April 2011 Archives

Anecdotal evidence suggests one of the reasons some social workers struggle, particularly when they are newly qualified, is because of high turnover among line managers. To help us build up a clearer picture of the situation, please take part in this short survey.

Interestingly, I started a debate about this on Community Care's forum, CareSpace, and a newly qualified social worker responded almost immediately with this: "Now I think about it, I've had three different manager in just under a year." Join in the debate

Unison has launched a poster campaign to highlight the impact of the government spending cuts, with this image showing an easily-recognisable refuse collector and a librarian, roles considered under threat. But hang on, who's the woman on the left?

Apparently it's a social worker!

Seems that social workers are the only public servants who are impossible to portray without a label indicating who they are, and perhaps this goes to the heart of the profession's public image problem - there's a real lack of public understanding about their role as a result.

The gloomy message of Unison's campaign is matched by her funereal outfit of a dark suit and white blouse - one esteemed colleague felt she could even be mistaken for an undertaker.

You might not immediately warm to the portrayal, but when you start to wonder what the alternatives might be (stereotypes have included cardigan-wearing professionals with clipboards), perhaps the union has got it about right.

The government has reiterated its firm belief that healthcare assistants and unqualified social care workers in England should not face statutory regulation. In response, Katherine Murphy, chief exec of the Patients Association, claims in today's Telegraph that there is a real danger that NHS trusts will fire nurses and hire cheaper, unregulated healthcare assistants.

This echoes a recent warning from the College of Social Work that employers in England are using personalisation as an excuse to replace social workers with unqualified staff.

Which brings me neatly on to a meeting of Scottish TUC delegates yesterday, at which one of Unison's social care convenors, Lilian Macer, said personalisation was being used as a sticking plaster to cover cuts to services.

She said: "When the first question isn't, 'How do we make a better service?' but instead, 'How do we make a cheaper service?', then it's not about reform, it's about attacking services."

Political activist Richard Seymour argues in favour of a general strike against cuts to public sector jobs and services in today's Guardian.   

I was living in Paris in 2006 when hundreds of thousands of French public sector workers held a one-day strike to try to force the government to abandon a new piece of job legislation, which made it easier to fire younger employees. But it took that and two months of nationwide rioting (a lot of young people set fire to a lot of small cars) before Jacques Chirac caved in and scrapped the law.

Seymour suggests that a one-day strike on 30 June would have to be the beginning, not the end, of national industrial action in Britain. I wonder if the Brits could ever rival the French when it comes to political protest?

Also today, Unison has launched a nationwide press campaign warning that the current cull of public sector jobs will badly damage vital services

Photo of Paris riots by Sipa Press/Rex Features

CC's adult services team has designed a nifty survey on outsourcing, which asks: is opening up social care to providers from the private or voluntary sector a good idea? Take the survey

Photo by Ashley Cooper/SpecialistStock/SplashdownDirect/Rex Features

Here is a selection of the most amusing/outraged tweets in response to the government's claim that job satisfaction is more important to social care staff than pay (despite a report showing nearly one in 10 workers are paid below the minimum wage).

@VILLANELLE1 "Fab. I'll see if the bank is happy to accept my mortgage payments in 'satisfaction' instead of cash shall I?"

@artsy72 "Job satisfaction more important than pay, says government - so I'm guessing we're all going to be more satisfied to compensate"

@TonyButcher "Always the same - lame - argument. If UK wants quality care then it needs to pay those who deliver it a decent wage"

Tweet your responses to @ComCareWork

THE BLAME GAME

The issue of low pay in social care has existed for a long time, yet all parties appear to be passing the buck:

The Low Pay Commission blames central and local government. "We have made repeated recommendations to the government that the commissioning policies of local authorities and the NHS should reflect the actual costs of care, including the minimum wage" - Low Pay Commission Report on National Minimum Wage 2011.

Central government blames social care providers. "It is for local social care employers to determine the wage rates for their staff which should be based on the requirements of general employment legislation including national minimum wage" - a Department of Health spokesperson.

Providers blame local authorities. "[National Care Association members] would like to be able to pay their staff more but ...a majority of those social care providers will be trying to come to terms with cuts to the fees paid to them by local government for care of between 1% and 10%" - Nadra Ahmed, chairman of the National Care Association.

Unions blame providers. "It is not good enough for firms to plead poverty. The minimum wage is the law of the land." - Unison spokesperson.

BASW - The College of Social Work has challenged Unison to prove its social worker membership figures, which raises an interesting question about exactly who represents the professional at a national and local level.

Unison claims to represent 40,000 social workers across the UK. But BASW/CoSW's chief executive, Hilton Dawson, wrote in the organisation's in-house magazine this month: "We simply don't believe this figure and challenge them to prove it."

Unison has declined to respond to Dawson's challenge. The two bodies often disagree on policy issues, sometimes quite heatedly, so perhaps this is no surprise (and it's worth bearing in mind that it would suit BASW/CoSW to imply Unison has fewer members than claimed, as this would undermine the argument for a joint working arrangement between Unison and the other college of social work). But it has highlighted how little we know about how many social workers, students and social care staff are members of unions, and of which one.

In July 2010, in response to a request for a breakdown of membership figures from Community Care, a spokesperson for Unison said it had "about 300,000 social care staff and 42,000 social workers in membership". The press office said it would struggle to provide further details, including a breakdown of monthly membership figures over the previous two financial years. GMB has been similarly vague about its social care membership in the past.

Unfortunately, trade unions are not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, so they are not required to make such information public. It's a shame; accurate membership numbers, broken down by month, could give us a useful insight into how job cuts are affecting social care staff. 

I did a double take yesterday, reading the Daily Mail's report on the teachers' strike at a school in Blackburn, Lancs. The journalist interviewed Basil Howard, a former head of religious education at a different school, about aggressive pupils. Next followed the sentence:

"Mr Howard, dismayed by the daily verbal assaults on him by pupils, left the profession suffering from stress to become a social worker."

You've got to wonder where he got the impression that social work's a "put your feet up" profession...

A damning report leaked to Community Care last week found agency social workers cost councils in the West Midlands 25% to 50% more than permanent staff but often delivered poorer quality services. Here, Jonathan Coxon, managing director of national recruitment agency Liquid Personnel, responds:

On the quality of agency social workers:

"The reports of poor quality social workers do raise the important issues of what standards local authorities should expect from agencies. A competent agency should be able to provide an enhanced CRB certificate, full references, and full compliance documents for all workers before they commence employment. It's crucial that a local authority can trust their agency to supply competent and compliant workers, and if there is doubt about this, they should check for the presence of these documents. Not only would this help to identify poor candidates before a placement begins, it would also highlight any agencies that are not doing their job properly."

On the proposal to introduce standardised pay rates for agency staff:

"There is some value in the suggestion that pay rates for agency workers should be more standardised across the area. However, this could only work under certain conditions. Historically, in order for an under-performing local authority to attract talented workers, they have had to pay more than neighbouring authorities who are performing to a higher standard. Councils would have to benchmark themselves realistically against their neighbouring authorities and regularly review their rates to reflect their performance and relative appeal to new workers." 

On the use of agency staff in general:

"Agency social workers fulfil an absolutely vital role, and their reputation shouldn't be tarnished by anecdotal evidence of poor practice. With teams across the UK suffering from chronic understaffing, unmanageable caseloads and high staff turnover, it's impossible to ignore the value of having specialised and mobile practitioners who make an immediate impact."

Should it become easier for European social workers to practise in the UK?

The European Commission is looking at ways of reforming the system of mutual recognition of professional qualifications between European Union states, in a formal consultation.

At present, if a social worker from another EU state applies for registration with the General Social Care Council, they must meet a series of requirements, which could include having two years experience as a social worker in their home nation.

In some cases, the GSCC will recommend an "adaptation period" of supervised practice, to allow the social worker to make up for any gaps in their knowledge and skills.

Should these requirements be relaxed, it could lead to an influx of more European social workers practising in the UK, but would this lead to concerns about the quality of practice they provide?

All will be revealed in the outcome of the consultation, which we will report on in due course.

Care services minister Paul Burstow hinted last week that the government would create a chief social worker post in England. But who would you like to see in the role? Saviour of child protection, Eileen Munro? Outspoken BASW chief Hilton Dawson? Or how about Cardigan, the UK's first social work dog*? Cast your vote now...

Newcastle social workers have been criticised for failing to visit a 91-year-old blind woman when concerns were raised about her rubbish-strewn home, a local paper reports.

Helping those who neglect themselves can prove an impossible task for social workers; they have limited powers to intervene but also face media pressure to "do something". Community Care's interactive guide to self-neglect assessments

The first few trickles of feedback from social workers and managers show "general, if sometimes cautious, support" for the Social Work Reform Board's professional capabilities framework.

To sum it up, they think the framework is good because it clearly defines roles and expectations within the profession. But there are serious doubts about how realistic it is to ask social workers to bring their practice up to a higher standard when they're under so much pressure, according to a consultation document submitted by the College of Social Work.

Opinion was also divided on the use of 'Professional Capabilities Framework' as a working title. One respondent said: "The word 'capabilities' is honest and I think that it is one that describes perfectly that social workers need to be capable professionals."

But another said: "Should we not automatically assume that any professional is capable of fulfilling their role to the best possible degree? I don't know if it sounds a bit patronising."

Related posts:

Do kids understand the term 'social work capabilities'?

Photo by Parvin on flickr

The new regime for regulating social care in Scotland has been described as a "shambles" by a former Care Commission manager, The Scotsman reports.