Do you like reading books about social work or by social workers in your spare time?
- No, I want to switch off from the job (36%, 316 Votes)
- Yes, that's what I'm into (34%, 299 Votes)
- It depends on the book (30%, 266 Votes)
Total Voters: 881
Loading ...Just over half of Community Care readers will be voting Labour in next week’s general election, a poll has found.
With the party predicted to win a sizeable majority on Thursday (4 July), our poll found 52% of the 954 respondents would be voting Labour, with just 5% opting for the Conservatives.
Reform UK was readers’ second most popular option at 12%, closely followed by the Greens (11%) and then the Liberal Democrats (9%).
Six per cent of readers said they would not be voting at all.
No funding commitments
Despite Labour being readers’ most popular option, the party has made no funding commitments on either children’s or adult social care.
While it said it would introduce a “fair pay agreement” for adult social care workers, it has not allocated any funding to this. Likewise, the party has said it would implement the current government’s adult social care charging reforms in October 2025 but not addressed the fact that this is currently unfunded.
On children’s social care, it said it would strengthen regulation of the sector, though did not set out how, while it also refrained from committing to continuing the current government’s children’s social care reforms.
‘Social workers will have to struggle on’
Social workers commentating on our election coverage were pessimistic about the prospects of a Labour government for the profession.
“Social workers will have to struggle on, working excessive extra hours without pay,” said David. “Vulnerable children and adults will not receive the services they need as a result.”
“Clearly things are not going to substantially improve for social care, whether for children or adults. Nor are the pressures on social workers going to be addressed.”
Another social worker, Nicola, said the Labour party wouldn’t be “any different to the Tories”.
“More austerity incoming, the most vulnerable carry the weight of the burden and the top 5% continue to be shielded by all parties.”
What do you think the future holds for social work under a Labour government?
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More and more of the same. As with the Tories, Labour hides behind “We cannot afford this”. Labour needs to have the courage to a tackle excessive company profits and the excessive riches of individuals. Fundamental to socialism is redistribution of wealth. In the absence of this, sadly those lacking a reasonable income will continue to struggle as they have done so going back to the year dot. Labour may have an opportunity to bring about some fundamental change. However, sadly I am not optimistic.
So 12% of respondent social workers will be voting for Reform UK ahead of Greens and Liberal Democrats. Let that sink in and then stop prattling on about how social workers are anti-racist activists, their practice anti-discriminatory and that they are at the front line in championing diversity.
Not all the people who read and comment on here are social workers.
Chances of a Reform UK supporter whose not a social worker reading CC is remote to zero. There has to be something that social work owns once in a while however uncomfortable it makes us. So I believe the poll. In our part of West Yorkshire “stop the boats” rhetoric is almost daily now. All from qualified and registered social workers. It would be interesting what SWE would make of that.
Really shocked that 12% of readers would vote for the racist Reform party.
About 11% of social workers have said they intend to vote Reform UK? And those are the ones who admit to it.
i have no words.
Shocking that 12% of social workers intend to vote for reform. Wow!
There’s a silence on spending commitments because the of utterly dismal financial pictures not disclosed or debated publically; the Departmental Expenditure Limits or cash transfers between successive Gov Departments since the 2005 elections, under the guise of the, then, Gershon Efficiency drives, have masked the previously more transparent s25a agreements between Councils and the NHS.
The full imoact of Brexit will now manifest.
In the coverage of the past 50 years of Social Work ‘we’ have neglected to pay any attention to the facticity that all, yep ALL, NHS and LocGov legislation and policy was a derogation of EU Law ~ it’s called a path dependency.
See Prof Gerald Wistow Collaboration between Health and Local Authorities: Why is it Necessary for a datum line document ~ maybe Sally Gainsbury, currently writing for the Nuffield Foundation could bring us up to speed on such?
It’s a truly well kept secret that despite ‘nationalisation’ alot of the NHS’s ‘economic activity’ is rooted in the retention of a charitable status ~ it’s the economic basis for the so called ‘Third Sector’ and the main driver of so called ‘arms length provision’ and the first wave of direct competitive rivalry with VolOrgs and NGO’s.
Indeed, the financial pictures, if disclosure was ever made, would show that the massive cash injection made throughout the noughties was geared entirely towards the creation of “pan EU Inter-member-State” arrangements ~ the “Inter-Member State Dispute Mechanism” a secret Court sitting to prevent the triggering of EC Breach processes ~ I know because I almost got the European Ombudsman (EO) to launch such an investigation.
Today, the landscape is very alien. That Primary Care is now about being an equity backed investment portfolio, with dry powder of a staggering £4 trillion, who’s gonna really try and stop the train?
The entire information management requirements, governance by information theft and stealth management, from within LocGov and the NHS are all about breaking the asymmetry of public ownership and the principle of solidarity
This is, now, all about the new-world of health and welfare economics coming of age and has taken about 50 years of incubation to reach market maturity.
It’s scary because it’s our collective blindsightedness, a manifest narcissism, that has eroded to dereliction any real state-craft at local and central government levels ~ the emergent regionalism of both LocGov and the NHS showing up as the ICB’s.
This said, I have fond memories of the early 70s arrangements which were more like ‘kinship care’ and social services were an integral part of local community life (imagine this, my Dad had a psw, my Mam a probation officer, my sister a esw and cpsw and our teachers and some social workers living in and around the estate).
It worked because advocacy was a sewn-in experience and expectation.
Just saying …
In some ways I’d like to see a labour and Green coalition. Out go the tories, in come the centrists with a strong left conscience
While my voting intentions lie with the majority here (Labour), I’ll never fail to be surprised by other social workers who are surprised that all other social workers are not politically ‘on the left’ – while Reform isn’t for me, personally, I don’t understand the surprise others have that social workers might vote for them and I certainly know and have worked with a number of social workers who have and are intending to vote Conservative.
Maybe as a profession we’d do better to show a little more humility and accept that we work with and among people with differing political views and when we talk about social work being political, we all have very different views on this.
Those who are saying they are surprised at social workers stating they will vote for ‘racist’ Reform Party, I might say I’m surprised at social workers who back the Green Party when they have welcomed antisemitic candidates, but I don’t because my reality is that social workers don’t hold any moral superiority over the rest of the population so it makes sense that a poll would follow the majority. Indeed, the numbers of social workers that backed an institutionally antisemitic Labour Party could have surprised me, had I not experienced some of that attitude personally.
If you think social workers can’t be racist/antisemitic/prejudiced, then perhaps some of you have been living in a bubble and I am envious that you have the means to be able to.
Whatever they might claim about their political allegiances most social workers are actually apolitical. They say the expected to fit into the equality and diversity narrative but rarely show conviction. That’s the extent of social worker activism. Believing you are virtuous, progressive, indignant at injustice, supposed ally to an unfathomable number of the oppresed doesn’t make you “left wing”. Voting, if you remember to, while consumed by cynicism and self interest doesn’t make you ‘political’. If political morality has a function in social work, it hasn’t, fetishising “Prefessionals” would be its core. I remember the days of NF and BNP ideas about “immigrants”, admittedly less volubly and a tad more cautiously than the embrace of Reform now, being uttered by social workers. Whatever the likes of Chiefs of this or that, SWE standards, DEI Directors, BASW, Social Work Leaders, Practice Educators, Academics and the latest iteration of public money wasting Think Ahead and Frontline claim on behalf of social work and social workers, there have always been outre beliefs in the ‘Profession”. Religious conviction verging on bigotry? Heard it. Small island overpopulated? Heard it. Margaret Thatcher saved us from socialism? Heard it. Jews control media etc? Heard it. Islam justifies paedophilia? Heard it, Homosexuals shouldn’t adopt? Heard it. Not just 30 years ago but heard and argued about one or more of these mere days ago. Sitting on the sidelines griping, feeling the world just “hates” social workers and elation at assumed uniqueness of social workers one minute then deflation to the point of depression at being “undervalued” next isn’t political, isn’t left wing, isn’t right wing. It’s just whinging. The fundamental problem with social work isn’t just that some and perhaps a sizeable number of social workers are anti-semitic, racist, homophobic, anti- immigration Islamaphobes or misogynists but that in the face of historical and ongoing evidence of this there is a persistence to pretend it really doesn’t exits and if it did the geniuses at SWE would weed it out through their fitness to practice diligence. My reality of social work is that it’s like the bits that got chopped out of Abigail’s Party. Frantically ignoring the chaos, the floundering, the bigots, the ever so slow descent into irrelevance actually verges on the delusional. Be outraged by social worker voting intentions but the malaise in which we practice should worry us more because that’s real politics. That’s the poltical ideology which sees us as mere bureaucrats there to do what we are told and to serve the agendas that local and national politicians impose on us. Vote or don’t vote, be elated or despondent on 5th July, feel aggrieved that you work with people you wouldn’t choose to, hunker down and be ‘professional’ for self preservation. But we should all be aoutraged every day that social work isn’t about people or communities anymore and how social workers are mere functionaries in a budget driven anti-welfare culture that punishes subtly or overtly if challenged. But then I’m a Communist so there is that.
Well said!!
As Vic has suggested above, there should be no reason whatsoever to be surprised at the diversity of political opinion expressed by social workers who, with the remarkably acute exception of their gender profile, are just as representative of the communities they serve as is any other group.
Wow, it must be a nightmare having Tahin in a service. Exposing and ridiculing blinkers social workers willingly wear to avoid actually having to get dirty fighting for a better social work must surely grate. Love, peace and understanding cosiness of managers and leaders never looked more flimsy than in Tahin’s summation. Judicious use of sarcasm and irony are needed in these grim work days. SWE could do with a bit of that wit.
Yet again I deplore any Social Worker voting Reform. Are they ignorant of its National Front background and now of its present day Immigration policy? Our Care system and NHS are at the point of collapse. Without Immigrants it would have collapsed long ago. As for sending people to Ruanda, many of whom will have suffered torture or at least extreme hardship, how could any Social Worker support this. And even if some immigrants are “Simply” economic migrants, just let them work. Surely Social Workers understand that leaving ones family and homeland is not an action taken lightly.
“Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating a no-deal Brexit, it won the 2019 European Parliament election in the UK, but did not win any seats at the 2019 general election”. Wow 12% of social workers agree with these racists and popularist flat earthers? disappointing.
Who’d have thought such a culturally and ethnically diverse workforce would have such diverse political leanings and beliefs.