How often have you as a palliative care social worker had someone say to you: ‘I never knew social workers did what you do’? Will palliative care social work ever be valued as part of a rich tapestry of social work in the UK? Or only as a minor outsider to real (that is, local government) social care. Possibly, if we can build on the social care framework in end-of-life care to say that social work is important in all sorts fo places, not just in delivering some lump of government provision called ‘adult services’. There is richness in the variety of many social work specialties coming together and there is power in that diversity, rather than in the sameness of the big social care agencies.

Palliative care social workers, and lots of other small specialities are valued by their professional colleagues in health care and elslewhere. This is because they have built up expertise and really demonstrated to professional colleagues and the people we work with that we can make a strong contribution to the things they need.

The people developing the proposed College of Social Work have a consultation on how it should be, which all social workers should contribute to. There are consultation events in various places in September:

* 1 September, Durham

* 2 September, Leeds

* 6 September, Manchester

* 7 September, Doncaster

* 13 September, London

* 15 September, Birmingham

* 20 September, Wolverhampton

* 21 September, Leicester

You can also fill in an online form at: http://www.collegeofsocialwork.org/consultation.asp#online

From the point of view of palliative care and other small specialties what happens here is really important, so we ought to express our view to make sure it includes something wider than the average. At the moment there is too much emphasis on everyone participating and defining the ‘reserved’ task of social workers. We should not be trying to limit social work to some legally controlled ghetto. Instead, we should promote the social work contribution to all sorts of tasks as colleague professionals.