Paper presented at 2010 JSWEC Conference. Four decades of public inquiries into child deaths and mental health tragedies have had a significant impact on public perceptions of social work. More recently, the death of Baby Peter led to intense media criticism of social workers, leading to the Sun newspaper petition to sack all of the social workers involved, which was signed by 1.2 million people. The Social Work Task Force, formed in response to the negative media coverage, has recommended reforms in social work education and the formation of a Royal College of Social Work that will act as the public face of the profession. This paper will present the findings of a mixed methods research study that investigated the impact of negative media coverage on student social workers. 68 students participated in three focus groups that used interactive software to collect survey-style quantitative data combined with focus group discussions. Over half (54%) of students reported that negative media coverage had a strong or mild negative effect and almost half (47%) had questioned their future career as a result of the media criticism. 86% believed that media criticism increased the likelihood of defensive practice and 83% felt the possibility of negative media coverage would influence their approach to a child protection referral. All of the effects identified increased as students progressed through their studies, with significantly higher rates for final year students. However, many articulated belief systems that provided a defensive function and acted as ‘discourses of resistance’. There was clearly an important topic of students, with 77% supporting this to be included in the social work curriculum. The implications for empowering student social workers will be discussed and the challenges currently facing the social work profession will be explored.

Paper presented at 2009 JSWEC Conference. Klein (2004) has summarised accurately the realities of professional practice by suggesting that the problems practitioners face are marked by unpredictability, ambiguity, turbulence and uncertainty. The tragic case of Baby P, like that of Victoria Climbie, has underlined these demands yet again. Both these cases evidence the need for social work and medical practitioners to work together collaboratively, communicating clearly and understanding each other’s language, perspectives and assessments. In qualifying training the need to prepare social work and medical students for practice in these difficult environments and to enable them to develop collaborative attributes is essential. Moving beyond policy requirements in relation to inter-professional practice and learning, this paper proposes that complexity theory should play a central role in the theorisation of inter-professional learning and practice. Informed, inter alia, by the notions of attractors, simple-rules, self-organisation and emergence, it is argued that more emphasis should be placed upon creating receptive conditions and contexts which will support and facilitate good collaborative working. The paper also reports case studies of learning and teaching where medical and social work students work together early in their training, and together consider the difficult realities of service user/ patient need, whilst exploring key skills for joint working. The importance of incorporating openness to collaborative practice as students develop and negotiate their professional identify is highlighted, as is the part played by teaching staff in modelling collaboration. Reference Klein JT (2004) 'Interdisciplinarity and Complexity: an evolving relationship'. Emergence: Complexity & Organization 6:1-2 pp2-10