intent but others may not be so honest. I cant believe how the future decisions lie in the hands of someone who can not remember to keep her handbag in her possession at all times.
I would laugh if I was not worn out and distraught with all the changes

I am ancient enough to have worked as a hospital social worker employed by the hospital authority in two different hospitals. A day arrived in 1973 when we were taken over by the local authority. And the next day we took delivery of trolley-loads of forms! - for which we needed to obtain filing cabinets - and people to do filing and form-filling!!!

Somehow we had previously managed to provide a good service to the patients without all that paper.

In most areas now, they are employed by the LA and are not even hospital-based, but come in to see patients on the wards from their LA offices.

So much has been lost = we used to do a fair bit of our networking in the canteen - you are sitting next to a consultant maybe, who says he needs to come and have a word about someone on Ward X - and you chat to staff there and they begin to trust your judgement and you become a part of the team and are at ward rounds for instance and really get to know the patients. So very different when you are just flown in from your LA office and become just another bod traipsing onto the ward.

I so missed that smooth and efficient working system.

Thanks everyone.

Local Council in Greater Manchester and I think all other areas in England. Don't know about Scotland, Wales or NI.

Local council here too

Also the local council in my area too.

welbeck thank you for that information. I wondered how a city social worker would cope with the differences in city and extreme rural areas

don't know about scotland, but in london they were employed by borough council. sometimes two sharing.
i think in some places they were piloting joint nhs and social care teams, but these were not hosp social workers.
the main london hosps have patients from all over uk, for specialist treatments, so that in itself should not be a problem. they can liaise with other areas.