An interesting addendum to yesterday's news about Plymouth council stripping
the local Unison branch of its official recognition has been brought to my attention
today.
Stripping the union of recognition means that social workers representatives
from Unison will no longer have the right to advance notice of changes to
contracts or pay.
But today a Facebook
campaign has sprung up to get the union recognised by the council again. At
the moment it's still in its infancy with only 336 members but it'll be
interesting to see if it has a tangible effect on the council's thinking if it
gets more traction.
Recently in Local authorities Category
Social workers at North East
Lincolnshire council seem to be the next group in a growing number of
council staff set to go on strike.
Yesterday, the local Unison branch put
out a statement saying it will reject the council's revised offer on
changes to workers terms and conditions.
Social workers at Southampton council have already
gone on strike over pay cuts, their compatriots in Shropshire
may be set to walk out over cuts to pay and yesterday social workers in all
of Northern
Ireland look set to gear up for mass walk outs along with other staff in health
and education.
North Lincolnshire still has a number of hoops
to jump through before it even reaches the point of balloting members but given
the general mood and the way other negotiations have gone a peaceful resolution
looks a way off.
It's looks like it's going to be a turbulent autumn.
Image by kozumel on Flickr
The College of Social Work is inviting practitioners to submit their views on the government's consultation to cut back on statutory council duties.
As reported in Community Care, the Department for Communities and Local Government is considering ways of reducing the "unnecessary burdens or restrictions on local authorities", including their social work duties.
MPs and social work leaders have raised serious concerns about the impact of potential changes on the sector, and the College is planning to produce a collective response to the consultation. It wants prospective members, of which there are currently 4.600, to respond by 18 April, in time for the final deadline of 25 April.
Questions may be asked about the timing of the College's decision to respond to a consultation which began nearly three weeks ago, on 7 March. However, a policy development group is being set up, to be headed by College members. A spokesperson says that in future, this group will coordinate thorough responses to similar consultations.
Children's minister Tim Loughton used a speech at the Conservative Party Conference tonight to champion the importance of social workers.
"I have enormous respect for social workers," he said at a fringe event called the Family Room reception hosted by a coalition of charities.
"My job is to free up the time of social workers to enable them to spend more time with families, rather than sitting in front of computers filling in forms," said Loughton.
"It is one of the most supportive speeches of social workers that I've heard from a minister in a long time," said Corinne May-Chahal, interim co-chair of the College of Social Work.
"Tim Loughton came to a fringe event organised by a coalition of children and family voluntary organisations, sponsored by Mothercare, where the focus could have been, as it was at the Labour and Liberal Democrats conference, on the voluntary sector and the Big Society. But Tim Loughton acknowledged the importance of, and spent most of his time talking about, social work."
"He was balanced and knowledgeable and stressed the importance of focusing on evidence-based practice," she added.
Loughton spoke about his week on the frontline with social workers in Stockport.
He described visting a family of four children living in "the worst squalor I have ever seen, with no food, no furniture, four mattresses on the floor and clothes and rubbish everywhere". Loughton told how one of the children had been repeatedly sent home from school with toothache over the last three weeks but the mother had done nothing. Yet, when she got toothache she phoned the emergency dentist on the same day, but didn't think to ask about her son, he explained.
"I told the social worker afterwards that I would have no hestitation taking the children into care, but the problem is the mum dotes on the children and the kids dote on the mum. Social workers really are making the judgements of Solomon," said Loughton.
A Telegraph columnist has rounded on unions for "squealing" about spending cuts and threatening to launch co-ordinated industrial action in protest.
At the TUC annual conference this week, general secretary Brendan Barber (pictured) promised to lead the fight against attacks on members' jobs, pay and pensions.
Jeff Randall dismissed the unions' argument in his column for the Daily Telegraph by blinding us with science - or, specifically, maths.
According to Randall, the fuss over spending cuts is a storm in the teacup, as the coalition government is actually spending more than the Labour government when inflation is taken into account.
The coalition government's net spend is £652 billion, compared to the £493 billion in 2005 when Labour were in power.
"According to my friends in the economics team at Deutsche Bank, £652 billion today would have been worth about £561 billion in 2005," Randall said.
For what it's worth, the unions' firebrand approach can come across as a little overblown. Although he was clearly being deliberately provocative, if you listened to Barber's speech on Monday you'd be forgiven for thinking we were on the brink of armageddon.
But Randall misses the point that local government workers are bearing the brunt of the cuts - how many other sectors would be able to cope with a reduction of more than £1bn in funding over a year?
Unison members at Derby Council have voted for industrial action over the decision to cut their car allowances.
The row has developed after many staff, including social workers, became unhappy at the threat to their expenses.
The Derby Telegraph has reported that 62% of Unison members voted in favour of industrial action while nearly half were in favour of a full strike.
Continue reading Derby social workers vote for industrial action .
Social workers' salaries have been a hot topic on CareSpace for the past couple of weeks. On one thread, the discussion has focused on whether or not social workers deserve to be paid more or less than other public sector staff. A central question seems to be, should pay be assessed according to the risk involved in the job?
Continue reading Pay debate rages on CareSpace.
Liverpool
However, when you compare this to the national average of 11.8 days of sick leave taken by social workers in 2008, it doesn't seem so shocking.
Continue reading High social worker sickness rates reported in Liverpool.
Unison made its feelings about George Osborne's proposal to freeze public sector pay in 2011 very clear today... by planting an ice sculpture of a hospital porter pushing an NHS wheelchair outside the Tory party conference in Manchester.
Continue reading Unison icy towards Osborne's public sector pay freeze.
By Jeremy Dunning
It's a society where living beyond the age of 100 is commonplace according to researchers who say that most babies born in the past few years will live to be centenarians. The study by the ageing research centre inDenmark calculated that at least half the babies
born in the UK
It's a society where living beyond the age of 100 is commonplace according to researchers who say that most babies born in the past few years will live to be centenarians. The study by the ageing research centre in
Continue reading Imagine the UK 100 years from today..
About the Social Work blog
The Social Work blog covers the challenges facing Britain’s 2m-strong social care workforce: everything from pay and working conditions to stress and the latest social work conduct cases. It is written by workforce editor Kirsty McGregor and senior journalist Vern Pitt. |
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