Enhancing public understanding of the kinds of differences social workers make
Intervening Fictions was a pilot creative writing research project run by the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA), Newcastle University.
The end intention is to produce an anthology of short stories written by professional writers but inspired by the work of social workers in the UK: telling the story of what they do, what value they bring and what differences they make.
For this first stage of the project we ran a pilot test of the methodological approach. In 2014-15 I interviewed a number of social workers working in different regions of the UK. I then worked with two other writers to produce short fiction using the anonymised interview transcripts as background research.
These three pieces of short fiction were published as a pamphlet and distributed to social workers across the UK along with feedback forms. Although the official date for collating feedback has passed, if you’re a social worker in the UK (or used to be, or are training to become one) then your thoughts would still be greatly welcomed: please take the time to read these stories and answer the three questions at the back of the pamphlet.
Viccy Adams 