Social work or mental health nursing?

mummytofour

Hi,
Im soooo confused! I want to be a social worker however mental health nursing also has a deep rooted intreset for me and with so many applying for S/W I maybe should look at other options..
Can anybody shed some light on the mental health nursing? I could do it at Brighton or I could apply to London south bank and do a combined social work and mental heath course.
The thing is I will be travelling daily from the south coast and have a DH and 5 kids to support so I need to consider all this AHHHHHH life was easier at 18!

welf_man

Please, don't even THINK about commuting that sort of distance every day! Even if the academic parts are family-friendly hours, the placements won't be, and they won't be local either.

Both these courses are tough, academically and emotionally, and it's you who will need the support. Are you sure now is the best time to do this? I did Social Work as a single parent of a 5-year-old, and that was hard enough; I've been working in student welfare almost ever since, and unfortunately there's no doubt that most student parents struggle with workload and home-course balance, and many drop out for these reasons.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people following their dreams, but it's such a waste when things go wrong for reasons unconnected with the subject. I'd really encourage you to contact the universities you're thinking of and talking to student advisers there before you even apply.

You need to know how much money you would get, how many hours a week you would be studying (and you're talking a heavy homework load too), whether you would get a reasonable choice of placements and what proportion of other students would be parents.

I hope this doesn't sound too negative, but I really hate to see good students falling by the wayside!

Best of luck, whatever you do.

Mel.

mummytofour

Thanks for that I am greatful for the imput. It is a dream going to uni, but its not just that it is the future for my family. I do take the point about the work load and I know it will be tough, the commute part does not worry me that much because A) dh does it now and he will be at home full-time with the kids instead of me. I already commute to Brighton and the traffic is SO bad I could travel to london in the time.
The money worries me dreadfully but I cant seem to find out for sure what our income will be as there are so many things like tax credits to sort plus we have a child with special needs so the dla/cares all comes into it.
But thank I shall take all your comments on bored:-)

spl2nh

Why not be a social worker who specialises in mental health?

fabwitch_2

I went into Mental Health Nursing and I loved it. Its a very demanding course but very rewarding too. With the Nursing you will not have to pay for your course fees and will be intitled to a bursery whilst training. After qualifying I specialised in Community Pyschiatric Nursing as its 9-5pm Monday to Friday so easier to work round if you have kids. I have worked with many Mental Health Social Workers and I must say as a CPN I had a lot more freedom working with clients and able to decide on treatment required whereas the MH SW seam to be tied down with red tape.

Shoey1610

I did Mental Health Nursing at Brighton Uni, it was a great course very intense at times but I really enjoyed it. During the theory modules the work day was 9.30 to 4.30 but much of the time you would be off before 4.30, the practice modules (working out there on the job) were tougher time-wise, you could be expected to work 12 hour shifts for example, which run from 7am-7pm, although you have to be there before 7am ready for handover, but you would only need to do 3 of these a week. Placements with early shifts would run 7am to 2.30 and late shifts would run 1.30 to 9pm. Night shifts either ran 7pm-7.30am or 8.30pm-7.30am. Community placements would generally be 9-5 so what I'm trying to say is that the hours change around ALOT and you would need to be very flexible with this.

To counterbalance that you do get quite long holidays, so you wouldn't be expected to work for more than a month in summer and you have 2 weeks off at Christmas amongst others. You do need to do a fair chunk of academic work including when you are working in a 37.5 hour a week placement, there are essays to do and clinical assessment work which you have to write as well as discuss with your qualified mentor.

Between you, me and the rest of MSE, the theory modules are not always that well organised, at least they were not when I did it 2000-2003. in that you might travel for a lecture and then there be no one to teach it, that was one thing that used to really annoy me as I travelled Hastings to Brighton.

Unlike FabWitch (Hi fellow RMN!) I specialised in inpatient work and even now I have a daughter I still do that, but I work night shifts to work around childcare, so there is alot of flexibility to balance mental health nursing with your life outside of work. I agree with fab witch that you do have alot more freedom in nursing in working with clients.

My advice would be to look up the job descriptions of each of the jobs and see which one you think would suit you best.

If you would like any more info about mental health nursing/ Brighton Uni please feel free to pm me

mummytofour

Wicked thank you people! I may have more questions soon as I have to give college my UCAS application very soon and am still trying to work out what to put for my course choice.

mummymania

My local Uni does a Joint Practitioner degree which is a Social Work degree with Mental Health nursing. Which means that once qualified you can do either mh or sw. I work in a community mental health team, work part time to fit around school times and is really flexible.

Girlzmum

I'm studying for Adult nursing in Belfast atm and I have to second what has already been said about placements. Uni is about 15-30 mins away but I can be placed in hospital over 2 hours drive from where I live, they are not flexible over placements at all and can be very funny about people swapping placements.
That said I love nursing, I did a MH placement and it was a fantastic experience so good lck with your decision.

anewman

You could try get experience on a psychiatric ward as unqualified staff. It would give you some idea of what goes on.

If you get night shifts on a Psychiatric ward you'll pretty much be sat there, probably watching TV or reading books and magazines, all night while patients sleep, although of course you'd be there to be at hand for whatever happens. Seems an appealing job to me

Shoey1610

anewman wrote: »

You could try get experience on a psychiatric ward as unqualified staff. It would give you some idea of what goes on.

If you get night shifts on a Psychiatric ward you'll pretty much be sat there, probably watching TV or reading books and magazines, all night while patients sleep, although of course you'd be there to be at hand for whatever happens. Seems an appealing job to me

That is abit of a generalisation, yes certainly on some mental health wards it is like that. However, having worked as a night nurse on an acute inpatient unit and doing emergency admissions, all the paperwork that the day staff are far too busy to do and all the preparation to make sure the the next shift ran as smoothly as it could and having worked on an elderly mentally ill unit where the patients might have day/night reversal and are up and around at all times of night and you are again doing prep work for the next shift, I can assure you that none of the qualified or unqualified staff were sat there reading magazines and watching TV. But it does happen, and you still get paid the same, so I'm not knocking it, just saying that not all night nurses are getting paid to sit there on their bottoms.

The suggestion to get some unqualified work on a ward is an excellent one, you could try NHS professionals so you could work on a variety of wards and this is also good for boosting your money when a student whether you decided to do MH or SW