Themes including liberty protection safeguards, relations-based practice, the ELFT Befriending Service, mental health social work and local authority perspectives were discussed at the event at The Indian YMCA on October 7.
Guest speakers were Ruth Allen, chief exec of BASW; Jason Brandon, mental health social work lead for the Department of Health; Rose McCabe from City University; Matt Preston from the ELFT befriending team; Clementine Robertshaw from Hampson’s Law Firm, and local authority social work leads Katie O’Discoll, Georgina Diba, Kate Walker, Julie Ogley, and Jason Strelitz from Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Bedford Borough, Central Bedfordshire, and Newham respectively.
The conference was opened by Mary Brazier, ELFT director for social work and Richard Fradgley, director of integrated care.
"We have done a lot of work in ELFT over the last few years to really develop social work role within the Trust to recognise it as a profession and get to a place where ELFT has become the employer of choice for mental health and social workers,” said Mary.
“This conference is part of that. It is the first opportunity since COVID-19 hit to come together again.”
ELFT Chief Executive Paul Calaminus also attend the conference.
"Social work, social care, thinking about how to help increase the quality of people's lives, is a shift for an NHS Trust,” he said.
“Everything that you are doing in your teams, directorate and the people that you are working with; everything that is representing today and the work you have been doing with each other as social workers to develop a profession and most of all to help us with that goal of quality of life.”
He added: “I really want to thank you for coming on that journey with us.”