|f you thought the interim report by the experts reviewing social work in Scotland was controversial, its chair Willy Roe has a surprise for you. The next phase of the review will go even further.
When the 21st Century Review Group published its interim report - or, as Roe refers to it, emerging findings - last month it caused quite a stir. There was severe criticism from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla) and the Association of Directors of Social Work (ADSW), who described it as giving an "overly negative" view of the profession.
But Roe, a management consultant and former chair of a council social services committee, is unapologetic, and suggests this is exactly what he wanted.
"I'm pleased that the interim report has stimulated real debate. When the education and training minister [Peter Peacock] launched the review he said he wanted a fundamental review of social work looking ahead 20 years, a whole generation. That implies change rather than the status quo," he explains.
And Roe is adamant that the toughest issues still have to be addressed by his 13-member review group team and the various subgroups looking into specific aspects of the profession.
"Areas such as the investment and effort in prevention, and the balance between early intervention and crisis management that we still have to get into, are more controversial."
Be under no illusions. The review, which was set up last summer and is due to report its findings and recommendations to ministers in the autumn, is looking at how the whole social services system in Scotland works - from training and professional practice to the methods of delivering services.
For Roe, the three big "emerging issues" are: to what extent councils provide services, how social workers spend their time, and the client choice agenda.
"The emerging evidence shows there is little time for social workers to do prevention work. But also there are ways to intervene that can reduce and prevent situations from developing. If social workers do that, they can make a very big difference to people's lives.
"What should be the role of local authorities across the whole spectrum of social work and services? Should it be confined to being a planning and commissioning and standards setting body or should it be a provider of some services? Should it be a provider of all services or only where the state has a coercive role, such as when sectioning people or taking children into care?
"There is an unstoppable trend towards people wanting services tailored to their needs rather than standard set services. Users and carers say they want to build a pattern of services that suit them. In that more demanding environment, where people are increasingly less willing to accept what's on offer with standard services, how do we build in choice?"
At last month's Cosla annual conference, finance and public service reform minister Tom McCabe indicated that not every council needed its existing quota of top-tier management, including social work directors. Roe says the role of managers is central to the review and adds he will look at the management structure of departments and how they relate to other public services.
"Social work does not exist in isolation - some clients of social services are also clients of other statutory services.
"The most interesting one is the interface between health and social care. As people live longer, the issues the NHS faces are really very close to those faced by social services. We can't assume the traditional boundaries between what's social work and what's health care are right for the future."
Such comments are bound to increase fears in the social work establishment that Roe and the review are pursuing a government-driven agenda to break up traditional social work departments and merge them with health, education and housing services, similar to developments in England.
The ADSW recently articulated these concerns in a letter to the Glasgow Herald newspaper, but Roe says he has no hidden agenda.
"People may have read things into my comments that aren't so. Ministers have given us a very broad and open brief. I am not constrained by ministers, and the members of the review group have been appointed as individuals and are independent," he says.
And Roe denies accusations that the interim findings were based on too narrow research and lacked a management perspective. He says the findings focused initially on what constitutes a social worker because this is at the core of the review.
"Social work groups will have every opportunity to influence what the review group thinks. The ADSW and its members are the most heavily represented body in our whole review, and ADSW chief officers chair all the subgroups.
"I've spent six months speaking to users and carers, front-line social workers and other related professions within health and criminal justice. Now we're working in six parts of Scotland in depth. Social work directors and chief officers are only one constituency in this, if an important one."
But it's easy to see why the ADSW and Cosla have been disappointed with the interim report. It paints a picture of social workers and departments that are risk-averse and defensive in their decision-making and overly driven by processes rather than outcomes.
"They take great care over processes and procedures, but that has created something of a bureaucracy," says Roe. "It is the job of leaders and managers to maximise the effectiveness of the resources they have and minimise bureaucracy.
"You get the growth of burdensome bureaucracy where you have systems where there isn't a lot of trust: it is used as a way of controlling the actions of people. We need to find ways of replacing a lot of the bureaucracy with more trusting relationships. By empowering people in the front line to take more responsibility you get more effective organisations."
The skills of social workers will be addressed in the coming
months, and the review is looking closely at Glasgow Council's use
of para-professionals to free up social workers to spend more time
on the front line.
Making greater use of technology is another theme to be explored.
And last month Roe visited the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in Boston to see how new devices are being designed to
improve life for ageing populations and turn tomorrow's world into
reality. Now Roe has to do the same for social work in
Scotland.
