by Daniel LombardSocial workers have undergone a crisis of confidence in the last few months, with much debate over the lack of a unified professional voice.
But a group of child protection workers are seizing the initiative with the support of Jim Wilde, a freelance trainer and activist.
Wilde is seeking professionals' views for a new child protection charter, an alternative, practitioner-driven package of reforms designed to transform frontline conditions.
The project has been driven by Wilde's disillusionment at the lack of tangible difference made by two landmark reports from Lord Laming in the last six years.
Laming's recommendations have failed to have an impact on day-to-day working environments for social workers on the frontline, he says.
Speaking at the first of a series of consultation events in London last week, Wilde said he wanted to come up with three or four solid proposals such as a national model for caseloads and supervision.
He told Community Care: "We're trying to empower frontline workers to claim - not reclaim, because they never had it in the first place - some part of the creation of more productive ways of doing their job."
The first event, hosted by the British Association of Social Workers and Kids Company, was attended by 200 child protection social workers and managers.
There was an impressive line-up of speakers, including Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company and Dr Eileen Munro from the London School of Economics, interspersed with question and answer sessions involving the audience.
I went along to find out what everyone was talking about, and include a sample of comments taken from the floor:
Eileen Munro criticised the government's tick-box approach to safeguarding and said a health worker had claimed that "if a visit isn't on the system, it hasn't happened". A frontline manager responded by saying that from a manager's perspective that was absolutely true, given the age of constant checks and audits. Munro replied by saying that inspectors needed to improve their understanding of good social work practice, and social workers needed to use their professional voice to define more clearly what that means.
Phil Morris, from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, said there should be national agreements on caseload limits for social workers. Amanda, a team manager from Cumbria, shared a local perspective, explaining how she and fellow managers always took into account what tasks their staff had to complete before allocating further cases.
John, a senior practitioner from Staffordshire, asked whether it would be better to move child protection out of local authorities' remit altogether. Munro said previous reorganisations had not made "a wit of difference to children's safety".
Host and Care matches families in need of childcare with students looking for cheap living situations. Childcare can be an enormous expense for a single parent or a family with limited income and at the same time many students struggle to pay their living expenses while in school. Host and Care has developed a win-win situation for both parties.
Jim is to be congatulated. I could not agree more that a root and branch reform is needed. I returned to statutory social work after a 10 year gap and I am appalled by the climate of fear, blame and attack that exists in the profession. How can we truly assist anyone or protect anyone? The profession seems not to have heard of emotional literacy! Soul destroying work, drudgery, treadmill, these describe what should be a passionately engaging task. I hope they are training current social workers to be super administrators, because that is what they have to be.