So, this whole research project is on writing and we all know how important writing is in practice even though we all moan about how much of it we do! Particularly in our ASYE year, I think that the portfolio is where the majority of the moaning is aimed it! As an ASYE myself I thought I would focus my post on the portfolio writing.

The types of writing: assessments (all types; singles, viabilities, risks and the 5 million others), case notes, minutes of meetings, reports, the dreaded court paperwork that we all look forward to doing then when we do we immediately regret having made the offer to help out, referrals to other agencies, all the other types and then the PORTFOLIO AHHHH!!

So, we’re already worrying that our child’s plan or single assessment aren’t quite good enough but our manager makes sure that they are and they definitely tell us when they aren’t. Fast forward a bit and we’re a few months in and a single assessment feels likes brushing your teeth you’ve done that many now… not even a problem. Then boom the 3 month review is here and you’ve not done the first reflection or the progress report (grids for us but I know that changes for each local authority) and that’s another piece of writing you’ve put off starting because it feels like you’re back at uni and well you’ve just done at least 3 years so what’s the point?

Here’s the point…it’s about Social Work as a whole, it’s about building the respect of other professionals and the media to understand the importance of this profession, it’s about ensuring that we’re all safe to practice and most importantly it’s about making sure that the families we work with are getting a good standard of worker who can be bothered to put the little bit of extra effort and time in. I mean if we can do this for a portfolio then it shows the level of effort we can put in for our families.

Basically what I’m saying is our portfolio is going nowhere so instead of trying to avoid it why don’t we look at ways that we can improve it, so that the writing in it will benefit us for our career in the long term. On the workshop day we discussed ways of doing this and some of the ideas were so good yet so simple. Banksy once said “a lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.” So, let’s use ours. We can write however we want for the portfolio, we can write them in a report style for the reflection or base our list of supervisions and workshops attended on a chronology. Then we’re practicing the writing we will need for the future now rather than it being an extra piece. *Don’t worry the irony of me telling people to use their initiative is not lost*

If newly qualified social workers began speaking about the writing and began changing the portfolio writing styles then this is how permanent change is made. We spoke about how this can link up to uni assessments too and how they can be written as an assessment etc.

Nobody has ever said we can’t practice these writing styles in our own time too. But being honest it’s taken me three months to even get round to writing this post so we aren’t all going to start spending our Sunday afternoons practicing writing techniques, plus we all know Sundays are for catching up on case notes or Disney films!

All in all we love social work and that’s why we do it and we all know that do it successfully writing is part and parcel of the job so let’s not keep moaning about it and work out ways that we can help to make the writing more productive and time saving. The ASYE is meant to help us so let’s start making that happen!

Here’s some helpful ideas for the portfolio writing;

1. Write the reflections as though they’re a series of case notes
2. Write the supervisions as a chronology
3. Get your service user feedback through direct work and make it fun
4. Write your progress report as a child’s plan (or adults)
5. Write the initial reflection as an assessment and then the follow ups as review assessments

Basically be inventive with the work and make it beneficial to you rather than feeling like a chore.