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Proposals by the health secretary to replace the traditional social worker role with social care professionals with a broader range of skills have been criticised by the British Association of Social Workers.

BASW's chairperson Liz Timms told Community Care she was "hard-pressed" to see any benefits in the combined roles put forward by Alan Milburn at the National Social Services Conference (news, page 6, 24 October).

She said: "We would be in favour of anything that would improve collaboration but we would not be in favour of anything that fudged the differences between professions. I don't think it will work and hope they think again."


Concerns about the proposals have also been raised by front-line social workers.

Chris Chambers, a mental health worker based in Somerset, said: "If we are expected to become some sort of superworker, a pseudo doctor, nurse and social worker all rolled into oneÉ well, that's more than one person can do."

He added that he feared the move signalled a lack of faith in partnership working. "[The government] hasn't given partnership working enough time to take off the ground before saying it doesn't work."

Chief executive of the Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association Mark Jones said that he believed the impetus for the new roles, one of which could be that of a family care worker who would have the skills of a health visitor and social worker, came from a shortage of social workers.


"More and more health visitors are doing social work because there are not enough social workers doing preventive work, which is not seen as an attractive enough job," Jones said. "But the answer to this problem is not to bolt social work onto the health visitor role because that diminishes the public health work which we should be doing."

The General Social Care Council and the training organisation Topss are now looking at how to create appropriate qualifications for the new roles.