Always Presence of Social Work

I cannot remember a time in my life when there was not some form of social worker’s presence. This fluctuated over the years based on my family’s needs, but they were always there. There were a couple of periods where social workers were barely present, except to help run annual letterbox contact.¹ For me, I would receive a letter from my birth grandparents updating me on the family once a year. This was in primary school, so I was very young. I do not have clear memories of this time, and because of this everything for a few years has merged into one collective memory, meaning for me, it felt the social workers were still very present. To me, it is an interesting concept always having some social worker’s presence in my life, whether once a year or monthly. I think a lot about the reality of this constant presence and the impact it has had on me. I have met others who have had similar experiences generally due to the annual letterbox contact, but it is not common to have social workers in your life for so long and it is not often talked about.

For me directly, this social worker’s presence will be ending soon, as I have stopped having help to communicate with my birth family and do not require support from a family social work. I will be entering a way of life I have never been exposed to, so I am reflecting on this, as social workers have been one of the most consistent presences in my life—even if the people changed the role stayed. I will still interact with social workers through contact with my sisters, who are currently in care. This contact, in some ways, prolongs the ending of the interaction, which does bring up the challenge of no clean break to leave social workers in the past. I think this is a shared experience for children who have been in the care system, with whatever route they take after; for me, it was adoption. People with lived care experience may have siblings, who spend time in care too, either before or after them, meaning a longer journey with social workers than it was just for them.

I am Tiegan, a twenty-year-old adoptee who went into care at two years old and spent two years with my foster carers before being adopted at the age of four years, by my two mums, just after my birthday. I of course had a lot of social workers’ presence through this time and prior to that, due to family circumstances. I will not be writing much on this due to my age then. I do not know my perspective from that time. The information from that time is very jumbled. However, I will reflect on it when I talk about the consistent presence of social workers as a whole, including the clearer parts that I remember. My main focus is on the presence after my adoption, which was the social worker who aided annual letterbox contact in October, which later turned into in-person contact. This is where the birth family, adoptive family and child meet face-to-face. When I was older, we also got a family social worker, which was unusual for an adoptive family. But we are so grateful we did as it helped our family so much. The family social worker helped us access therapeutic support, advocated for me at school when the lack of understanding of me as an adoptee impacted me and helped with contact with my two younger sisters.

I would describe the presence of social workers in my life as supportive crutches while I learnt about the role of my birth family and how to live with the impact of my early life—sometimes needed and sometimes not. Hopefully one day they will not be needed altogether. This support has enabled me to be where I am today. Despite there still being challenges, I feel in a position of understanding with everything and how some of the future may be. I feel in a very enabled position as I have been given the skills to deal with situations like birth family contact or emotional regulation² on my own or with my family. For this, I am very grateful and appreciative as this has not been down to having just any social worker. There are some, I know from experience and what I have heard from others, that I would not have achieved the same results with, due to them not being open to comments from adoptees or lacking the basic knowledge of adoption-related topics.

Social work is a personal business that requires social workers to be able to connect and balance the non-professional and professional so finely. Sometimes as a service user,³ you are left thinking about how they are managing to maintain this balance. As a service user, I had never wanted to feel like I was in a tick box exercise or anything unnatural. When we had meetings, I wanted a chat to flow with random anecdotes, maybe about pets, as I have dogs. For the most part, I got this, which was incredible and made the work more accessible, especially as I got more involved with the social workers. It felt like a welcoming environment I could participate in as I grew older because when I was younger, I did not want anything to do with professionals. They took the time to get to know me when we started getting family support around the end of primary school, through my parents at first, with the social worker keeping me at the centre. This helped me want to engage as I could tell it was a friendly environment, always being told by my parents that the social worker was asking after me, my hobbies and ways interaction between us could happen, like going for a walk. They were very proactive with ideas and action points, which felt amazing, just what my family and I needed. They helped to advocate for me at school when school refused to believe that I had additional support needs due to my past so that I slowly got some understanding.

Then, when I needed therapy, which I got through the Adoption Support Fund,⁴ they made sure it was an easy journey to access it, and once I had it to make sure I got it for the appropriate time needed. There was never any unnecessary work. I felt like we were treated as humans where I was an individual they were working with, not just a client. I eventually got to the point where I never felt unable to go to my social worker for anything I was thinking and questioning, including when I had concerns around the connection and contact with my younger sisters. The social worker started helping me straight away, at first just talking with me about how I was feeling about it and what action points I would want. The social worker’s presence made me feel less alone or helpless. I felt there was someone who could help me navigate a tricky situation as the social worker knew similar situations and the system. They were someone I could bounce off who had a different perspective from me, which was a professional one, it was really good I could reach out to them.

An important way to look at this constant presence is consistency. This was a significant part of my experience that meant the social worker interactions were not jumbled or just in moments of crisis. A moment of crisis can be too late to help solve an issue—so much before and even after a crisis can happen, they do not always just happen in isolation. I think this consistency is something many do not experience which can make any work needed hard for either side to pursue and do. I have always had social workers for a couple of years at a time, and any transition to a new social worker has been well-discussed, something I do not hear always happens. This has meant I have always felt I could trust social workers in general, as I always knew there would be someone there aiding any plans agreed upon and that the social worker would be there if something came up, without having to search out someone. As well as this, because of this trust and time, there was a relationship or at least an understanding built between us. I was willing, over time, to talk to them about my experiences when relevant and be open with them in any way our work needed. Of course, I never felt pressured for this to be the case, due to handovers always being well thought out. The following social worker always had a basic idea of me and past work so my family and I would not have to repeat ourselves if we did not want to.

This consistency meant it felt like an ongoing process where the social worker’s presence felt like a part of my life, not something separate, which worked as they could just slip into the background when not so relevant. Having a social worker was not a big deal that I had to think about a lot or give special attention to; I could live my life normally, as that was my normal. If there had not been this consistency, I would not have engaged with support or advice as I would have found the coming and going very stressful, never exactly knowing what to expect. At first reflection, this would be due to the very personal nature of the work. I would not want to do it with just anyone, even as a very open person, as the work has the potential to impact my life forever. Secondly, I used to struggle with emotional regulation, meaning I could get frustrated easily so that the frustration of being passed around could have pushed me over into an outburst. Plus, less consistency with social workers would have made me feel less human, more a case to solve, even an inconvenience. I would have worried whether the time would be given to solve this case. Some things take a long time to be solved, proven by my therapy, which I had for five years before there was a point of not needing it, due to having gained the knowledge and coping skills. With deeper reflection, I realise my autism has played a big part in this. Some of my most prominent traits are that I struggle with change and meeting new people. I am not sure if these traits were ever mentioned at the time as a consideration, at least from my memory, which may have been partly due to the fact that I did not have a diagnosis at the time. Maybe it was not needed as there was already good consistency, but it might have been helpful too. Those two factors alone could have made it really hard for me, as it could have been so stressful that I would have probably taken myself away from the situation as the easiest way to stop the stress.

The last thing on consistency is that I was able to have the same social worker running my contact with my birth family for thirteen years, as she said, she saw me grow up as my birth family did. She was very much part of my life, and it was a tough ending as she had been there so long. However, it was odd too because despite being there so long, she never interacted much except for two direct contacts.⁵ It felt like saying goodbye to something like a tree that has always supported you whenever you need it, but which sometimes you pass without thought when it is not relevant. Because of running contact so long, she learned about me and my family, trusting us over time and was always very willing to support us as she wanted what was best for us. I think she could always tell contact benefited me, and I was very engaged. This is why, when my birth mum sent in an extra letter on two occasions, she still passed it on to us, despite it not being the right time of year. Typically, she left any decisions of how and when these letters got to me to my parents. When I was fifteen years, we found out that both my birth grandparents I was in contact with were quite ill, so one of my parents suggested we go to meet them in person. We all agreed it was a good idea, so we went to ask the contact social worker, which was made easy due to this longstanding relationship, and from her perspective, she said yes, as she was up for it too. That meeting was incredible as not only did I meet my birth grandparents, but I also got to meet this social worker who had helped hold us all together all those years.

I had a very positive experience overall where, most social workers were very open and inclusive, including supporting my assessments for dyslexia and autism. However, there were some more challenging times with my interaction with social workers, either due to mannerisms or challenges they were facing, like time constraints which are understandable. However, it is still how about you handle that. At points, it felt more like I was more a job to fulfil than being a service user to interact with. The person themself was nice, but could not handle the job. I could always tell there were good intentions, so I tried to persist with the regular meetings. However, it made interaction hard as I could not speak my mind; I had to be very aware of the questions on the sheet and her availability if I had further questions. I think something else I have noticed is that social workers are not always aware of how long and impactful their presence can be in someone’s life. This may be for several reasons, some very understandable—you can tell it is partly due to the nature of the job. For me though, that is tough to accept as the ending is a big deal, and I do not want it just to happen overnight. I think that is way too quick. This is an actual ending, hence why I have been thinking about it for so long, and even when it does end, I think there will be a transition period of realising I actually have entered a new phase of my life. It has been challenging when I have just quite bluntly been told by social workers about the end. I would have preferred some proper work around ending of social worker’s presence, what this means and where I can go in the future if I need any further support.

I believe I really started noticing the difference between me and other students in secondary school. Despite there always being an awareness that my life situation was different from my peers, I really started understanding that as I got older. I noticed many of my peers did not have social workers involved in their lives, at least from my knowledge, made clear sometimes by comments like ‘what is a social worker?’ or ‘I thought only people in bad situations had them’. Even some of my teachers were surprised by the fact I did, especially due to the length of involvement. I think this was partly because then and even now, there is still not the broader public knowledge of how many different reasons there are for social workers to be involved in someone’s life, including small reasons like contact with the birth family. I think this eventually started me off considering the whole of social work presence in my life and its unusualness in many respects.

I do not believe I would change anything about the presence of social work if I were to follow a similar route as I am now, as I can see the value of it. It may be questioned if different decisions were made when I was really young whether I would have needed the input and support, or at least to the degree I did. However, in my view, the impact on my life started before birth and right after birth, so I was always likely to need support to some degree. Plus, some of my neurodiversity traits being considered trauma related for many years would need strong professional input to help in those moments when my parents were not sure of the best way to approach something. I feel a social worker was best placed for this, plus contact was always going to be a good idea for me so that involvement cannot be disputed.

I will always live with the impacts of such involvement, some of which I feel were necessary and others not so much. However, over time, I feel even the decisions I do not necessarily agree with have been made better with the work and support of social workers helping me work through them. Without social workers’ input, I would have not ended up in care or even as an adoptee that is something that is daily there in my life. I also probably would have carried on with emotional regulation issues which negatively impacted aspects of my life including school, if they had not helped me access therapy. I do not think I will ever forget, or not think again, on this input, as it has been such a big thing. I feel it may fade more in the background with weeks or even months going by where I do not think on it, but it will come back even for very random things like a conversation I am having where a social worker said something similar thing at some point. I think I will want to reflect on the input sometimes due to its positive nature and not wanting to forget the benefits that came, even though I know there will be times when I question the fact that this is not something average.

Author Biography

I am Tiegan a twenty-one-old female university student born in England and lived here my whole life with Irish heritage. I am an adoptee having lived with my two mums since I was four years old who also is neurodiverse doing work around my lived experiences of these.

Footnotes