I didn’t know anything about the inquest process, what that entailed, and the role of the caseworker’s always a bit daunting. Okay, so I remember starting and watching other caseworkers being really busy typing away and, you know, I would do my stuff, then I would just sit around thinking, you know, what are you actually doing, you know, you’ve found a solicitor, you refer the person, now what, you know. It took me a while to understand the role in its own, you know, what it actually entailed. Probably took me about a month to actually get the hang of the role and how, you know, this different…
So what does it entail?
I mean it’s quite different to the role of a lawyer, which was difficult to get my head round, because I, also, you know, I was a bit like, I wish I could go to court, why do I have to send it to somebody else, you know. And, you know, then you keep… basically, what does it entail, you know, you speak to the person, those bereaved through, you know, usually in neglect, you know, usually preventable death in the hands of the state. So you spoke to the person, you speak to the person and the first call takes about an hour, because often bereaved families are not told about anything. You know, they might get a few leaflets in the post, but nobody tells them, this is going to happen first, then this is going to happen next, it’s going to take a long time. When it actually comes to the inquest, this is how it’s going to be. They will tell you it’s non-adversarial, but that’s a myth.
And everyone will have their lawyers and barristers. You know, just explaining the whole picture. And then if they want to be referred to a solicitor, if there is funding available, then that can be quite straightforward sometimes, but it’s been really hard since the pandemic because everybody’s overworked. But normally then you refer to a solicitor. And then if it’s a priority case - and it’s awful to describe cases as priority, non-priority – but, you know, we worked, we work on about 500, 600 cases a year, so, you know, as a caseworker I worked on over 1,000 deaths in the last 13 years. So that’s 1,000 bereaved families, so it hasn’t been obviously the same level of involvement in all of those cases.
Some cases you go to lawyer meetings, you go to the inquest, you go to the meeting with the IOPC, Independent, you know, Police Commission, or the Prison Probation Ombudsman, and you do policy work, you know. And in some cases you do, even though we’re not bereavement supporters, support workers, you know, some cases, some families need more support, you know. So, yeah, it’s an interesting role, basically. We also do a lot of, we organise a lot of events like Family Forums, we organise meetings with our lawyers and the IOPC or the Prison Probation Ombudsman, or the CPS and, so yeah, it’s quite a busy role, but it’s not an easy role to explain to someone you meet at a party. Like, what do you do? I’m a caseworker, but I’m not a lawyer, you know, so what do you do?
