Claire McCamphill

I have over thirteen years experience of working as a Social Worker in the Gateway Service. There are two main aspects to my role as a Social Worker within Gateway; firstly I am required to work on the duty desk during which I respond to a large number of referrals from families, members of the public, and professionals. This can entail providing advice about community services or screening the referral to see if it meets the threshold for a Social Work assessment. The duty day often consists of exercising judgement and completing risk assessments with minimal detail and within short timescales.

The second and main aspect of my role is to assess need and provide support to families using the UNOCINI framework and, to initiate Child Protection or Looked After Children proceedings when the threshold is met. This involves direct liaison with children, their parents and agencies known to the family. I gather information via home visits, meetings and telephone calls to inform decision making around how to achieve the best outcome for the family. Succinct recording and good report writing are crucial especially as the job has become more paperwork focused.

I have to present information at Child Protection Case Conferences and Looked After Child meetings. At times I have to participate in Family Court Order proceedings. I am trained in the Joint Protocol Investigation process for which I work closely alongside Police to investigate allegations of abuse and to support children to make a complaint when it is appropriate.

Gateway is a very fast paced and often crisis led environment in which it is necessary to work effectively with children, parents and agencies involved with the family to ensure that children are safeguarded and parents are supported in a caring and compassionate manner to better meet their children’s needs. Through my work I have developed effective skills such as listening, empathising, challenging where necessary and appropriate, and providing clear communication with families to achieve positive outcomes.

My work involves the balancing act of meeting assessment deadlines yet prioritising the cases with higher levels of risk. Skills in risk assessment are a fundamental part of the Gateway role given the continual high risk cases that we receive with decisions often being made with limited information and short timescales.

The vast majority of parents that I work with have mental health difficulties which often arise from challenging childhood experiences, for some this includes traumatic experiences from the Troubles and for which society is now observing the outworking of intergenerational trauma. We often see parents who have developed addictions as a means of coping with the trauma that they have experienced. I engage with Mental Health and Addiction Services on a daily basis and have vast knowledge in this area.

I have a great awareness of the many complex reasons why families come to the attention of Social Services and as we are experiencing a more diverse society combined with new and changing societal problems I have had to continue to learn and expand my knowledge base in order to be able to effectively deal with these new emerging issues. To do so I continue to attend training provided within the Trust, read as much as I can around relevant topics and I completed three modules of the Post Qualifying Award.

To ensure that I provide safe, professional and effective social work practice I use a number of strategies; adherence to Gateway's policies and procedures and the legislation which mandate my practice, work in line with Data Protection requirements, adhere to the NISCC Codes of Practice for Social Workers and supervision with my manager to reflect upon my practice. I work very closely with my manager and team ensuring that we support each other through what can be a challenging job.

At times, due to the needs of the service, I have simultaneously worked across two teams which has led to even greater skill in the management and prioritisation of cases. Despite the pressures on the service and the increased complexities of the workload my compassion, empathy and motivation to support families has not dwindled. I have never stopped doing my absolute best for the people I work with. By nature I am an extremely methodical person and I hold myself to a very high standard in regards to my work. My warm, caring and non-judgemental approach has resulted in very positive feedback from families despite often coming into their lives in times of crisis.

Working in Gateway has made me a very competent Social Work practitioner and I strongly believe that the knowledge, skills and values from this job would be transferable to those required to be a Clinical Assessor.

My role was to provide support to young people between the ages of 11-18 who were experiencing a higher level of need than the general population. I supported these young people under one of three levels; Family Support, Child Protection or as a Looked After Child in line with the policy, procedures and legislation. These young people were often experiencing a multitude of problems such as; substance misuse, involvement in risk taking behaviours which resulted in criminal behaviour and involvement in the Youth Justice System, anger management difficulties, self-harming behaviours, self-esteem issues and deep psychological difficulties often emulating from childhood which often lead to family dysfunction and breakdown.

Essential to this job was building trusting and respectful relationships with the young people, understanding this stage of development, really listening to their thoughts and views and trying to guide them to think about their decisions and the consequences in order to make better choices. I developed some very positive relationships and received excellent feedback from the young people and my employer. This role also involved working with the families to support them through the challenges that they experienced as the parents and/or siblings.

Additionally it required multi-disciplinary working as there was often a range of professionals involved in the young people's lives who all had one goal which was to support the young people to find stability in their lives. Attendance at Youth Court was an integral part as these young people often came into contact with the Criminal Justice system. I left this post to return to Belfast Gateway where I was offered a permanent position.