When Policy Meets the Street: A Social Worker Lifts the Lid

In this episode, Sarah and Louise sit down with social worker Nana Abbey-Hagen, a practitioner who moves fluently between frontline reality, leadership conversations, and the community spaces where social work and lived experience intersect.

Nana talks candidly about working conditions for social workers and whether those pressures ripple into foster care. We explore his work with the Chief Social Worker, Isabelle Trowler, and dig into the long-standing cultural gap between leadership and frontline practice, a gap foster carers know all too well.

He talks about his Street Social Work Practice Model: why he created it, the blind spots it exposes, and how it reconnects practice with the real lives of children, families, and carers.

We wrap with his vision for the future of social work and what that future means for foster carers on the ground.

A grounded, honest conversation that pushes past the corporate narrative and into the truth of what’s really happening.

All views shared in this podcast reflect the personal opinions of the hosts alone. They are not intended as factual assertions about any person or organisation, nor do they represent the views of any employer or professional body.