New BASW boss wants a revival

Reviving social work in local government will be top of the
agenda in Gordon Jones’s year as chair of the British
Association of Social Workers.

Jones claimed that the adult care green paper’s call for
social workers to become navigators rather than gatekeepers of
services could herald a revival of the profession.

But he said the government would have to invest in social work.
“If we are to meet these agendas there will have to be new
money.”

Jones, head of older and disabled people’s services at
Bridgend Council, said the community care reforms of the early
1990s resulted in social work being marginalised by care
management.

He said: “We’ve lost what social work was about
because of assessment and care management. The values of social
work need to be restored.”