Community Care has launched a survey of social workers, mirroring a poll by The Sun newspaper that asks its readers about the future of the profession.
The tabloid’s agony aunt Deidre Sanders, who also sits on the government-appointed Social Work Task Force, promised to feed Sun readers’ ideas to the task force “so they have a chance to be turned into reality”.
Fears over Sun poll
However, some social workers have expressed concern about the content of the multiple choice questions, including fears that the answer options were insufficient and may skew results.
Community Care has set up its own survey to counter the concerns and is asking social workers to complete it online.
“We took The Sun’s original survey but amended some of the questions and added a couple of new ones to take account of the concerns our readers had raised,” said deputy editor Emma Maier. “It will be interesting to compare our results with Deidre’s.”
Social Work Task Force
Community Care will send its survey results to The Sun and to the Social Work Task Force to emphasise social workers’ views - and their concerns over the original Sun survey.
The news followed angry objections at the British Association of Social Workers' annual conference to Sanders’ role on the Social Work Task Force.
Call to 'eliminate' Deidre from task force
Fran Fuller, of BASW’s Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire branch, asked whether Sanders might be “eliminated” from the task force.
But Andrew Webb, vice-chair of the task force, defended Sanders’ “valuable contribution” and said her influence could be used in a positive way.
Sanders originally agreed to take part in a debate at Community Care Live on 13 May, but has since cancelled her appearance to take part in a meeting with readers of The Sun instead.
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