BASW calls for green paper to help social workers deliver equality of care

Social workers’ judgements should not be compromised by a lack of resources, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) have said.

The group’s Initial Position Paper, published this week, outlined what it thought this summer’s green paper on adult social care needs to achieve from a social work perspective.

The paper said “sufficient funding” was required for social care “to promote full and equal citizenship” and warned that two-tier systems, where different groups receive different quality of service, must be avoided.

It also called for continued support for social workers to work preventatively and advise on development.

Respecting human rights

A survey conducted on behalf of BASW found 89% of respondents agreed that the review needed to address the provision of “adequate and fair resources” in adult care.

The importance to respect the human rights of adults and carers in the green paper review was also highlighted. Meanwhile, more than 90% of respondents agreed that the green paper “needed to address person-centred care for adults”.

BASW’s paper stated that people who receive care and support must be “at the centre of the assessment and support planning process” to make decisions “transparent”. It advised that social workers should be allowed to make professionals judgments about care and support “in partnership” with service users and asked workers to “take a lead on rights-based and person-centred care”.

Equal partnership

During his speech on the green paper principles, Jeremy Hunt labelled the current relationship between the social care and health systems as “confusing and fragmented”. He said that individuals should have one plan that covered all their needs and continued to say that this would involve a “joint assessment” conducted by both systems.

The report responded to this principle by saying that integration should be “based on respect” between the “different and complementary offers” of both systems. Yet it highlighted that social care should be regarded as “an equal partner with health” in the collective aim to promote health and well being.