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Social Care
Social Care, Community Services (formerly Social Services) form partnerships with people: helping them to assess and understand the problems they face, and supporting them in finding solutions. As adviser, advocate, counsellor or simply as listener, a Social Worker will try to help people to live more successfully within their local communities.
Did you know that everyday Social Services are helping thousands of people in our society make choices to improve their lives?
As you read this carers across the country are providing practical support to people who need help with the day to day business of living. Social Work involves engaging creatively with people, their families, friends and other important influences in their lives.
Social Services may work with parents and children who are struggling in the face of deprivation, disability, or abusive behaviour, or with young adults who are finding it hard to handle the pressures of living independently. We help people who are dealing with mental health problems, disabled people, people with HIV/AIDS, or older people who need some support to maintain their independence as age takes its toll.
Nationally - we can say that about half of Social Workers are involved in some way with supporting and protecting children and young people as well as their families. The roles in this area include providing help and advice to keep families together, working in children's homes, or managing the processes of foster care or adoption, working with young people who need support as they leave care, or who are at risk or in trouble with the law, and looking after the interests of children who have problems at school or are facing problems brought on by illness in the family.
Social Work with adults includes work with people who are facing family or other problems, people with mental health problems, people with disabilities, offenders and older people who need help in their daily lives.
Social Services work with a variety of other services: healthcare, the police and the criminal justice system, benefits agencies, voluntary and independent organisations etc.
In Coventry - Social Services is organised to work mainly with five service user groups:
- children and families;
- older people;
- people with a physical disability;
- people with a learning difficulty and;
- people with mental health problems.
We respond to referrals - that is, approaches made to us about people who may need support - and decide whether someone’s situation is such that an assessment must be undertaken, to look in detail at the help they need.
After an assessment, people may receive a service or package of services. This could be provided by us or possibly purchased from another agency who meet our quality standards.
Informal carers are a cornerstone of community care, providing a major input in a way that can often go unnoticed but which is vital in keeping thousands of people supported in their own homes. It has been estimated that there could be around 37,000 carers in Coventry, of whom 34,000 are unidentified. Some of these people will be children, and some will be people who are getting older and/or more infirm themselves.
The thinking behind the ways in which we try and support people is that people should be 'empowered' by giving them the support they need to keep their independence wherever possible. People should be able to make their own decisions about how to live their lives, helped by us and others important to them.
General Enquiries
For further information that you cannot find elsewhere on this site, please contact Social Services General Enquiries on 024 7683 3478.
