Ruth Cartwright of BASW has warned that some councils are freezing social work posts as they implement personalisation because qualified practitioners are "too expensive" to implement personalisation.
Is this people's experience?
We've picked up anecdotal evidence of this in the past, for instance in the Wirral, while a survey of adult practitioners we did last year found over half thought there would be fewer qualified adult social workers in practice in 2011 - the end point for the government's Putting People First personalisation agenda.
A common theme appears to be that as councils reform care management procedures, tasks are transferred from qualified social workers to non-qualified community care staff - though often combined with extra training for the latter.
The role of the social worker then is focused on safeguarding, handling complex needs cases and in some cases, as in Thurrock, monitoring the quality of support plans developed by non-qualified staff.
This is a concern that I have to be honest. I can see it happening in my own borough too - although posts that have gone are more 'retirees not being replaced' - I can see qualified staff being replaced by unqualified staff before too long. It is one of the reasons (among many, I hasten to add) that I am glad I moved from an Adult Community Care team to a specialist Mental Health Team.
I think they are too expensive and too vocal! In our authority they are in the process of restructuring, and in the personalisation workshops we have been to, the majority of qualified people (social workers and occupational therapists) have been particularly strong in questioning the way that some of these new ideas are being rolled out across the authority.
I personally feel that because social services is now being run according to business models and being led by managerialist thinking that anyone who does not fit into their preconcieved notions of care management and has the temerity to question their 'one size fits all' policies is not wanted in the new regime.
I fully understand that there is a severe lack of resources, an ever increasing population who need assistance and that something needs to be done, but under the guise of personalisation there is a clear move towards a 'tick box' culture. Points mean prizes and instead of a holistic assessment, you tick a box to say you need assistance with personal care and this gives you a certain amount of money and so on. We don't know why it is you need that help or how long it takes......the whole process makes a mockery of holistic assessments and the three year social work degree.
The government need to decide whether they want to support social workers or whether they don't. On the one hand they have the social work task force, looking into how to promote social work positively and encourage recruitment then on the other hand they are cutting the number of qualified social work posts and giving the impression that anyone can do the job, with a bit of basic training. Most social work students I meet now are seriously concerned about whether there will be a job for them at the end of their training and exactly what kind of job it will be.
Sorry, maybe I did not explain clearly enough. I totally agree with what you say about workload, stress etc and I do not think we are paid too much - not enough is nearer the mark. However, I think that some local authorities think that they can get other people (unqualified people) to do what we do and pay them even less than us, thus saving the department lots of money. This appears to be what is happening under the guise of personalisation.
They then use the few social workers that they do still have to 'supervise' the unqualifed workers and ensure that clients are having full, in depth assessments and choice of services etc. The role of the social worker is changing to that of a supervisor of other workers, we cascade information and teach others, without the local authorities having to formally pay for the further training that these other workers may need.
When I talk about unqualified workers, I just mean people who do not have a diploma or degree in social worker. The people I work with have a great deal of experience and are very skilled in what they do, but it concerns me that they will be used to do complex work without equivalent training in law, theory etc, which will put them in a very difficult situation.
The bit about being more vocal is related to the fact that often when we train as social workers we are taught to question things, to look beyond the spin and to stand up for the vulnerable people we work with. Therefore when policies, procedures, new guidelines etc are brought in, we are often extremely vociferous in our discussions about them.........this is not always welcomed.