What Case Recording Feels Like From the Other Side
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
We talk a lot about good recording practice in social work. We know the principles. We know records should be accurate, contextual, and written with the person in mind rather than about them. We signpost to the writing of people with lived experience, we reflect on language, we think carefully about what we include and what we leave out.
But knowing something professionally and feeling it are two very different things.
This month's podcast episode came from a personal experience of having a record written about me, not in a professional context, but as a home educating parent. It was minor.
Almost comedic in hindsight. But it left me unsettled in a way I wasn't expecting, and it reminded me of something I think we all need to reconnect with regularly. When something is written about you without full context, and you have no control over where it sits or who reads it, it feels exposing in a way that is hard to articulate until it happens to you.
My experience is incomparable to people who are care experienced, who have had their entire lives storied by others, often without their knowledge, and who have had to fight to even access those records. But I think small examples matter. They help us feel, rather than just know, why this work deserves the care and attention we give it.
If you want to go deeper on the lived experience of case recording, I'd point you to two previous podcast episodes. Rebecca Pierre joined me to talk about what it meant to get her own records back, and Gem Turner and I had a conversation about compassionate case notes and the experience of adult social care assessments. Both are worth your time.
Skills have to keep pace with legislation
The episode also gets into the Families First changes and the updated Working Together guidance, because there is a lot happening right now and I think it is worth slowing down and asking what it actually means for social workers in practice.
My reflection is this. You can change team structures, update local offers, introduce new frameworks and give them new names. But if you do not invest in the core skills that make those changes work in practice, the legislation means very little on the ground.
One of the things I keep coming back to is meetings. Multi-agency working is central to the Families First agenda, and yet I do not know a single social worker who received training in chairing or managing meetings as part of their route into the profession. It is one of the questions I get asked in almost every training I deliver, regardless of the topic. That gap matters, and it needs to be part of the conversation as these changes roll out.
Legislative change without skills investment is just paperwork with a new name.
Listen to the episode
This episode is available now on Buzzsprout and wherever you get your podcasts. If you are a member of the Collective, the case recording and good practice episode is also available inside the Confidence in Practice journey area.
If you have thoughts on how Families First is landing in your local authority, I would genuinely love to hear from you. Drop me an email or find me on Instagram.
Linkedin: Vicki Shevlin
Facebook: social work sorted
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