Post by Ruth Bradley

Change takes time. It's important to pause and look back along the journey. Doing so reminds us what can be achieved when ideas are given the space to take root, when people come together to nurture them, and when collaboration is valued as much as the result. It's also necessary to be realistic about how long change can take. I'm impatient. I like novelty and starting things. It's a good reminder to stay the course. At Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust we've spent the last few years developing a document with social workers to help articulate the value social workers bring to modern mental health services. It has been encouraging to see that work mirrored and strengthened through the NHS Social Work Network's national position statement describing the essential contribution that social work makes in NHS settings. This (slightly blurry!) photo tells that story. It captures comments (on stars) from an SPFT Social Work Conference before I joined, the whiteboard I created to shape my thinking when I joined and the SPFT Social Work's Essential Contribution on the paper above. The refreshed British Association of Social Workers Professional Capabilities Framework gives us an excellent framework for describing our approach, but in England, social work is still too often understood primarily through the lens of statutory responsibilities. Those responsibilities matter enormously, but they are only part of the picture and for some organisations. Social work brings a social perspective that helps people make sense of their lives in context, strengthens multidisciplinary decision-making, champions rights and relationships, and keeps people's lived experiences at the centre of care—wherever we work. I'm often struck by how much development work mirrors practice. Reviews create space to look back at what's working, recognise the effort put in, notice what's changed, decide what to hold onto and think about what comes next. Perhaps we can do this as a profession and with each other as well as in our practice. bryan lynch Joan Hallifax Jim Newton Hannah T. Rosalind Green #SocialWork #MentalHealth #NHS #ProfessionalIdentity #ReflectivePractice #Leadership #MultidisciplinaryTeams