Working as a Social Worker in a Multi-Agency Team: Benefits and Challenges

Financially, the family are not coping. They do receive benefits, but Martin spends a good portion of it on Whiskey. They are now living on mostly frozen foods and they have rent and Council Tax arrears.

Terry and Shelly have a close relationship. They are both outgoing and popular at school. Recently, Terry has not been attending school every day and has been sneaking out of the house after everyone has gone to bed, returning before everyone gets up. Shelly is the only person that knows he goes out, but she doesn’t know what he is doing. Terry returns one morning and Shelly notices bruising to his face. He claims that he fell over a low wall. He  eventually tells her that he is a “runner” for a local crack seller and gives Shelly £50 to keep quiet. Shelley takes the money and agrees.

The police arrived at the family home yesterday morning to inform Martin and Carol that they have arrested Terry for selling drugs to an undercover police officer.

You are the Social Worker to whom the case has been allocated Social worker

1. Identify the main concerns in the case study (what needs to be addressed?)
2. Legislation and statutory guidance that guides and informs your social work role in relation to the case study
3. What level of intervention is required and why?
4. Identify up to three professionals you would invite to be part of a multi-agency team and give an overview of their role
5. Demonstrate knowledge of the Social Work role (its emergence into mainstream health and social care and how it is regulated)
6. Discuss the relevance of your role to multi-agency working within the context of the case study
7. What approach will you and your team take (theories and models of social care and assessment) and why?
8. How will you and your team Include of the voice of the service users?
9. Set out each professional’s contribution to the multi-agency team care plan in addressing the concerns (will you work collaboratively with any other professionals in the team going forward?)

Reflective discussion

The benefits and challenges of working as part of a MA Team: Include the following:

10. What you learned about legislation and statutory guidance that informs multi-agency working
11. Reflecting on practise law, evaluate one of the pieces of legislation or statutory guidance in relation your role, using research or case reviews to illustrate and/or back up your points
12. Reflecting on methods and models, evaluate one of the social care models or approaches that you used in the case study – how well does this support multi-agency working to meetthe needs of vulnerable people?
13. What were the main points of learning in undertaking this assignment?
14. Include what you have identified as your on-going learning and development needs
15. What will you take forward from this assignment in regards to your plans for your future studies and career?
16. Provide a minimum of 8 references that are mostly from Literature, books, Journals, Reports.
17. Referencing both in text and reference list must be in Harvard style