Does Social Work make a good subject for a TV Serial?

So I’ve finally rejoined the rat race. Although I have a new job – it’s still as a hospital social worker. We are living in a new house – but in the same area as last time. Everything is different but nothing has really changed. I like my line of work and in that respect it is good to be back in the swim. It’s a people job and therefore never really boring as everyone I meet is an individual character with their own story.

I often wonder why no-one has written a sitcom about social workers after all, they’ve done it about teachers, vets, doctors, nurses and policemen. Once again we are, undeservedly, the Cinderella service. Maybe writers think that it’s all doom and gloom in our job. But most social workers I know have stock stories covering humour, pathos, tragedy and hope and I’m sure that someone could write an entertaining script based on the reality of the job. Alternatively, maybe a children’s programme called Sue the Social Worker (Bob the Builder was a hit- so why not).

Before working in a hospital setting, I was based in the community. One of my clients, who was confined to a wheelchair, unbeknown to me owned a cockatoo (a white bird, a yellow tipped crest, makes raucous noise). I arrived at her home for a meeting and unaware of an avian presence sat down facing my client. Suddenly something flew through the kitchen door, swooped around the room, performed a dive bomb, narrowly missed my head and performed an emergency landing on my client’ s bouffant hair. The bird and I looked at each other – it in curiosity and me in horror. I now had two pairs of eyes trained on me as I talked. Not content with out-doing me in the staring contest, the bird then proceeded to mimic me. I moved my head to one side – so did he, I moved my head to the other side – so did he. If I lifted either of my arms or hands he mirrored it with his legs and feet. I found myself twitching in various ways just to see what the bird would do to try and copy me. Realising that I was getting nowhere fast, needed to concentrate on my client and not the two beady eyes regarding me I adopted a frozen posture. The cockatoo realising that it didn’t have my attention anymore decided to ham it up and when the head he was perched on nodded in a yes or no confirmation the blasted bird pretended it was sliding off and side stepped up her head, flapping its wing for balance. As you can imagine I didn’t get much done and eventually called it a day.

On the same theme, one of my friends, made a house call to visit an older person. When she arrived she was shown into the living room only to be confronted by a man sitting on a horse which was standing the middle of the room. He was painting the ceiling. On further investigation she discovered that this wasn’t just a one off because they had no ladders. The horse was living in the house with them. She negotiated her way around the horse and horse waste to find Grandma bundled up in a chair in the far corner.

So social work can be amusing and I’ve got plenty of material for a mini drama. Maybe when I’m retired…