Institutional ageism is the main pressure against good social work with older people

Yesterday, I asked, following up on a recent publication of government statistics: ‘Do social workers have nothing to offer older people?’ and on Twitter, various social workers commented in their tweets, that they certainly do have something to offer, but that a variety of constraints prevent them. To sum these up, there are:

• Costs, inadequate resources
• Practitioners’ time (this is part of the resources, but I’ll put it separately)
• Institutional ageism
• The dominant medical discourse
• Unimaginative local authority practice and policy.

An American social worker comments that in the US, social workers do provide more personal support. The implication of this point is that good interpersonal social work with older people and their carers is perfectly consonant with social work theory and practice. Absolutely true, and the Twitter commentary at the same time about my latest book Citizenship Social Work with Older People offering ‘a great human rights perspective on social work and ageing’ reflects the priority I give to using social work skills in that way. The publishers' pages for Citizenship SW...UK: Policy Press; US: Lyceum Books

I think institutional ageism is the most important of these, because I think all the others, poor resource, poor local authority practice and policy and lack of time for social workers to do what social workers could do are more connected with institutional ageism than anything else. Although there are pressures (of course – I lived through the Seebohm reorganisation of social services in the early 1970s and remember being in tears about not being able to cope with my workload), money has been found for child safeguarding and people like Eileen Munro have begun saying that we have to let social workers use their skills in that field of practice.

It’s also true for social work with older people. And we can manage our time to do good interpersonal social work with some older people and their families who really need the best kind of practice: I know some social workers manage to do this because I meet people in the Hospice where I work singing the praises of their social worker. And we cover some of the poorest parts of London. It’s about making the right priorities in our workloads.

But our American colleague’s comment also makes an important point: unless we have the chance to practise to the full extent of social work at least some of the time, we will not retain the skills to do the best job. And that means that the medical discourse is always going to reject our value, because they don’t always see the best of which we are capable. We have to be able to demonstrate to sceptical colleagues how good we really are.

These are the tweets, in order of arrival:

Ermintrude ‏ @Ermintrude2

Really interesting post. I think answers lie in cost and institutional ageism.

Orpheus ‏ @lavinialady

Sadly, in my [local authority] they do 'zap in routine services' due to case load pressure, [under-resourcing] etc. [There is] little time to offer real support.

Cuskellk ‏ @cuskellk

As a mental health social worker with older persons I say we do! More so, [it’s the] dominant medical discourse that constrains us.

Louise ‏ @Lou15eb

We have lots to offer but [it’s] difficult due to budgetary constraints and [the] reluctance of local authorities to think outside the box.

michelle griggs ‏ @michelleg1976

Can I say we can only do good with what limited resources there are?

Kelsey Kelsey ‏ @kelseyterp

Interesting. I wonder if [the] statistics are similar in the US. I work with older adults and I find the support is there from social workers.

(Because Twitter limits how people can write, I have filled out the abbreviations and shorthand in these tweets, indicated in the square brackets.)