The good people of Britain have been happily contributing to the government's spending cuts challenge, posting 44,000 suggestions so far, which we can now all vote on.

But are there any suggestions which relate to social care? There certainly are. For starters I searched for "social work" and it returned 57 results.

Interesting suggestions include:

• reducing the amount of annual leave that teachers get to the same amount as other public servants. They can then use all those spare days volunteering in other public services to help tackle backlogs and stress. Genius
  
• banning agency social work staff in local authorities and introducing a national pay scale. The lack of an agency option would commit social workers to permanent roles and save money on expensive agency fees. National pay scale would stop authorities competing against each other on pay for the existing pool of workers. Not sure about that - if bankers get paid their market value why shouldn't social workers?
• Spend more money on early intervention with families and re-name social workers to avoid the suspicion associated with the term
• Even more radical is the suggestion to get rid of social workers altogether and replace them with direct payments
• Perhaps we should end the prohibition of drugs? It never worked with alcohol in 1930s America after all
• How about scrapping all those pesky awards and targets that local authorities strive towards?
• Here's a good one: get Queen of Shops Mary Portas to sort out the voluntary sector
• Finally, why not manage social work nationally, rather than locally? This means social workers could move between areas without having to resign and get a new job and you wouldn't have all those recruitment costs.
  

Well those are the ones that caught my attention. If you find any good suggestions please do let me know.

The whole project seems to have generated a predictably varied selection of ideas and general rants. I suspect it might lead to a handful of short-lived initiatives which shave a little bit of money off the edges of the budget deficit but not a lot more.

(Photo courtesy of HowardLake on Flickr)

Read the complete post at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/mental-health/2010/08/making-the-budget-cuts---some.html

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Posted 19 Aug 2010 5:39 PM by Mad World | Report Abuse

Filed under: social work, children, Politics, adults, workforce