Think Ahead has raised concerns about cuts to mental health social work job numbers as it launched a campaign for the government to invest in thousands more roles.

The fast-track social work training provider said it had seen “trends of mental health social work roles disappearing in some NHS teams”, while some employers were pulling out of its programme on budgetary grounds because they could not commit to providing salaried jobs for trainees on qualification.

Under Think Ahead’s two-year programme to train people as adult mental health social workers, participants spend a qualifying year placed with an NHS or local authority employer, who then takes them on as a salaried employee in year two.

Cutbacks in mental health social work roles

The charity said that, of employers who partnered with it in 2024, 35% were unable to do this year for financial reasons, up from 20% of partners who pulled out last year for similar reasons. It said this was affecting NHS trusts more than councils.

“What we are experiencing in terms of the development of our programme is that where budgets are squeezed, non-clinical roles, like mental health social workers, seem to be first to take the hit – perhaps because they are seen as non-essential to mental health,” said Think Ahead chief executive Philippa Mariani.

Cutbacks to mental health social work numbers would mark a turnaround from the 20% growth in NHS mental health trusts seen from 2019-22, which left 3,576 whole-time equivalent (WTE) practitioners in post.

Despite the growth, this accounts for just 2% of England’s NHS mental health workforce, which numbered about 143,700 in 2023, according to think-tank the Nuffield Trust, with about twelve times as many mental health nurses (about 45,000) as social workers.

Also, the profession was not mentioned at all in the 2023 NHS workforce plan, prompting criticisms from Think Ahead and the British Association of Social Workers.

Call for 24,000 more practitioners

The plan is due to be refreshed this year and Think Ahead said it wanted to see a sevenfold rise in the number of NHS mental health social workers, to almost 28,000, over the next 10 years.

This is based on everyone with severe mental illness in England – of whom there were about 624,000 in 2024, according to an NHS estimate – having a social worker, and practitioners having a caseload of 20-25. The latter is based on a proposed limit for adults’ social workers set out in a 2022 report for Social Work Scotland.

Think Ahead said recruiting many more social workers would help tackle the social issues that were associated with mental ill-health, including those related to housing, poverty, employment, relationships and social connections.

Mariani said that, besides working in community mental health teams, social workers could be used more in inpatient settings, to support people’s recovery and discharge.

Think Ahead’s ambition would involve the recruitment of a net additional 2,400 social workers annually over the next decade, which the charity said would cost £130m in year one, including salary, oncosts and recruitment.

Social workers ‘a vital lifeline’ for tackling inequalities

Its Social Work Matters campaign was backed by charity the Centre for Mental Health, whose chief executive, Andy Bell, said social workers were “a vital lifeline” for tackling the inequalities faced by people with severe mental illness, including in relation to income, employment and life expectancy.

The NHS Confederation, which represents healthcare bodies, was also supportive, with its mental health director, Rebecca Gray, saying: “We welcome Think Ahead’s call to invest significantly more in mental health social workers in the NHS.

“They play a crucial role as part of multidisciplinary mental health teams – for example, in supporting patients who are leaving hospital, to finding suitable accommodation and working with parents who have mental health issues. This is so important as parental mental health is a significant risk factor for child mental health.”

Call for Casey Commission to address mental health social work

She said the Confederation hoped that Baroness Casey’s government-appointed commission on adult social care, due to start work shortly, “will present an opportunity to properly address the role and contribution of mental health social workers”.

In response to Think Ahead’s campaign, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Mental health social workers provide an invaluable service, and the workforce is critical to our reforms.

“We will publish a refreshed long-term workforce plan that ensures we have the right people, including mental health staff, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need when they need it.”

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
The government has budgeted for a 2.8% rise in NHS salaries in England next year.

The money would cover both the headline pay rise for staff on Agenda for Change (AfC) contracts – including social workers and social care staff employed by NHS trusts – and planned changes to the AfC pay structure.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced the plan in its submission to the independent NHS Pay Review Body (NHSPRB).

Based on the DHSC’s evidence and that of the Welsh Government, Northern Ireland Executive, NHS employers, trade unions and others, the NHSPRB will make recommendations for AfC staff in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for 2025-26.

It will then be up to the three governments to accept or amend these in relation to their countries’ staff.

5.5% rise this year for NHS staff

Shortly after taking power in July 2024, the Labour government accepted the NHSPRB’s recommendations of a 5.5% rise for AfC staff in relation to workers England in 2024-25.

The Welsh Government subsequently followed suit in relation to staff in Wales.

This meant that NHS social workers in England and Wales were given a larger pay rise this year than counterparts in most local authorities, who received increases of 3-4%.

Council concerns over social work pay differences

This prompted concerns from the Local Government Association (LGA) that councils were losing ground to the NHS in terms of social worker pay competitiveness.

However, in Northern Ireland, where statutory social workers generally are employed by the NHS, no deal has been done because the region’s Department of Health says it cannot afford to deliver the NHSPRB’s recommendations.

The DHSC’s submission to the review body would, if implemented, entail a headline salary rise for NHS staff of less than 2.8% in 2025-26.

The remaining budget would be spent on amending the AfC pay structure, including to tackle the relatively small differences between some pay bands, which the NHSPRB has said creates disincentives for staff to seek promotion.

Prospect of real-terms pay cut

With the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicting an average rate of inflation of 2.6%, this would mean that many staff would likely see a real-terms pay cut or freeze.

In justifying its submission, the DHSC said it faced an “extremely challenging fiscal position”, in which the AfC pay rise would need to be considered alongside other priorities.

While NHS England’s budget is due to rise from £182.8bn this year to £193bn in 2025-26, a cash increase of 5.6%, the DHSC said the health service needed to boost productivity and efficiency to achieve the government’s targets around cutting waiting times.

Should the NHSPRB recommend a higher increase than that budgeted for by the department, the DHSC said it would need to consider “difficult trade-offs” in relation to NHS budgets.

‘Not what NHS workers wanted to hear’

The proposals were criticised by UNISON, whose head of health, Helga Pile, said they were “not what NHS workers wanted to hear”.

“Staff are crucial in turning around the fortunes of the NHS,” she added. “Improving performance is a key government pledge, but the pay rise proposed is barely above the cost of living.”

The government should invest in mental health social work to meet its key objectives for the NHS, Think Ahead has said.

Recruiting more social workers will help mental health services move from “hospital to the community” and “from sickness to prevention”, two of three overarching goals set by Labour for the NHS, the training provider claimed.

However, the profession is not being prioritised by the health service, with practitioners facing “unacceptably high caseloads”, it warned.

Profession not mentioned in workforce plan

And despite about 3,600 full-time equivalent mental health social workers working in the NHS as of 2022, the profession was not mentioned once in last year’s NHS long-term workforce plan, published under the Conservatives.

Think Ahead, which runs a fast-track course to train people as mental health social workers, made the claims in a submission to a government consultation designed to shape the forthcoming 10-year plan for the NHS.

It said supporting mental health recovery involved addressing the social challenges people faced – such as housing, poverty or relationship issues – alongside clinical care, with social workers being ideally placed to carry out this role.

Lack of investment in mental health social work

However, this was being stymied by a lack of investment in the workforce that left practitioners “overstretched” and carrying “unacceptably high caseloads”.

As a result, they were only able to respond to people in crisis and were unable to carry out the relationship-based practice needed to help them navigate complex challenges in their lives, build independence and overcome barriers to treatment.

Though the number of mental health social workers in the NHS grew by 20% from 2019-22, Think Ahead said some trusts saw the profession as a “nice to have”, rather than critical to service delivery.

Councils withdrawing social workers from joint teams

And over the past several years, several councils have withdrawn social workers from integrated NHS-based teams by dissolving partnership agreements under section 75 of the NHS Act 2006.

Think Ahead pointed to a recent report on out of area placements by the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, which cited this issue and said that placing social workers in integrated mental health teams could speed up hospital discharge.

“When leaving hospital, service users may have lost their homes, their jobs, relationships may have suffered, they may even be in a new area of the country,” said Think Ahead. “Embedding social work within post-hospital care means that these social issues can be improved, tackling isolation, and reducing chance of re-admission.”

The government is planning to refresh the NHS workforce plan next year, and Think Ahead said this should set targets to grow the number of mental health social workers, which should be adopted by integrated care boards.

The Change NHS consultation runs until spring 2025.

The “dire state of social care” is among the reasons that the NHS is in a “critical condition”, a government adviser has warned, in a report designed to provide a blueprint for a 10-year plan for the health service.

In a damning report commissioned by health and social care secretary Wes Streeting, Lord (Ara) Darzi said “austerity and a starvation of investment” during the 2010s, “confusion” and “fragmentation” caused by the 2012 reorganisation of the service and Covid had left the NHS in a state of “disrepair”.

Darzi – a surgeon and former Labour minister who is now politically unaffiliated – said “far too many people are waiting for too long and in too many clinical areas, quality of care has gone backwards”.

Hospitals consuming more of NHS budget

Despite successive governments vowing to shift care out of hospitals into the community, the reverse had happened, with the share of NHS budgets going on hospital care rising from 47% to 58% from 2006-22.

Too many people ended up in hospital because of significant underinvestment in community health services, while there had been a slowdown in patient flow through hospitals because of falling productivity.

In addition, 13% of hospital beds were taken up by people who were fit for discharge but were waiting for social care or other services to be put in place.

Social care in ‘dire state’

Though social care was outside Darzi’s investigation into the problems facing the NHS, he said it was “impossible to understand what has been happening in the NHS without
understanding what has happened to social care”, which he said was in a “dire state”.

Real-terms spending by councils on adult social care was only marginally higher in 2019-20 than 2010-11, after taking account of inflation, due to government cuts to local authority budgets.

“The result is that publicly funded social care is provided for fewer and fewer people while the demand for it has risen, largely as the result of an ageing population,” said Darzi.

Reductions in social care leaving people ‘stuck in acute wards’

According to official figures, the number of people who received long-term care fell from 872,520 in 2015-16 to 817,815 in 2021-22, though this figure subsequently rose to 835,335 in 2022-23.

“The impact on the NHS has been more people staying in hospital for longer than their medical needs require them to be there,” Darzi added.

“This means older people have been stuck in acute hospital wards rather than in facilities better suited to their needs.”

Call to rebalance NHS towards community

Darzi did not make any recommendations regarding social care – in line with his remit – but, among his recommendations, was rebalancing NHS finances to shift care out of hospitals into the community.

“General practice, mental health and community services will need to expand and adapt to the needs of those with long-term conditions whose prevalence is growing rapidly as the population age.

“Financial flows must lock-in this change irreversibly or it will not happen.”

This should be underpinned by a “neighbourhood NHS”, consisting of “new multidisciplinary models of care that bring together primary, community and mental health services”.

10-year plan for NHS

Keir Starmer has already outlined shifting care out of hospitals as one of Labour’s chief ambitions for the health service, along with investing in prevention and technology.

In a speech responding to the Darzi report on Thursday (12 September), the prime minister fleshed out Labour’s plan for a 10-year strategy for the NHS.

On shifting care out of hospital, he said: “That means more tests, scans, healthcare offered on high streets and town centres, improved GP access, bringing back the family doctor, offering digital consultations for those who want them.

“And more patients can be safely looked after in their own homes, where we can deal with problems early before people are off work sick and before they need to go to hospital.

And we’ve got to make good on the integration of health and social care, so we can discharge those 28 hospitals worth of patients, saving money, reducing the strain on our NHS and giving people better treatment.”

Social care ‘must be at heart of NHS reform’

In response to the Darzi review, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said social care needed to be a core part of NHS reform.

Melanie Williams, ADASS president, 2024-25

“We support Lord Darzi’s recommendation to shift focus and funding from hospitals, towards community and mental health services,” said ADASS president Melanie Williams.

“But social care must be at the heart of any plans to create a ‘neighbourhood NHS’, otherwise we’re at risk of failing to deliver this once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform health and social care.

“A strong, well-funded social care system is key to keeping people independent at home, healthy and out of hospital.”

‘Report shows need for home care investment’

The Homecare Association, which represents domiciliary care providers, said the report illustrated the need to invest in the sector.

“Home care plays a key role in preventing hospital admissions and readmissions, and reducing delayed discharges,” said chief executive Jane Townson.

“With 13% of hospital beds occupied by people waiting for social care, it’s clear that investing in our sector can contribute directly to reducing waiting lists for NHS treatment.”

Criticism of exclusion of NHS from Darzi remit

The Independent Care Group, which represents private and voluntary sector care providers, welcomed Darzi’s acknowledgement of the “crisis in social care”, but heavily criticised the fact that this was not included in his remit.

“That is a serious omission and makes something of a nonsense of the whole process,” said its chair, Mike Padgham.

“Wes Streeting has identified cutting waiting lists as his top priority and includes more care in the community and more preventative care, as levers towards achieving that.

“That means tackling the crisis in social care so that it can provide that community care and that preventative care, keep people out of hospital and help cut waiting lists.”

NHS-employed social workers in England are to receive a 5.5% pay rise in 2024-25, after the government accepted recommendations from the sector’s independent pay review body.

The decision means that practitioners in the service are currently on course to receive a better uplift than council-employed social workers in England and Wales.

The latter have been offered increases of £1,290, £1,491 or £1,575 (based on location), or 2.5%, depending on which is greater, which is worth 3-4% for social workers. The offer has prompted UNISON to ballot members on taking industrial action and Unite to reject the proposal, though the GMB has accepted it.

The 5.5% for staff on NHS Agenda for Change contracts in England is significantly above the current rate of inflation, which was 2% in the year to June 2024, according to the government’s preferred consumer prices index (CPI) measure.

‘Investment in NHS staff is imperative’

In its report to ministers, the NHS Pay Review Body said that “investment in NHS staff is imperative to meet the needs of patients, reduce elective waiting lists and grow the NHS workforce”.

It said that, though inflation had fallen from a high of 10% in March 2023, pay settlements in the wider economy had been around 5-6% this year.

In her statement yesterday on Labour’s fiscal inheritance from the Conservatives, chancellor Rachel Reeves revealed that she had accepted the review body’s recommendation of a 5.5% rise.

In a report accompanying Reeves’s statement, the government said it had accepted these and recommendations from its other public sector pay review bodies in the light of “the benefits from improved recruitment, retention and motivation of public sector workers, on the back of public sector pay having fallen relative to the private sector in recent years”.

It also pointed to the costs of industrial action arising from a more modest settlement.

Pay rise ‘was the right thing to do’

In response to the deal, UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said: “An above inflation rise was the right thing to do after many years of NHS wages lagging behind increasing prices.”

“This year’s pay rise cannot be a one-off. It’ll take much more than this boost to get the NHS into a better place.”

The Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive are yet to confirm whether they will accept the NHS review body’s recommendations for their staff, including social workers.

Growing numbers of NHS social workers

Most NHS-employed social workers work for mental health trusts, with the number of these practitioners having grown by 20% from 2019-22. 

As of 31 March 2022, the 58 mental health trusts had 3,576 whole-time equivalent (WTE) social workers in post, according to a census of the workforce carried out by NHS England.

Last year, NHS staff received a 5% pay rise, a similar settlement to their counterparts in local government, though in addition, they were given two one-off payments by the government, which were designed to help resolve a protracted series of strikes by unions.

Adult social care staff are carrying out tasks previously undertaken by the NHS in most areas, without compensatory funding, council heads have reported.

Seventy per cent of directors said this was the case, in response to an Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) survey carried out in September and October of this year.

ADASS described the finding as “startling”.

‘People being charged for previously free care’

“Not only does this add to councils’ financial pressures, it reduces the time that frontline social care staff have to meet people’s essential social care needs and means that some people are being charged for care that would have previously been free at the point of delivery because it was provided by the NHS,” the association said, in its report on the survey.

The pressures on councils were laid bare in other survey results, with directors reporting rising waiting lists for assessments and reviews since the spring and predicting that they would overspend their budgets by 3.5% in 2023-24, despite significant increases in funding this year.

ADASS did not ask directors for details about specific NHS tasks that had been passed on to councils.

Drop in eligibility for continuing healthcare

But the finding comes amid a drop in the rate of people found to be eligible for NHS continuing healthcare (CHC), under which the health service fully funds social care for people whose need for it arises primarily from a health condition.

While a quarter of those assessed for CHC through the standard route were found to be eligible in January to March 2021, this had dropped to a fifth by July to September of this year, according to NHS England data.

There had also been a fall, over the same period, in the proportion of people per quarter found to be eligible following the resolution of disputes between the NHS and councils, from 25% to 18%.

There are also concerns that councils are taking on responsibilities that should fall to the NHS, because of the drive to discharge people from hospital as quickly as possible, which means people are leaving wards with greater needs than previously.

Hospital discharge ‘a big area of risk’

In its last survey, conducted in the spring, ADASS found that 76% of directors had reported that the average size of care packages for people leaving hospital had increased in the preceding 12 months.

Delivering a legal learning seminar at last month’s Community Care Live, independent specialist CHC consultant Morag Duff said: “Levels of acuity at hospital discharge are getting higher but there’s no corresponding transfer of NHS funding for these people.

“That’s a big area of financial risk for these local authorities as well as the larger risk of local authorities unthinkingly picking up people with health needs.”

Legal limit on councils’ meeting health needs

As set out in the CHC national framework, a health need is “one related to the treatment, control, management or prevention of a disease, illness, injury or disability, and the care or aftercare of a person with these needs”.

Duff pointed out that, under section 22 of the Care Act 2014, councils may only meet health needs where doing so was “incidental or ancillary” to meeting a social care need and the relevant service was of a nature that a local authority could be expected to provide.

In relation to hospital discharge, she said: “There are a lot of local authorities paying for recovery or rehabilitation services. Then it’s not about reablement, but things that are the NHS’s responsibility, not local authority responsibility.”

Lack of intermediate care

Directors identified a lack of NHS provision, both at the point of discharge and to prevent admissions, in response to the ADASS autumn survey.

Nearly two-thirds of directors (63%) did not feel that ‘step up’ intermediate care, which supports admissions avoidance, was widely available. Though three-quarters reported that ‘step down’ intermediate care was widely available at discharge, the association said it was concerning that about a quarter did not.

On the back of the results, ADASS called for investment in prevention, crisis resolution and recovery services, including intermediate care, to help people stay as independent and health as possible for as long as possible.

NHS leaders’ concern about service shift

The NHS Confederation, which represents health leaders, said it was “concerning that social care directors are reporting that their staff are picking up more and more work that the NHS would once have done”

Rory Deighton, director of the confederation’s acute network, added: “But with pressures on the NHS and levels of resourcing as they are, this is perhaps somewhat unsurprising and health leaders would agree with social care directors that more availability of NHS led community based intermediate care would be beneficial all-round.”

He added: “A preventative approach in health and social care can help support people to live as healthily as possible, both mentally and physically and as a result reduce demand on the NHS. But as social care directors report, at present there is only limited availability of preventative services, and the government must do more to help both social care and the NHS.”

Social work bodies have voiced their disappointment at the absence of any references to the profession in the health service’s long-term workforce plan, issued by NHS England last month.

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) England criticised the omission in the context of social workers being “a crucial component of the healthcare system”, a stance then backed by Think Ahead, the fast-track training provider for mental health practitioners.

The long-awaited strategy lists student training targets for 36 separate roles, in order to grow the workforce to address the current 112,000 NHS vacancies and meet the needs of an ageing population.

Besides doctors, nurses, pharmacists and dentists, the roles include occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, psychologists, child and adolescent psychotherapists and peer support workers.

Within mental health – where most NHS social workers are employed – the plan calls for increasing numbers of other roles, including mental health and wellbeing practitioners, who work with people with severe illnesses.

Social work excluded from NHS plan

However, despite mental health trusts having grown their social work workforces by 20%  on the back of NHS targets set in 2019, there were no references to ‘social work’ or ‘social workers’ in the 151-page workforce plan.

Also, while NHS England engaged with 33 royal colleges or professional bodies and seven professional regulators, representing over 30 separate professions, while drawing up the strategy, it did not list BASW or Social Work England among them.

BASW England said social work’s exclusion came despite it undertaking “extensive engagement” with its members to inform its contribution to a call for evidence in 2021 on long-term workforce planning by NHS workforce development body Health Education England (now part of NHS England).

BASW’s ‘deep disappointment’

“It is with deep disappointment that, despite extensive engagement, we note the glaring omission of any mention of social work in the NHS Long Term Plan which constitutes the final report,” said BASW England.

“This omission perpetuates the disheartening sense that social work is simply not considered when it comes to discussions and planning in health and social care services. As a crucial component of the healthcare system, social work should be recognised and valued for the significant contributions it makes towards holistic patient care and the overall well-being of individuals and communities.”

Think Ahead – many of whose trainees go on to work in the NHS as mental health social workers – supported BASW’s stance in a thread on Twitter.

#MentalHealthSocialWorkers are an integral part of the #NHSWorkforce, and it is crucial that they are both recognised and invested in for the support they provide to people living with mental health needs.

— Think Ahead (@ThinkAheadMH) July 19, 2023

There are several references to social care within the workforce plan, stressing the need to tackle its severe workforce problems and its interdependency with the NHS.

£250m to develop care workforce

In response to the concerns around social work’s omission from the plan, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the social care workforce was “at the centre” of Next steps to put people at the heart of care, the policy paper issued in April setting out its adults’ services agenda.

“This includes £250m for staff to develop their skills through relevant training and progress within their careers with the introduction of the care workforce pathway,” a DHSC spokesperson said.

However, the £250m, available up to 2025, is half the £500m the DHSC originally committed to developing the workforce over this period, which has prompted severe criticism from social care bodies.

In response to this, the DHSC has pointed out that it is yet to allocate £600m in adult social care reform funding up to 2025, some of which may go on the workforce.

The DHSC spokesperson added: “We are also making available £15m for 2023-24 to help local areas establish support arrangements for ethical international recruitment in adult social care.”

By Clare Jerrom and Mithran Samuel

Social Work Recap is a weekly series where we present key news, events, conversations, tweets and campaigns around social work from the preceding week.

From criticism of the lack of a social care workforce plan to accompany this week’s NHS strategy, concerns over the state of child protection and an obituary for a pioneering social worker to the government ditching its human rights reforms, here’s our week in social work:

Lack of social care workforce plan ‘a missed opportunity’

Photo: Zerbor/Adobe Stock

The release this week of the NHS’s first comprehensive workforce plan in its 75-year history has sparked criticism over the lack of a similar strategy for social care.

While welcoming the NHS England workforce plan, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services warned that adult social care had “an equally pressing staffing crisis”, with vacancies – at 165,000 as of March 2022 – that were higher than in the health service.

Think-tank the Nuffield Trust said it was a “missed opportunity that we see no social care workforce plan promised alongside this”.

“The shortages and chronic staff turnover are even more damaging than in the NHS, and the two sectors share crucial staff groups like nurses, with a constant risk of health services sucking vital workers from fragile care providers,” added trust senior fellow Dr Billy Palmer.

The NHS plan acknowledged that its success was dependent on increasing the capacity of social care and said that expansion of the health workforce should not come at the expense of social care.

BASW welcomes ditching of Human Rights Act overhaul

Photo: nito

The British Association of Social Workers has welcomed the government’s decision to ditch its planned replacement of the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights.

Justice secretary Alex Chalk told the House of Commons this week the government would not be proceeding with the reform, championed by his predecessor, Dominic Raab.

The Bill of Rights would not have removed the UK from the ambit of the European Convention of Human Rights. However, it would have prevented the courts from interpreting the ECHR in a way that imposed new obligations on the state to prevent interference with people’s rights.

Previous such ‘positive obligations’, such as the recognition of ‘private’ deprivations of liberty in people’s homes, have had a major impact on social work practice, wrote Community Care Inform legal editor Tim Spencer-Lane in a 2022 piece on the proposed bill.

“This is a welcome move by the UK Government to drop a bill which would have undermined universal protections for human rights,” said the chair of BASW’s policy, ethics and human rights committee, Martin Sexton.

Social workers ‘firefighting’ with ‘massive caseloads’ – NSPCC chief

NSPCC chief executive Sir Peter Wanless

Social workers are “firefighting” under the weight of “massive caseloads”, undermining their ability to support children and families in need.

That was among the warnings from NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless in a speech that claimed that a “lack of coherent national leadership” risked leaving the child protection system unable to cope with the cost-of-living crisis.

Wanless told the NSPCC’s ‘How Safe’ conference this week that the crisis was “putting intolerable pressure on families”, but said that “existing social structures and safety nets [were] stretched beyond breaking point”.

He added that the government’s response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care Review and the inquiry into the deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, which includes plans to test a new approach to family help and child protection, was inadequate.

Wanless said these reforms needed to be rolled out more quickly than planned, adding: “Social workers absolutely must be given the tools and resources they need to do the job they want to do for families and children in need and operate within a joined up and functioning system.”

Plan to improve autism and learning disability training

Image: Artur/Adobe Stock

The government has launched a consultation on proposed standards for health and social care providers in training staff to work with autistic people and people with learning disabilities.

The proposed Oliver McGowan code of practice outlines how Care Quality Commission-registered providers can meet the new legislative requirement to ensure staff receive appropriate training on learning disabilities and autism.

Oliver McGowan was a young autistic teenager with a mild learning disability, who died in 2016 after having a severe reaction to medication given to him against his and his family’s strong wishes.

Oliver’s parents, Paula and Tom McGowan, have campaigned for better training for health and care staff to improve understanding of the needs of people with a learning disability or autistic people.

The consultation is open until 19 September.

Melanie Phillips: obituary

Photo: castenoid/Adobe Stock

Pioneering social worker Melanie Phillips, who fought to challenge the racist stereotypes of black and Asian children and families that informed practice, has died aged 64 from cancer.

An obituary in The Guardian said Melanie trained in the 1980s and practised as a generic social worker in Walthamstow, London, before joining a specialist team in neighbouring Newham, where she fought to implement change for  families from ethnic minorities.

The obituary highlighted that in contributions to publications such as The Child Protection Handbook (1995) and The Child’s World (2009), Melanie wrote about the persistence of the view that Caribbean mothers were aggressive and neglectful, and that Asian mothers were passive and unable to protect their children. She found that colleagues explained such assertions on the basis of culture without any acknowledgement of racism.

Melanie then moved into training and implementing best practice, locally and nationally, including as part of the social work improvement team in Rotherham that followed the 2013 inquiry into child sexual exploitation.

More recently, she worked on a project for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

Tweet of the week: ‘We should be kinder to ourselves’

For once trying to celebrate the wins, I always doubt myself and never focus on things that go well. We should be kinder to ourselves! #Neurodiversity #socialwork #inclusion@BASW_UK @SWU_UK @SocWorkToday @CommunityCare @skillsforcare @SCIE_socialcare pic.twitter.com/Da5ZXDeucl

— Neurodivergent Social Workers Group (@ND_SWgroup) June 22, 2023

Social worker and chair of BASW’s Neurodivergent Social Workers Group Deb Solomon highlighted the importance of challenging self-doubt after receiving praise for some training she had delivered.

A proposed pay deal for NHS social workers in England will go through after unions representing the majority of members gave it their backing.

The government will now implement the deal, which amounts to a 5% rise in pay for this year, backdated to April 2023, in addition to two one-off payments for 2022-23.

UNISON, the biggest NHS union and one which supported the deal, urged the government to ensure the money was paid into practitioners’ June salaries. The Department of Health and Social Care said it planned to pay the money this summer.

Protracted strikes

The settlement follows a protracted dispute that has involved several strikes by nurses and ambulance workers. However, the deal does not carry the support of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which represents most nurses, and Unite, whose members include ambulance staff, still being in dispute with the government.

Health and social care secretary Steve Barclay (credit: HM Government)

Health and social care secretary Steve Barclay said he hoped their members would “recognise this as a fair outcome that carries the support of their colleagues and decide it is time to bring industrial action to an end”.

Despite the union backing the deal, UNISON head of health Sara Gorton criticised the government’s handling of the dispute.

“Proper pay talks last autumn could have stopped health workers missing out on money they could ill afford to lose,” she said. “The NHS and patients would also have been spared months of disruption.

“This pay deal must be the start of something new in the NHS. There cannot be a repeat of the past few months. Everyone who cares about the NHS deserves better.”

Deal on cards in Wales

Despite the Agenda for Change 2022-23 pay deal that sparked the dispute covering England, Wales and Northern Ireland, this deal only applies in England.

However, a settlement may also be on the cards in Wales, where a majority of unions are recommending their members accept a revised settlement for NHS staff, including social workers, from ministers.

This involves an additional 3% backdated rise for 2022-23, above the £1,400 increase already provided, with half of the 3% being consolidated into staff salaries.

As in England, staff would receive a 5% rise in 2023-24 should union members back the deal in consultative ballots that are currently taking place.

No improved offer for Northern Ireland social workers

The news is less positive in Northern Ireland, where most statutory social workers are employed by NHS health and care trusts. Not only has there not been an improved pay offer for staff, but its health budget will be flat from 2022-23 to 2023-24, in cash terms.

Its Department of Health said last week that “therefore makes no allowance for the increasing costs of running services and the rising demand for care across the population”.

“Consequently, 2023-24 will inevitably involve significant financial pressures across health and social care, with a material impact on service provision.”

Story corrected 4 April 2023

NHS social workers are set for a pay rise after the government and unions settled a protracted dispute that has seen multiple strikes by nurses and ambulance staff.

Under the deal – which will now be put to union members – staff on Agenda for Change contracts in England* would receive two one-off payments for the 2022-23 year and a 5% rise in 2023-24.

Unions including UNISON, which represents an estimated 40,000 social workers across all sectors in the UK, have recommended their members accept.

‘A fair pay rise’

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it could “guarantee that there will be no impact on frontline services or the quality of care that patients receive as a result of this pay offer”.

Health and social care secretary Steve Barclay said: “This offer will give nurses, paramedics, physiotherapists and other non-medical staff a fair pay rise while protecting our commitment to halve inflation.”

For UNISON, head of health Sara Gorton said: “If accepted, the offer would boost pay significantly this year and mean a wage increase next year that’s more than the government had budgeted for.

“This is better than having to wait many more months for the NHS pay review body to make its recommendation. UNISON will now be putting this offer to the hundreds of thousands of health members in the union in the next few weeks, recommending acceptance.”

*The story originally said that the improved offer applied to staff in Wales and Northern Ireland on Agenda for Change terms, but it is only for those working in England. We apologise for the error.