Most social workers believe a disconnect exists between senior management and frontline practitioners, a Community Care poll has found.
The need to ensure leaders are in touch with the front line has been highlighted in both the major reviews of children’s services in England carried out over the past 15 years.
In his 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, Josh MacAlister recommended that all registered social workers, at whatever level, complete 100 hours of direct practice annually.
‘Crucial for leaders to keep up with practice’
“It is crucial that leaders, inspectors, policy makers and academics keep up with the realities of frontline practice,” the review stated, though MacAlister’s recommendation was rejected by government.
In her 2010-11 review of child protection in England, professor Eileen Munro also tried to narrow the gap between leadership and practising social workers through the creation of the principal social worker role.
“There must be a stronger commitment by all levels of local administration to understand how senior management decisions impact on frontline social work,” she wrote. “[The PSW] role would take responsibility for relating the views of social workers to all levels of management…”
Management ‘more detached than ever’
Unlike MacAlister’s recommendation, Munro’s was implemented.
However, in a 2024 interview with Community Care, she claimed that senior management was more detached from the front line than ever.
“Once you’re away from the front line, you forget quite how chaotic and messy the reality of it is,” she said. “You get a much cleaner, more sanitised version of it. That’s dangerous.”
The respondents to a recent Community Care poll seemed to agree.
An overwhelming 92% of readers said that there was a disconnect between frontline practitioners and their senior managers.
In an echo of MacAlister and Munro’s views, Dame Moira Gibb, who chaired the 2009 Social Work Task Force, recently called for stronger bonds to be forged between management and practitioners.
“It is my hope that senior managers understand what the life of a frontline social worker is and what they need to make a difference for families,” she told Community Care.
What is the relationship with senior management like where you work?
We are looking for social workers to share their experiences to spark conversation among fellow practitioners. Share your perspective in a short paragraph (150-250 words) or a 10-minute interview to be published in Community Care. Submissions can be anonymous.
To express interest, email us at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com.
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The idea of ensuring senior managers engage with frontline realities is vital. But with so many levels of responsibility and decision-making, how can we realistically expect them to maintain a close connection without compromising their larger organizational duties?
It’s because senior managers are so driven by protecting their “larger organisational duties”, which in effect are primarily about budget and expenditure, that social work is in such a mess. We keep on hearing that social work is a person centered profession committed to alleviating the negatives in people’s lives but that isn’t true is it? Every care package, every funding request, every time I’ve submitted an assessment that has a cost implication these have been rejected or I’ve been asked to resubmit by lowering the money value of them. It’s precisely because social work has been turned in it’s head and corporatised that we need to remind senior managers of what core social work values are. That said if senior managers are as petrified of meeting users of services as they are in our authority I don’t think two weeks of getting in our way is a way forward either.
There are a number of disconnects within some (many?) LASSD. Some of the senior leadership team are not very good at communicating clear messages, ie this is what we need to achieve, this is why we need to achieve it, this is the consequence of not achieving it, we want to engage with you about the most efficient and effective ways of achieving it. This in turn disincentivises staff, why should staff engage in a plan that their leaders can’t communicate? None of the stuff about senior management coming from a different perspective has to be an issue, but LAs are much more hierarchical than when I started and they do need to be open enough for front line staff to challenge in a non personalised way without being called into an actual or virtual room for a “little word”. Higher up the food chain senior managers create the reality of their organisations.
Senior management in the councils seem to have little clue about the social work role and very importantly the law.
HR are currently directing SW’s in unlawful directions with a. level of ignorant arrogance.
I have been driven out of my role and the law has agreed with me.
Read the case outcome here-
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66e42dfa61763848f429d69c/Ms_Elizabeth_Pitt_v_Cambridgeshire_County_Council-3311160-2023-Costs_Judgment.pdf
Worse, the Council management have agreed with me.
The case didnt make it to court so I could not defend what I contend are untruths about me. However, social workers can, and should challenge management and this case will make it easier for that to happen.
We need to be able to do the job, training needs to be directed at upskilling Social Workers role, not some extravagent edi sessions that insist everybody is nice and loved, as social workers we should all have serious questions about tbe potential Safeguarding here. We need senior management to understand the job, not be busy being ‘nice’ while ignoring the harsh reality of how we have to navigate the law and the ‘nasty’ aspects of what we have to manage daily.
I have been called some awful things in my role, my time needs to be spent working out how to improve the situation for the person I work with/for, understanding the anger, pain, shame etc. Not filling in forms saying I cannot work with somebody because they said nasty things- we need a backbone to do the job, please empower us, not stick us in the headlights.
The disconnect between front line social work and line management, is in general massive and entrenched. To overcome this and bridge the gap is not a small undertaking and will require a committed, proactive and multi faceted approach, as there are many barriers to overcome, as my colleagues above have talked about. Such as line managers fear of working with service users and families, poor communication skills, avoidance of conflict or lack of skills working with conflict, accusing people of being impolite or rude as a way of shutting down conversations or to try and control situations they feel uncomfortable with and much more.
Further guidance and clearer expectations are needed from CQC, Ofstead and Social work England and I think the pending Adult Social Care review should also make clear recommendations about this. To stop this becoming yet another tick box exercise or another review to be ignored and ensure key legalizations, including the Equalities Act 2010, and social work standards are demonstrated and evidences by all registered social workers, whether they are a manager or a frontline social worker.
I believe all managers from Team manager and below need to hold a case load, abet a small one. For the managers who do not hold a case load to fulfill a minimum number of hour’s annual of shadowing front line staff, perhaps a 100 hours if not more. That Principle social workers not only focus on practice and learning development of front line staff, but they also develop and review pathways of constructive communication, were there is feedback from line management on their actions, decision, rational and timeframes, making the process transparent and accountable. All registered social workers, including all managers, to regularly discuss and document in their respective supervisions what they did and how they practiced key aspects of the Equalities Act 2010, Care Act and Social Work Standards. For all social workers who supervise staff to have regular, good quality training on management and supervision. For all local authorities to ensure they have up to date and fit for purpose policies and guidance for menopause, anti-discrimination and Anti-racism, whistle blowing etc. Finally, for Social Work England to amend their CPD requirements to include some of the recommendations above and to spell out very clearly that all registered social workers, including managers at all levels are required to uphold and practice the social work standards. And for CQC to included the above areas as part of their standard data collection when they are conducting their assessments in Adult Social Care.
But I am very syndical as to whether line managers, local authorities and Social Work England will be self motivated and committed enough to do these themselves. Therefore I would like to suggest, that all social workers who read this and you truly care about the profession and the vital work we do, to write to Social Work England, CQC, your local MP, House of Lords and/or Baroness Louise Casey about your concerns and suggestions. Knowledge is power, but only when it is used.
Easy fix for senior managers to connect with frontline staff, go ‘back to the floor’ (TV programme from years ago) for a month, do some casework. That will give them all the knowledge they need to understand current situation/difficulties. Otherwise senior managers only hear what they want to hear and that’s staff telling them how good things are or otherwise the rest is staff ‘moaning’! It should be written into senior managers contracts, things would change rapidly, within the organisation and perhaps it would make them less rash in changing things and not listening! However I doubt any would have the guts to do it, as most I know did little frontline work and applied for senior roles because they couldn’t hack doing the frontline job!
Frontline Social Workers need to work to rule. Only the will there be respect for the 37 hour working week
Oh no, who will protect the children if we do?
Sandra
Managers will have to take on that responsibility until there are sufficient Social Workers on the front line to provide that protection that is currently lacking
Just a reflection, cynicism seems rife in social work but parody and sarcasm mostly interpreted literally. I know laughs are hard to come by in our work but still.
Front line staff frequently complain senior management don’t listen but in my experience senior management are listening they just don’t understand what they are hearing.So what do you do if someone doesn’t understand what your telling them?
What do social workers do when users of their services don’t understand what they are telling them? A: give up and curse B: repeat then repeat again C: Accept they aren’t being heard but use their skills to get heard, eventually. I have zero confidence in my managers but that doesn’t mean they are useless forever. Hope should be eternal.
Social Workers should work to rule, ie stick to the weekly hours that they are paid for. This will make managers/ councillors/government listen. The whole system is so dependent on Social Workers’ good-will working. Without such good-will it will collapse
I believe there is a huge disconnect between senior managers and frontline practitioners. As a student you learn so much about empowering and collaborative practice and anti-oppressive practice. Perhaps I expected too much but I have found local authorities to be – on the whole, and from my experience of a few – disempowering and often oppressive organisations to work for. The style of management influences the organisational culture although this can vary across different services within the same local authority.
In my local authority a wellbeing survey was carried out to explore the reasons for low staff morale and recruitment/ retention. The questions were mainly tick-box with little opportunity for meaningful, detailed responses, apparently because this would make analysis more difficult. When the poor results came back, managers seemed surprised and rather than asking staff what the specific problems were and how they could be addressed they went off and had their own meetings to discuss and decide what should be done. But how would they know if they didn’t ask and let us speak (in confidence – I am a fan of anonymous surveys because this is the only way many people feel able to speak up)?
There is such reluctance on the part of senior management to listen, truly understand and address issues raised by staff as earlier commenters have said. Local authorities are so hierarchical – so many layers of managers – and staff are not routinely encouraged or invited to give feedback and suggestions and raise issues. Recently we had a system redesign which most would agree has been a disaster – loads of extra bureaucracy and inbuilt delays. I am sure this is because it was not collaboratively designed and trialled with frontline workers but rolled out too quickly to meet a deadline.
My team manager has openly said they feel intimidated by senior managers. I don’t think any manager should feel like this. A lack of critical thinking and challenge contributes to a toxic culture and inhibits positive change. All managers should be accountable to workers and service users and we should be asked to give feedback on the performance of managers as they do on ours. The PSW role is effectively meaningless in some local authorities where they are also a senior manager and it is simply an ‘add on’. They are often not approachable and don’t want to be!
Finally, my impression is that many managers just want to get out of frontline practice because they find it too stressful. This is unacceptable – all managers should carry a caseload, even if it is very small (but still including complex cases to reflect their higher pay!). I don’t care what grade they are, if they are not working directly with service users they are not practicing social work and arguably should not be allowed to use this title. Direct work will allow them to stay in touch with the reality of social work today, to understand our roles and the challenges we face and (in an ideal world) to be better managers.