Social Services Questionnaire

Please take the following questionnaire to find out how you would rate as an employee of a 21st Century Social Services department.

1) You are the Emergency Duty Social Worker when you receive a call from an anxious PC Bloggs telling you that she is with an elderly female whose boiler has broken down and the temperature is under three degrees.
Do you:
A) Provide emergency accommodation for the lady at great public expense.
B) Immediately call for a gas-man to go round.
C) Offer practical advice such as raising the lady's relatives, finding a mains heater etc.
D) State that you are the only person on duty and can therefore do nothing, and that since the police have attended it is their problem if the old woman dies.

2) You are a Community Mental Health Worker whose job it is to provide support to mental patients in the community. One evening you are on duty when a patient calls telling you she has taken an overdose and is about to hang herself.
Do you:
A) Remain on the phone to her while driving to the address and calling an ambulance with the other hand.
B) Dial 999 and begin to make arrangements for a duty officer to attend the address.

C) Dial 999 and be ready to attend if required.
D) Dial 999 and go back to bed, turning off your phone and switching on the answerphone message that goes: "We are not coming out of our warm office until a police officer has personally threatened to sue us."

3) Once more you are on duty at Social Services when PC Bloggs calls up telling you she has just taken a ten-year-old boy into police protection because he has been assaulted by his father and is scared to go home.
Do you:
A) Go straight to the police station and take responsibility for the lad, relieving PC Bloggs to go back on patrol.
B) Have a few cups of tea, put your feet up and attend in four hours. The boy is safe with PC Bloggs and she won't mind babysitting him for a while.
C) Phone around foster-homes to get accommodation for the boy which you can instruct PC Bloggs to take him to.
D) Ask to speak to the boy and inform him on the phone that he has to go home and should learn to do as he is told. Tell PC Bloggs she cocked up by taking the boy into police protection and suggest that the paperwork is thrown into the bin as this will make it easier your end.

4) You have been shafted as duty officer five nights in a row and this time PC Bloggs calls to say that she has arrested a fourteen-year-old girl for shoplifting and her mother won't attend the police station as she has two other small children at home to look after.
Do you:
A) Go to the police station immediately so that the girl can be interviewed and released.
B) Wake a colleague from bed who has no training and send them instead.
C) Phone up the girl's mum and threaten to take her child away from her if she will not attend.
D) Tell the police there is nothing you can do and the girl will just have to be either released or kept in a cell for 8 hours until the next duty officer comes into work.

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How did you score?
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Mostly A's: You are hardworking and compassionate. Apply elsewhere.
Mostly B's: You are excellent at delegating jobs to other people, but you do it far too quickly to be a really good Social Worker.
Mostly C's: You are just too practical to do this job.
Mostly D's: Congratulations, you are ready to apply to Blandmore Social Services.

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