A recent survey by Social Work England found that, of 2,120 respondents, 75% disagreed that social workers were valued by society.

This is despite previous research for the regulator finding that 74% of around 3,000 adults in England believed social workers wanted the best for people. Of those, 62% felt social workers also made a big difference in people’s lives.

So how accurate is the profession’s view of its public image?

A Community Care poll with close to 800 responses found that most practitioners believed that the majority social work opinion was accurate and the profession really was unvalued by society.

Only 4% said this was not true.

Media portrayals ‘biggest contributor to profession’s image’

This section on Social Work England’s survey also attracted the most free-text responses – 1,462 – the overwhelming majority (88%) of which were negative.

Most respondents also said that the main reason behind society’s low opinion of social work was media portrayals of the profession.

“I think that people grossly misunderstand what social workers do,” said one respondent. 

“Social work definitely has an image problem, which makes our already difficult job much harder. I do blame media representations for this. I have never seen a remotely accurate portrayal of social workers in the media.”

Last year, Social Work England launched a campaign urging TV and film producers to ‘change the script’ on how they depict the profession on the screen.

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
This article is part of a series of profiles of key figures who have shaped social work over the past five decades, to mark Community Care’s 50th anniversary. Previous interviewees include Brid Featherstone, David Howe, June Thoburn, Eileen Munro and Herbert Laming.

Dame Moira Gibb’s calling to leadership was evident even when she vehemently resisted the step-up to management.

Just three years after qualifying, she walked out alongside her colleagues in Newcastle protesting the pressure to move into management – and ended up a leading figure in the strike.

It was one of the longest organised strikes in social work history. From August 1978 to May 1979, over 2,500 social workers in 15 local authorities walked out over staff turnover, pay, and a push for practitioners to take on managerial roles due to vacancies.

“We thought we were in the right,” says Gibb now.

“We were campaigning about the ability to stay in practice and not have to move into management to gain a higher salary. How do you not have the front line served by your least experienced people?”

Gibb was selected to give a speech on the first rally, her candour and passion quickly ‘catapulting’ her to being a spokesperson for the strike.

“I ended up going around to other councils making speeches about why they should pursue the same approach.”

Still, despite cherishing memories of solidarity and camaraderie from that time, Gibb calls striking “terrible” for social work.

“It felt very bad to be walking away from your clients. Some people contacted them and tried to support them, but it’s a terrible waste of resources and, in social work, we ought to be able to negotiate and understand the perspectives of both sides.”

Listening to frontline staff

At the root of the strike, she says, was a disconnect between management and frontline staff that she has tried to address throughout her career – both as director of social services at Kensington and Chelsea from 1990 to 2003 and later as chair of the 2009 Social Work Task Force.

As a director, she tailored her service based on feedback from frontline staff and those who used social services, helping make Kensington and Chelsea one of the top-rated social services authorities in the country according to inspectors.

Her words are layered thick with pride as she talks of that time.

“They said we were one of two best in the country,” says Gibb.

“And it was simple things, like people not having to give their details three times because they met three different practitioners, approving new services that made sense to young people, and talking to them before making decisions that would affect them. But also listening as an organisation to design the service, instead of relying on the frontline [to do that].”

Senior managers – Gibb included – were also required to spend at least two weeks every year working with cases to stay connected to the profession and their staff.

“How do we know what is needed if there is no touch with the frontline and the clients?”

Even today, when looking at the future of social work, the first thing that springs to Gibb’s mind is the relationship between management and their 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.”

Forming the Social Work Task Force

Pictured: Moira Gibb

Even after becoming distanced from social work, after being appointed chief executive of Camden council in 2003, Gibb remained passionate about frontline practice.

That passion led her to chair the Social Work Task Force in 2009.

In December 2008, in the midst of the media storm that marked the Peter Connelly (Baby P) case, then children’s secretary Ed Balls fired Haringey’s director of children’s services, Sharon Shoesmith, on live television.

The same month, Gibb received a phone call from Balls’ office to form the taskforce.

It was to be a group of 18  experts who would review frontline practice in England and help improve recruitment, training and the overall quality and status of social work.

“My theory was [Balls] thought he’d gone too far in his response with Sharon and wanted to demonstrate that he was a friend of social work,” says Gibb.

‘We wanted to reinforce a sense of professional identity’

When they went around England talking to social workers, what they found, says Gibb, was struggling departments over-relying on frontline practitioners to resolve their running issues.

“They were not understanding the consequences of what they were asking practitioners to do,” she says. “Practitioners thought what they were doing was social work, but they were also doing bits of welfare, bits of what the department needed from them – we needed to reinforce a sense of professional task and identity. There seemed to be no space for relationships.

“We wanted practitioners to feel they could say, ‘You can’t ask me to do that because it would be against my professional standards’.”

Their final report, published in November 2009, found that people supported by social workers were “not getting the consistently high quality of service they deserve” because of weaknesses in recruitment, retention, resourcing, training and leadership.

It also identified a dangerously poor public understanding of the profession.

The taskforce presented 15 recommendations, some of which remain in place today, including: increased entry standards for social work degrees, the assessed and supported year in employment (ASYE) to improve early career support, and the standards for employers of social workers in England, to enhance organisations’ support for their staff.

Unfortunately, similarly to Eileen Munro and Lord Laming’s reviews on child protection in the same period, the taskforce’s recommendations came at a time of change for England. Within a year, a new government came into office and implemented a programme of public sector austerity.

‘Our last recommendation was to have a reform board to coordinate the changes so they didn’t have to be done all at once. Then the Coalition came. They supported the work for a year, but then took away the funding and closed down the board,” says Gibb.

“I still think, if implemented in full, the recommendations would have made a big difference.”

Munro echoed this sentiment in an interview on her 2010-11 review earlier this year.

The College of Social Work

Gibb calls the Baby P case one of social work’s ‘low points’ – a time when practitioners were hounded by the media with no voice to defend themselves.

The taskforce’s solution was the College of Social Work, a professional body that would be a strong, social work-led voice in public debate and policy development, and raise standards for the profession.

“We looked at what other professions did and thought social workers needed something to give them a sense of identity that wasn’t defined by their employer. That’s what makes a profession, we thought,” says Gibb.

“Managers are very important and can make a big difference, but they shouldn’t be able to call all the shots about what’s quality social work. The standards for lawyers aren’t set by the government. They have input themselves into what is appropriate.”

The College was established in 2012, but closed down in 2015 when the government pulled its funding after it failed to become financially independent due to a shortage of fee-paying members.

“It ran out of steam,” says Gibb. “It didn’t have the traction I would have liked it to. But it had a positive impact on the morale of social workers, I would claim that.

“A sense of, yes, somebody is speaking about the profession in positive terms, and not just about the failures.”

‘Telling social work’s story’

Gibb hasn’t worked for or within the sector in a while, but – in her own words – her love for it hasn’t faded.

“I think my passion for the frontline and for social workers to tell their story better are two things that could go on my tombstone,” she jokes.

Her taskforce pushed for improving the public understanding of the profession by fostering relationships between social workers and local media, establishing clear protocols for managing breaking stories involving social work, and maintaining a repository of success stories to showcase good practice.

As part of that, Gibb invited The Sun editor Deidre Sanders to be among the 18 experts comprising the team, which included social work leaders and academics.

Her choice was regarded as polarising following The Sun’s vitriol against the social workers involved in the Baby P case. But she was determined to tell practitioners’ stories to the outlets that were, she says, read by and representing the average citizen.

She describes Sanders as “a great supporter”, one who accepted criticism when it came and defended it when she thought it was right.

Opening social work’s doors to the media

There is a lot to be said – and feared – about social care services opening their doors to the media. Trauma and history lie heavy between the two, even when not accounting for the profession’s innately sensitive and private nature.

But Gibb is a firm believer in the value exposure can bring to the sector.

“We want people to say they want to become social workers so we’ve got talent to recruit from, we want people to seek intervention from social services at the right time, and government to give resources to something that matters to their citizens,” she says.

“But if the citizens never think about it, they’re not going to say that’s a good idea. Media exposure cannot keep being at the bottom of the pile.”

Her decades of experience have taught her that when local and national reporters are invited in, they’re often left impressed with “how different it was from what they thought and from how it is portrayed”.

“We should be braver,” she reaffirms.

She praises Coventry council’s 2023 documentary with Channel 4, Kids, about six young people about to leave care, as a successful example of social care services opening their doors to the cameras.

The feature led to the local authority recruiting six experienced practitioners shortly after the third episode aired.

“Lots of local authorities genuinely say, well, somebody else can do it because we were so small or because this and that,” says Gibb.

“Social workers have to be willing to expose themselves, to feel confident enough in their professional practice to be observed. It could make a world of a difference.”

This article is part of a series of profiles of key figures who have shaped social work over the past five decades, to mark Community Care’s 50th anniversary. Previous interviewees include Brid Featherstone, David Howe, June Thoburn, Eileen Munro and Herbert Laming.

Few can boast a long career in social work these days.

Ray Jones, emeritus professor of social work at Kingston University, is one of the rare ones with more than 50 years of experience.

Since he qualified in 1972, he has seen the sector through many changes while wearing different hats: social worker, academic, director of social services, independent reviewer and, notably, the unofficial social work spokesperson on the Peter Connelly (Baby P) case.

He began his career at a time when, on the back of the 1968 Seebohm report, pre-existing welfare, children’s and mental health services had just been merged into unified social services departments in local authorities.

From generic social work to ‘fragmentation’

Jones, like other practitioners, became a ‘generic social worker’, handling a caseload across all ages and needs – a time he recalls wistfully, and one he wishes we’d return to.

“The reality we have now […] is services that are specialised, fragmented, segregated and separate,” he tells me.

“In 1972, we knew what was going on in the community. We weren’t handing over cases between workers when different needs arose. We stuck with people and worked within their communities with other professionals  – schools, GPs, health visitors, district nurses, police officers. I feel we’ve lost that to some extent now by the fragmentation.”

As Jones recounted in a separate article for Community Care’s 50^th anniversary, the splitting apart of adults’ and children’s services started in the 1980s, culminating in the creation of two departments, in England, through the Children Act 2004.

‘We lose trust with too many handovers’

Ray Jones in the 1970s as a newly qualified social worker

However, that fragmentation of services extends beyond this split to the way children’s services, in particular, is organised, he says

Today, children can be passed between referral and assessment, child in need, child protection,  children in care, adoption and leaving care teams.

It is something he observed in his 2023 review of Northern Ireland’s children’s services, where he highlighted that a lesson for all practitioners in the UK is the need for continuity and stability for children and families.

“I was working it out and, as a child, within a period of a year to 18 months, you could move between three to four teams. That is three to four different workers, assuming the workers within the teams don’t also change,” says Jones.

He tells me of a young person who’s had 12-13 social workers in the past two years and is currently undergoing another change.

“We’re a relationship-based profession wanting to be close to people, and we can’t do that if we have all these handovers, all this fragmentation,” he says.

“We lose the relationship and the trust, but we also lose something else – the history; the knowledge of what’s happened to a person in their recent life. We lose that journey. We’re a short-term interjection, and then we disappear and someone else interjects.”

Standing besides people in times of need

A social worker, as he puts it, should not be the one with all the answers or specialist knowledge, but someone who stands beside people in times of difficulty and engages them, helping to “create some space to see a way forward”.

He sees these as human and professional qualities that do not require specialisation. When the need arises for specialist knowledge – “say to assist someone with chronic anxiety” – he advocates bringing in an expert to work alongside the practitioner, rather than handing over the case entirely.

Jones recalls his teams at Wiltshire council, where he was a director of social services in the 1990s, as an example.

“We had multidisciplinary groups, but we would have key workers. They would be the person who would stay with the family, child or adult. Other workers might come in and do bits of activity, add expertise and knowledge, but we would have someone to anchor the person.”

If it were up to him, children’s social services would comprise only a “short-term” initial assessment team, followed by longer-term teams embedded within communities “that stuck beside the person”.

“It would bring the focus back to the community. [Practitioners would] know what’s happening in people’s lives [and] their life story, but also know about the communities they’re living in and the impact it has on them.”

A less experienced workforce

Jones served as Wiltshire’s director of social services for 14 years, starting from 1992, a tenure that was common then but rare today.

As of March 2024, the average director of children’s services (DCS) had been in post for less than three years (33 months). The rapid turnover within the workforce – including social workers and managers up to directors – has, in Jones’ view, created an environment “unstable to be building practice skills within”.

“To an extent, we have a less experienced workforce than we have had in the past, including the leadership,” he adds.

“It’s really difficult to build up a strong base of competence and confidence when you’re not around for that long, or when the people around you aren’t around that long.”

‘Change takes time’

“It’s a difficult job,” says Jones about the role of a director.

“There’s a lot of public and media exposure. You’re working in a political environment, both locally and nationally, which is unsympathetic and unsupportive of the work that we’re doing. There’s a lot of blame culture and stress.”

Yet it might be the expectation of change tied to the role that is partly to blame, he says. Directors arrive with new promises and plans, but are unable to see them through in their short tenures, leaving them burnt out.

“We need to recognise that building a culture within organisations takes time. It’s not a job that you can crack in two or three years. You need at least seven or eight to make a difference. But if you can stay beyond that, that’s even better.”

During his time as a director, Jones recalls leaders staying long enough to witness “the consequences of what they were introducing”.

In contrast, recent years have been marked by a quick-fix culture that has made it difficult to build stability, he says.

“At the moment there are too many distractions and everything is too fast. It’s creating a lot of noise without, if you like, the progress that needs to be achieved to actually build stable organisations.”

Building relationships with journalists

An inescapable lesson Jones had to learn as a director was also how to handle media attention. In social work, child deaths or older people wandering off from care homes are sometimes unavoidable, he says.

In those cases, alongside being beside his colleagues to “provide a bit of space and protection for them”, he also took on the media attention through relationships built with local journalists.

“[The media] was handled by me, not some communications officer who didn’t understand the things we needed to talk about. When something awful happened, I had a relationship with the journalist and was able to engage with them.”

‘A spokesperson for social work’

Peter Connelly, who died in Haringey, August 2007

This decade-long dance with the media proved vital when the story of Baby P broke years later.

It’s difficult to talk about Jones’ career and not mention Peter Connelly, the child whose death in 2007, and the subsequent coverage of it in 2008, has permanently marked social work’s history.

Amid the media storm and relentless targeting of practitioners that ensued, Jones – then a professor at Kingston University – became social work’s spokesperson, appearing on various channels and in newspapers to correct the narrative.

Later, in 2014, he also wrote a book, ‘The story of Baby P: Setting the record straight’.

A more risk-averse culture

The case brought an intense period of public condemnation for the sector and a sharp  rise in the annual number of care proceedings, with the number of care applications seeing a 70% rise between 2008-9 and 2012-13  linked to a risk-averse culture that, Jones argues, has yet to ease.

The decade of austerity ushered in by the coalition government in 2010 did not help the sector get back on its feet either.

“We had the double-whammy of the media slam in 2008, and then the government withdrawing resources from us and the families,” says Jones.

“It has made it very difficult to do the work we need to do. We’ve remained largely focused on risk assessment and management, and the job has gotten more difficult. The exposure has increased but the opportunity to do what we need to do has been even more restricted [due to a lack of resources].”

However, despite the hardships, Jones’s belief in the sector remains unwavering. He affirms that what social workers do is “as important now as it’s ever been”.

His parting advice: “We don’t have the resources, but let’s try and calm it down and stick with the job, rather than churning it up as often as we do at the moment.”

Readers’ Take is a weekly series by Community Care that showcases your opinions on trending topics. To take part, vote in our weekly poll and share your thoughts in the comments section of the related article. You can read previous articles from this series here.

Most social workers are affected by online misinformation in some way, a Community Care poll has found.

The poll was triggered by the role of misinformation and disinformation in sparking the racist riots that spread across the country in early August 2024 and included the reported targeting of social care workers based on their race or religion.

The far-right riots were preceded by disturbances in Leeds, where social workers were directly put at risk on a visit to a family to carry out a court order to remove their children. In this case, the sharing of online footage of the police removing a child appeared to have played a role in sparking the disorder.

While negative and inaccurate media coverage of social work is nothing new, social media has significantly increased the volume of misinformation about the profession and its ability to spread at speed, without the reporting standards generally observed by journalists.

For example, though online groups for parents involved in care proceedings or who have had children removed are a valuable source of mutual support and information, they can also provide opportunity and encouragement to name and shame practitioners, putting them at risk.

A Community Care poll amassing 660 votes asked practitioners whether their practice and wellbeing had been affected by the spread of online misinformation.

The majority of respondents (58%) said it had impacted on them very much (36%) or somewhat (22%).

However, nearly one-third (31%) said they hadn’t been affected at all, while 11% said online misinformation had had very little impact on their practice or wellbeing.

How does online misinformation about social work affect you?

By Polly Baynes

Since January 2024, the press have been allowed into nearly half of family courts in England and Wales to report on proceedings, following a year-long pilot in three areas. What are the implications for social workers?

The need to limit press reporting to protect vulnerable children from the disclosure of sensitive personal information has long been recognised.

Section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 made reporting on family proceedings involving children a contempt of court.

Tension between confidentiality and transparency

But this was always in tension with the need for justice to be ‘seen to be done’.

Closed courts became harder to justify as society generally became more open and in the face of a series of inquiries into the deaths of children known to social workers and the contested removals of large numbers of children in Cleveland and Orkney in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to concerns about sexual abuse.

When New Labour introduced a target to increase the number of adoptions in 2000, this prompted unfounded claims that individual social workers were paid to ‘steal children’ for adoption with the support of corrupt and secret courts. This myth continues to be widely promoted on social media and has real-world consequences, increasing fear and hostility towards social workers, making it hard to build trusting relationships with families.

Social work fears

For many social workers, attending court is one of the most stressful parts aspects of their job even without the prospect of media criticism. Some remember how those working with Baby Peter Connolly were pilloried after the 2008 trial of those responsible for his  death.

The prospect of having the media cover cases prompted worries not just about insensitive reporting of family difficulties but also the potential disclosure of personal information about professionals. This was not unreasonable: social workers experience high rates of verbal and physical abuse, negative press reporting and online naming and shaming, including death threats and the sharing of home addresses and details of children’s schools.

Earlier attempts to open up courts

In 2009, journalists were allowed into family courts but not permitted to publish reports without the judge’s permission. In effect, the courts remained closed.

Families who felt that had been treated unfairly were not allowed to talk to the press – and could be in contempt of court if they shared the reports written about them with anyone.

The Daily Mail spearheaded a campaign for transparency in the family courts, fuelled by steadily increasing levels of child removal.

The paper claimed success in 2013, following the announcement of rules, introduced the next year, that made a presumption that judges would grant media requests to publish family court judgments – with public authorities and expert witnesses named – in most cases.

Family courts ‘still perceived to be closed’

However, in 2021, following a review of transparency arrangements, the president of the family division of the High Court, Sir Andrew McFarlane, found that the relevant practice guidance on publishing judgments was not being followed in many cases.

More generally, he concluded that a major shift in culture was needed to increase transparency, warning: “The family justice system is suffering from serious reputational damage because it is, or is perceived to be, happening behind closed doors.”

The transparency pilot

As a result, in January 2023, journalists were allowed to report contemporaneously on family proceedings, subject to careful anonymisation, in a pilot in three court areas, Leeds, Cardiff and Carlisle.

This was dependent on the judge making a transparency order, setting out what could and could not be reported, which was not always granted.

In a piece for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), former lead family judge for Cardiff, Jonathan Furness KC said there had been some teething troubles.

Judges were concerned about the time arguments about transparency would take in their busy court lists, while there were also issues with listings, making it hard for journalists to identify particular hearings they wished to attend. Resources were not always available for journalists to attend lengthy and complex cases.

Court work ‘recognised as important and child focused’

However, he concluded that the pilot had achieved its purpose: “There has been some excellent reporting showing the family court working well and for the benefit of families and children.

“Our work is being recognised as important and child and family focused. We deservedly receive better press than we previously did.”

A separate TBIJ article quoted the lead judge for pilot, Mrs Justice Lieven, as offering a similarly positive verdict.

“We went into this with nervousness, and it’s gone better than we feared,” she said. “Anonymity has been preserved – I have not had any complaints about jigsaw identification [a person being identified from different pieces of information].”

Reporting that can help readers understand decisions

As a practitioner, I was encouraged to read articles like that in the Yorkshire Post on 30 June 2023 (behind paywall), concerning proceedings for a baby for whom there was a plan for adoption.

Polly Rippon’s report from Leeds family court made clear that the judge was not prepared to endorse a plan for adoption without clear evidence that the child concerned would be at risk of significant harm if he went home. The social worker’s efforts to work with the parents during the pregnancy are acknowledged and compassion is shown for the mother – who is losing the care of her fifth child.

The judge concludes that there is no alternative to adoption for this baby, who was born prematurely with a heart condition and requires complex care. Stories like this are potentially powerful in challenging the idea that courts ‘rubber stamp’ adoption plans without proper scrutiny.

The family’s confidentiality is protected but enough detail is provided to allow readers to understand the reasons for the decision and the care that was taken to ensure fairness.

Extension of pilot

Reporting is now permitted of public and private law in the three original pilot courts. In 16 others, report of public law has been permitted since January 2024, with private law cases being added later.

In these areas, transparency is now the default position, providing this is safe and not disruptive. Family members are free to talk to reporters and their words can be quoted for the first time.

Key documents, such as threshold documents and chronologies, will be disclosed to journalists in full and can be quoted providing they are anonymised.

Judges, legal representatives and court experts can be named, as can the local authority and its senior managers.

Safeguards for families and professionals

There are a number of protective measures in place:

• Only recognised journalists – those who carry a UK press card – and authorised legal bloggers are allowed into the court.
• Family names and identifying details must be anonymised.
• Individual social workers, team managers and guardians cannot be identified unless this is ordered by the court.

Encouraging signs for social workers

As a social worker with years of experience in court work, I faced this change with trepidation, mindful of the death threats I had received and the impact of hostile reporting following child death inquiries.

At the same time, I recognised the need for justice to be seen to be done and the ways in which the secrecy of the system exacerbated families’ fears about justice. It remains to be seen how this change will affect social workers and their relationships with families over the longer term but there are encouraging signs.

Sensitive reporting has the potential to reveal the complexity of the work and can highlight what is going well as well as empowering families with accurate information and providing accountability in line with social work values.

Most social workers believe that improving public perception of social work requires enhanced media representation, a Community Care poll has found.

This follows the report of a recent survey by YouGov, for Social Work England, that revealed that just 44% of members of the public thought the profession was well-respected within society, far lower than was the case for doctors (90%) or nurses (86%).

In further qualitative research by YouGov, practitioners linked negative perceptions to a lack of understanding of social work’s role, which they attributed to the media.

This included entertainment TV often showing social workers arriving at a family’s home to take away their children, which was “not an accurate representation of the purpose of social workers”, they told the polling company.

‘Realistic portrayal of social work’

On the back of the results, Social Work England has launched a campaign urging the entertainment industry to ‘change the script’ on how it portrays practitioners on TV.

A Community Care’s poll, which amassed almost 1,000 votes, found that most readers supported this ambition.

Two-thirds of respondents that said ‘realistic TV and film portrayals of social work’ would be an efficient way to improve public perceptions of the profession, while 59% called for less negative news coverage (readers could vote for more than one option).

Almost half (48%) supported educational government campaigns on the role of social work, while 39% backed making social workers more visible, for example, by placing them in schools. 

Media training for social workers

One social work lecturer, in the comments section of the related article, suggested social workers receive media training to become “public ambassadors for the profession”.

“Social workers have an incredible amount of knowledge and experience and many of us have first degrees in other subjects,” said Jim Greer. “We can combine our social work experience with enough background knowledge to speak on a range of social issues.

“When local authorities are asked about social work issues they should put forward social workers or managers rather than PR people. Of course, we cannot comment on confidential aspects of individual cases but we can explain in general terms how and why social services make certain types of decisions.”

Would you welcome media training and opportunities to speak to the media?

Social workers are significantly less likely to have high morale or to recommend the profession to friends or family than in 2020, research released this week has found.

High workloads and burnout were key concerns for practitioners, who said these risked creating a “spiral” of social workers leaving their roles and leaving colleagues even more overworked than before, found the Social Work England-commissioned study.

And though pride in the profession remains high, this has also fallen in tandem with the drop in morale, according to the survey of 1,260 current and 115 former social workers, carried out carried out from May to June 2023.

The study follows a similar YouGov survey conducted for the regulator in 2020. While the authors of the latest research said that comparisons between the two datasets should be made with caution, because of the different samples of practitioners, they added that they had reported on those they deemed appropriate.

Drop in social worker morale

This included a substantial drop, from 43% to 26%, in the proportion of current social workers with high morale, and an accompanying rise, from 24% to 41%, in those reporting low morale.

Also, while 26% were likely to recommend the profession to friends or family in 2020, this had dropped to 16% by 2023, with the proportion saying they would not recommend social work at all increasing from 8% to 17%.

Though 83% said they were very or fairly proud to tell others about their job, pride in the profession had fallen from 89% in 2020. This was seemingly driven by the drop in morale: almost all practitioners with high morale (96%) were proud of the profession, compared with less than three-quarters (72%) of those with low morale.

High morale was more prevalent among men (31%) than women (25%), among those in upper management (39%) than those without management responsibility (21%), and among NHS practitioners (41%) and agency workers (34%) compared with local authority staff (22%).

There were similar differences in current practitioners’ propensity to recommend the profession, with 41% of those in upper management doing so as against 24% among those without managerial responsibility, and NHS staff (42%) being the most likely employment group to do so.

Rising levels of burnout on back of Covid

The changes over time in morale coincide with the Covid-19 emergency and its aftermath. Separate research with practitioners carried out last year found that social workers were working more overtime, experiencing greater levels of burnout and reporting lower work-related quality of life than at the start of the pandemic.

The YouGov study uncovered similar themes, both through the survey and in qualitative research with 30 current social workers, six ex-practitioners, 10 employers and 10 people with lived experience.

In answer to the survey, eight in ten current social workers (79%) cited high workloads and burnout as a main challenge facing their organisation over the coming year, with this feeling being particularly acute among local authority practitioners (87%).

This was strongly linked to retention risk. Four in five social workers said they had been actively job hunting over the past 12 months, with 55% of this group citing excessive workload, and 52% the impact of their work on their mental health, as key reasons.

‘Spiral’ of social workers quitting jobs

This was echoed in the qualitative interviews, with many practitioners speaking of a potential “spiral” of “burned out social workers leaving the profession, creating more work for those who they leave behind, causing them to become fatigued and leave the profession faster and thus contributing to the same problems they were victims of”.

The findings echo those of BASW’s latest survey of the profession, also released this week, which found most practitioners had seen more of their experienced colleagues leaving their roles over the past 12 months, with the vast majority of this group saying this had had a negative impact.

Employers interviewed by YouGov also cited burnout and workloads as the biggest contributors to low retention in their organisations, while two-thirds of current social workers and 56% of former practitioners picked reducing workloads as one of the top three factors that would help retain staff. This rose to 72% among current and former children’s social workers, compared with 55% of current or former adult practitioners.

The research also explored current social workers’ experiences of their first role in the profession, with 9% of respondents saying they had left the role within a year and a further third (32%) leaving between one and three years after taking up the post.

While a quarter (24%) of those who left within three years were promoted out of their first role, a similar proportion (25%) cited excessive workload as a reason and 21% not being supported by their manager or employer.

Likelihood of leaving profession

Overall, 39% of current practitioners were very or fairly likely to leave the profession within five years, the same proportion as in 2020.

The rate was higher among social workers from an ethnic minority (48%), a finding that follows research showing that council social care staff from minority backgrounds face disproportionately high levels of workplace bullying, disciplinary action and fitness to practise referrals.

Also, disabled practitioners were more likely than non-disabled counterparts to say they were very likely to quit social work within five years (23% versus 14%).

The YouGov research for Social Work England also identified issues around paperwork and pay facing social workers.

Organisations seen as ‘process-oriented’

Almost half of current social workers (44%) described the culture of the organisation they worked in as “process-oriented”, compared with 12% who said it was dynamic and creative.

In interviews, several practitioners “expressed frustration with having to follow strict bureaucratic processes and paperwork that take time away from working directly with clients”.

Respondents were more positive about other aspects of their workplace, with 83% saying employees respected and valued each other’s opinions, to a great deal or a fair amount, and 69% saying that they felt they belonged.

“Social workers spoke highly of their teams and their managers, saying they felt comfortable in their organisation and that they could use their co-workers as a resource when they were struggling, had questions, or needed a second opinion,” said the report.

Most social workers do not feel fairly rewarded

However, just 36% said employees were rewarded and recognised fairly for their work, with 61% saying this was not the case.

The real value of council adult social workers’ wages has fallen progressively over time, with the average full-time equivalent pay in September 2023 – £41,500 – being worth 7.2% less than the average in 2016, according to Skills for Care data.

Interviewees also said they felt some people were “deterred from entering the profession due to poor reputation and negative associations with social work, particularly due to the messages portrayed in the media, such as social workers taking children away”.

Parallel research by YouGov for Social Work England found that 44% of members of the public thought that the profession was well-respected within society, while 39% felt practitioners often got things wrong.

Change the Script campaign

On the back of findings such as this, the regulator has launched a campaign, Change the Script, urging the entertainment industry to change how it portrays social workers to ensure this is accurate.

Previous research into TV plot summaries from the 1950s to the 2010s, by linguistics academic Dr Maria Leedham, found that social workers rarely featured in programmes. When they did, they almost always worked in child protection and were described as either “judgmental bureaucrats or child snatchers”.

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Social Work England has urged the entertainment industry to ‘change the script’ on how it depicts the profession after commissioning research that linked negative media portrayals to social work having a poor public image.

The regulator launched a campaign on the issue today after releasing research showing that just 11% of social workers, and 44% of members of the public, thought that the profession was well-respected within society.

The views of the public, as surveyed by YouGov, on whether social workers were respected lagged well behind those for comparable professionals, including doctors (90%), nurses (86%), pharmacists (85%), physiotherapists (82%), lawyers (69%) and teachers (67%).

And though 74% of 3,032 adults in England polled last spring felt that social workers wanted the best for people they worked with and 62% thought they made a big difference to improving people’s lives, 39% felt practitioners often got things wrong and a quarter were fairly or not at all confident in practitioners’ ability to do their jobs.

Social workers link poor standing to media representation

Qualitative research with social workers – 110 of whom were also surveyed by YouGov for the regulator – found they linked negative perceptions of the profession to a lack of understanding of its role, which they attributed to the media.

Practitioners felt that the news media “focuses on the failings of social workers while ignoring the cases in which social workers succeed in supporting vulnerable individuals and families”, said YouGov’s report on public perceptions of the profession.

“Likewise, some social workers commented that entertainment featuring social workers is often called inaccurate, as some mention that in these portrayals social workers would arrive to a family’s home to take away their children, which is not an accurate representation of the purpose of social workers and the authority they hold.”

In a separate report on the views of the workforce, YouGov reported that many social workers felt that people were deterred from joining the profession because of it having a poor reputation, “particularly due to the messages portrayed in the media, such as social workers taking children away”.

Research findings on TV portrayals of social work

Previous research into TV plot summaries from the 1950s to the 2010s, by linguistics academic Dr Maria Leedham, found that social workers rarely featured in programmes. When they did, they almost always worked in child protection and were described as either judgmental bureaucrats or child snatchers.

Launching its Change the Script campaign today, Social Work England said many social workers “frequently play roles which might appear intrusive and neglectful, which leads to perceived negative outcomes for the people they’re supporting”.

“These portrayals are often inaccurate, and many social workers believe the storylines are contributing to mounting recruitment and retention challenges in the profession,” it added.

Although 71% of members of the public responding to the YouGov research said social workers rarely (33%) or sometimes (37%) separated children from their families, 11% said they did this often and 2% always.

Regulator looking ‘to tell the real story of social work’

The regulator said it was aiming to “raise awareness of the consequences that negative depictions of social workers have on society and seeks to tell the real story of social work in an effort to transform opinions of the profession”.

To highlight the profession’s positive impact, it has released a film featuring two young men talking about the transformative impact their social workers had had on their lives.

One of them, who is in care, said his social worker was the “person waiting for you at the finish line” after you had run a race. The other, who had received bereavement support from a practitioner after his mother went into a hospice, said the practitioner “listens, she understands, she makes me feel like everything’s going to be all right”.

Alongside the film, the regulator is urging people and organisations to share the campaign’s messages and imagery through social media channels and in press statements.

Community Care’s Choose Social Work campaign

Change the Script’s aims chime with those of Community Care’s Choose Social Work campaign, which we ran last year and whose aims included challenging negative media representations of social work.

A survey of 151 social workers for our campaign found that two-thirds had been influenced by fear of adverse media coverage when approaching cases.

In addition, most (84%) considered the coverage of social work by UK mainstream outlets to be ‘generally inaccurate’.

Society places an enormous onus on social work, expects it to do a very difficult job in almost impossible conditions and then screams hysterically when things go wrong.”

You would be forgiven for thinking this was written a few years – or even a few days – ago. It is, in fact, a quote from the editorial in the first ever edition of Community Care magazine, published on 3 April 1974.

As I was skimming through the musty book containing all the editions from Community Care’s first year, I was struck by two things: how much the salaries have changed – in cash terms, at least – and how little the reputation of social work has.

Social work’s negative press

Since the 1970s, social work has hit the national press time and time again, especially when a child known to social services has died.

At the same time, its successes have often gone unnoticed. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, among the – deserved – praise for medical staff, delivery drivers and care workers, there was little mention of the social workers, who continued carrying out in-person visits to children and adults at risk of harm.

It was into this context of suspicion, hostility and ignorance about social work that Community Care launched our Choose Social Work campaign, in June 2023.

Showing the difference social work makes

We wanted to show the side of social work that you rarely see in the media: of people like you, our readers, working alongside families and adults, supporting them to make changes to their lives; sometimes having to make difficult decisions, but not making them alone.

We wanted to challenge that common misconception, beloved by TV dramas, that social workers can swoop in by themselves and take a child away.

Instead, we have shown the reality: that social workers are part of multi-agency teams and arrangements, with schools, police, health and mental health all playing their part and sharing decision making.

As part of the campaign, four journalists from the Community Care team went to Wandsworth children’s services to shadow social workers for a day:

The day ended with me being in absolute awe of the social workers I met. The decisions, the effort, the planning that goes into their work is phenomenal and cannot be understated. We only hear of the bad stories in the mainstream news but we never hear about the children and families social workers help.”

Giving voice to those with lived experience

Another hugely important aspect of Choose Social Work was ensuring that we involved people with lived experience of services. While we did hear about poor practice and how the care system as a whole often fails children and young people, we also featured some very moving stories about times when social workers formed meaningful and long-lasting relationships with the children they worked with.

In one video that we specially commissioned for the campaign, care-experienced author and campaigner Jenny Molloy interviewed a young person, Lizzie, and her social worker, Janet, about the relationship they had built and why it was so important to both of their lives.

Dear Future Social Worker

Throughout the campaign, we have asked you to share advice with the next generation of social workers. Given the negative media coverage of the profession, it must be difficult for any sixth-former or university student, or someone considering a career change in later life, to understand what the social work role involves and how to prepare themselves for the challenges they might encounter.

We’ve been so pleased with the response to this series: three of the letters are the most-viewed pieces of the entire campaign, and they’ve been shared across social media and have caused lively discussions in the comments section. Here’s some advice from two of my favourite letters:

Yewande (centre) speaking at Community Care Live

“Being a child protection social worker taught me that reward will come from seeing positive outcomes, and that you need to celebrate the small wins. Praise comes in different forms, and job satisfaction helps you to have a long lasting social work career.”
Yewande, manager and practice supervisor

Your views on Choose Social Work

The comments sections of news websites are often fairly horrifying places: I try my best never to stray ‘below the line’ on most sites.

But your comments under Choose Social Work articles have been so heartening, both for us and for the social workers and writers you have been responding to. These are some of the comments that have stayed with me:

The campaign’s future

Lyn Romeo (second right), chief social worker for adults, flanked by past, present and future chairs of the Adults PSW Network. Photo courtesy of the Adults PSW network.

Over the last seven-and-a-bit months since Choose Social Work was launched, we have published more than 40 pieces of content, including written articles, podcast episodes, videos, letters and galleries.

I would love to be able to share all of them here, but it would make this already long article more like a novel. Please do take a look at the Choose Social Work page, where you can see everything we have published as part of the campaign.

In 2024, we will still be championing Choose Social Work – and we hope you will too. Please contact me on ruth.hardy-mullings@markallengroup.com if you have any questions about supporting the campaign.

Community Care’s big Five-Oh

The first edition of Community Care magazine was published in 1974 – making this year our 50^th anniversary.

In the editorial in our first magazine, our then editor, Mark Allen, wrote that, “Community Care, with your co-operation, will do all it can to ensure that social workers are not made society’s universal scapegoats.”

This is as true now as it was 50 years ago. We hope that you will continue supporting us, so that Community Care is still going strong in another 50 years.

And our promise to you is that we will continue being the voice for and of social workers and champion the issues that matter to you.

In June, Community Care launched our Choose Social Work campaign to champion the profession and inspire the next generation of social workers.

As part of this, we are exploring how the often negative media coverage of the profession affects social workers – and how it can be improved.

In this episode of our Learn on the Go podcast series, from Community Care Inform, two expert guests discuss media coverage, blame and shame of social workers.

The guests are Dr Liz Frost, associate professor of social work at the University of the West of England, and Dr Maria Leedham, senior lecturer in applied linguistics at the Open University.

They discuss Maria’s research into mentions of social workers in UK newspapers and TV dramas, why media coverage almost entirely focuses on child protection, and whether there are signs that this negative bias might be changing.

The podcast is available on most podcast platforms such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or you can find it by putting ‘Learn on the Go’ into your search engine.

You can view a written transcript of the podcast here.