I'm a social worker within RCT, the team is called intensive intervention East 3. I refer to it just as one of the child protection teams in RCT. There's six of us. We handle our caseloads including care and support and child protection, public law outline and then over to children looked after. So, we do like the whole spectrum of cases at the minute. I've got from pre-birth babies, toddlers and primary all the way to teenagers, 16 plus. So yeah, a big variation, but I do enjoy it. We work with like a whole host of families. I cover a specific patch. That’s basically what my team does. A bit of everything, I do enjoy having the difference of having pre-birth babies all the way through to teenagers. And I think it keeps you on your toes. I know people argue that you could be more specialised in specific areas of age, but I would lose interest there. I enjoy having the spectrum to be able to go back and forth between. 

One of the first things I think about this particular girl on my caseload, is a lot around my language and not just mine, but other people's language around when we engage with her. She's got, and I think a lot of young people who have got trauma, have this huge thing around shame and blame. And she finds that really difficult and it lead to a lot of lying, sometimes white lies, sometimes big lies. But I think it's all because of her experience of shame and her experience of being shamed within her family home.
She always feels blamed. I work really strongly at my language. I'm so careful with the words I pick. It's not just that it's around the pace in which I deliver things as well. I like really slow it down and I have to think about how I explain things. I'm really careful, and pre think about how I'm going to explain big pieces of information and then about checking to make sure that's being retained or make sure it's being interpreted in a safe way.
Sometimes information can be where, they could take on board like little snippets of what they want and then catastrophize or their imagination run away. Whereas, I'll really check that. If I think of this girl, I think I got quite a good understanding of her inner working model - how I believe she processes things and how they come out. I try and respond directly to that. So, when I speak with the young people, I'll acknowledge that I believe that that's how they’re thinking. But, I verbalise that to them and then try and respond on their wavelength.
Then one of the other major things I try and do is really put an emphasis on is that all the young people are going to have consequences or they're going to have criticisms on them or given to them. But I try and push that's not an attack on their character or them as a person. I isolated to that being a response to a specific action they've done or a specific behaviour they've done to try and really create that difference between we're not criticising you as the child, we're just criticising that one behaviour because it's not favourable.
I'll try and create a clear difference between those things. Otherwise, it can be an attack of character. Especially ones who’ve experienced trauma, something will happen and then in the environment be, oh, they all hate me. Ohh, they all don't like me now, then they'll create tension about going back into it. And it's about trying to word that then and be like, no, people don't not like you. They don't like how you did that or how you spoke to them in that scenario. I think my focus sometimes is about reminding them you can come back from anything, but it's about how you process and how you come back from it. They find it really hard. I think especially the ones who have experienced a lot of trauma. When I'm thinking about my teenagers specifically, they find it really hard to just admit that they're wrong because I that hasn't been something which they can safely do in certain settings. Maybe there's like a fear of repercussions or fear of punishment or whatever it may be. It's about trying to demonstrate that it's OK to be wrong.