For journalists
The Media Centre for Social Work works with journalists to ensure accurate and honest portrayals of social work in the media. We do this through a mixture of promoting dialogue, holding briefings and informal discussion sessions and through our database of media volunteer spokespeople
Contact us on 020 7024 7706/ 7741 if you are a print, broadcast or online local or national journalist and need a background briefing on:
Promoting dialogue
The Media Centre is in contact with a number of experienced professional across all areas of social work, ranging from policy through to front line practice. Through this we are in position to react proactively to breaking social work stories and to facilitate the engagement of the social work profession with national and local media.
The Media Centre works to ensure that when a major social work story breaks, we can quickly offer news desks social work professionals available to comment, a briefing on the main points / issues involved and details of which press officers or web sites to go to for further information.
Contact us if you wish to interview a social worker who can speak on behalf of the College of Social Work.
Good practice database
We work with a number of social workers to maintain a resource of information for journalists seeking to know more about the profession of social work. All these social workers, whose interviews form part of this database of good practice, are drawn from the breadth of children’s and adults’ services and have agreed to be featured in the media. The interviews provide an insight into the complexities of social work issues and cover topics such as safeguarding children, preserving client confidentiality, working with adults on personal budgets, and managing risk in mental health services.
Find out more about our Good Practice Database
Guides to the role of social work
Additionally we have produced a series of good practice guides. The aim of these guides will be to provide advice on how to explain more about the complexities of social work issues and situations in the course of a brief news interview. These guides cover topics such as:
- social work with children at risk
- social work with children in care
- social work with older people
- social work with disabled people
See all our good practice guides
Briefings
The media centre holds regular briefings on a wide variety of social work related topics. The aim of the briefings is to improve coverage of social work in the media. We do this by providing journalists with access to social work information and also facilitating their access to social work professionals, from expert practitioners to newly qualified social workers.
The topics of the briefings are guided by discussions with the social work community via the policy and communications unit of The College of Social work and with journalists. Many are based on issues which social workers fear may be subjects of sensational or inaccurate reporting.
Find about the latest briefings from the Media Centre for Social Work
Workshops, meetings and discussions
The media centre runs informal sessions about media coverage of social work issues that are hitting the headlines. The aim of these meetings is to bring together social workers, press officers and journalist to look at the way that social work is covered. These sessions will also look at what the social work community can do to ensure that their messages are communicated and that the public have access to the most accurate and objective coverage.
Useful links & downloads
Contact us to find out more about media services from the Media Centre for Social Work