15 Years in Social Work – And 4 Reasons I am Still Not a Manager

I qualified as a social worker 15 years ago and I have never held a management role.

This has been a deliberate choice. I’ve remained working directly with children and families.

There are four key reasons why.

1. Relationships

Everyone understands that relationships are important in social work, especially long-term ones.

Given that my primary motivation to do this job was to help children and families, it’s been vital that I offer them stability. That kind of stability can only be achieved by doing the same job in the same place for a long time.

2. I haven’t stopped learning

It took me a few years to understand the many different processes in child protection. At the point where most social workers leave — two to three years post-qualification — I felt I had just started to reach competency.

Further, the issues we support children and families with are some of the most complex human problems that exist.

Very clever people spend an entire lifetime studying just one aspect — whether that’s domestic abuse, addiction, trauma, or the effects of poverty.

Career progression is one form of development.

But so is learning the craft of effective social work practice, and continually deepening your understanding of the challenges families face. Staying in practice has allowed me to do that.

3. Leadership isn’t determined by job role

For me, leadership begins the moment you qualify as a social worker. You are first and foremost a leader of yourself.

I established personal values and ethics that I try to uphold, no matter what the circumstances.

Being kind to a parent who is kind to you is easy.

Being kind to a parent who is screaming at you to “get the fuck out of my house,” while you’re already stressed from a difficult decision you’ve just made — that’s the hard part. But that’s what I strive for. And that, for me, is leadership.

I also don’t believe that seniority automatically equals influence. We can shape the system from the bottom up just as much — sometimes more — than from the top down.

This can be in small ways: how we treat families, how we support colleagues, how we demonstrate values. These actions can be just as impactful as the big decisions made by senior leaders.

And sometimes, it’s in big ways too — like creating a new approach to working with families.

I should also be clear: many social workers go on to become brilliant managers, and I wouldn’t be able to do my job effectively without them. I’ve worked with some exceptional leaders whose practice of wisdom, humility and insight has made them outstanding. But my choice has simply been to stay grounded in frontline work, because that’s where I believe I’m best placed to contribute.

4. Practice experience cultivates wisdom.

I worked in one local authority for five years and another for ten. In my current role, I contribute to the most consequential decision a child protection social worker makes: whether a child can remain at home.

This is unbelievably complex.

Even if you account for every variable, you never truly know how it will turn out. But staying in frontline practice has allowed me to receive feedback — sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly — about decisions I made three, seven, even ten years ago.

That learning is priceless.

For example, imagine I’m involved in removing a child from their parents’ care and placing them in foster care. The child initially settles well. A few months later, I changed roles or moved to local authorities. Based on that snapshot, I’d conclude I made a sound decision.

But what if, after I leave, that foster placement breaks down? What if the child is moved several times before ending up in a subpar residential home? How would I feel about that decision then?

It astonishes me that judges can make permanent, life-altering decisions about children without any feedback loop. Staying close to practice gives you that loop — and the wisdom it brings.

Staying grounded has also kept me connected to the day-to-day struggles that frontline social workers face. These challenges are often overlooked — not intentionally, but as a result of:

• Forgetting how the statutory context shapes practice
• Forgetting how little we knew when we first qualified — and how much we learned in the few years before we moved on (what’s sometimes called the “curse of knowledge”)

The Enduring Realities of Social Work

Since the inception of child protection in the late 19^th and early 20^th century (see ‘Protecting Children’ in Time by Harry Ferguson), social workers have needed to:

• Build relationship with parents who, more often than not, don’t want help, especially from a social worker.
• Help parents suffering with addiction issues, mental health, violence or other challenges.
• Support parents to change
• Connect with children and understand their lived experience
• Analyse a wide array of information to form an analysis and plan of support
• Make difficult decisions (and when necessary, decide to secure children’s safety by placing them in alternative care)

These enduring responsibilities are the bedrock of social work, requiring skill, tenacity and empathy.

I believe these are the ‘nuts and bolts’ of social work – today, tomorrow and the foreseeable future. It is these unchanging elements that social workers, ironically, don’t get sufficient support for.

Conclusion:

With these 15 years of practice under my belt, I’ve written this book: Messy Social Work: Learning from Frontline Practice.

This book is unique because it’s written by a practicing social worker — and there are very few books out there that capture this perspective.

I wanted to offer a first-hand, authentic account of the highs and lows, the triumphs and tribulations, that define the landscape of child protection work.

My hope is that it supports social workers doing this complex, vital work; helps managers and leaders reconnect with the realities of practice; and gives other professionals — and even the public — a clearer understanding of what social workers are tasked with.

Professor Eileen Munro said Messy Social Work offers “a vivid account of the challenges and rewards of social work” and that “this should be read by all in social work management and civil service positions, so they better understand the reality of practice.”

I am proud to be a social worker. And I am proud of social work.

I hope this book does justice to the profession that has brought me so much growth, learning, and enlargement. It is available for pre-order here.

By Richard Devine (21.04.2025)