Bloody Social Worker: One Man's Three Decades in Social Care

On Monday, 30 November 2020, Richard Wills resigned. Burnt out, unable to take it anymore and with his health shot to pieces, he decided that being a social worker was no longer him.

BLOODY SOCIAL WORKER – mallet and memoir – documents his 32 years on the front line, in ‘Madchester’ and Oldham, together with his childhood in Cumbria.

This isn’t a dry, academic splodge of a book though, about processes and policy, but one which illuminates the “glorious, tragic, funny, and enchanting figures” he came across.

Stumbling into moving taxis, looking after ‘Salman Rushdie’s’ cat, witnessing fights between Mr T (blind) and Mr M (Down’s syndrome) on the disco floor and in a helicopter, Wills invites you into his former world and simply asks you to look at complex individuals – those who “perplex and amuse” – with fresh eyes.


‘Wills makes your brain tingle and your heart ache as he takes you through the tunnel of society’s most serious issues. Yet the process feels like a delicate breeze as he honours the downtrodden. Sharp, informative, and laugh-out-loud in unexpected places’ Aidan Martin, author of