what a red herring – Labour are equally to blame. I agree that austerity contributes to all social care issues – but mostly on adult care – the picture surrounding children in care and on the edge of care is far more complex

Totally agree Andrew.

Chief Social Worker – You are meant to be our voice. Where are you? Do you have any recognition of the reality your Social Workers are facing every day??

Austerity has caused many families to struggle, to become homeles. It has put huge pressure on already difficult situations.

But it has also meant cuts in non statutory services so that some services that may prevent children needing to be looked after are no longer available.

Thirdly it has made DCS focus on finance and not what is best for young people.

This is about all agencies and services to families not just social care. Health, education, social care, youth services, youth offending etc still work in silos. People reorganise and restructure but silos remain and YP will have maybe 6 or 7 different professionals, all with different thresholds and line management structures. This is patently unworkable and unhelpful. The DCS is only one silo head. Children’s services should be all services for YP and children.

The recent knee jerk reaction to CSE has, in some cases, meant another ‘expert’ worker is parachuted in. This has been accompanied by a score system which, many now argue, is counter productive.

I digress. Government policy has had a direct impact on children and young people. Ray Jones speaks of the politicisation of social work and, sadly, the CSW role is a case in point. The role surely has to be a conduit between social workers and government but I think i recall a quote that said the CSW wasn’t the voice of social work. Trouble is government doesn’t welcome challenge at all. The CSW is now widely perceived to be the voice of government and was too strongly, in my view, allied to government policy.

The politicisation of social work has been accompanied by the de politicisation of social workers who are often increasingly micro managed. This micro management is heavily influenced by the need to keep within decreasing budgets so the SW is forced into a conflict situation with senior management.

More debate and dialogue is needed..this should be collaborative and practitioner led.

Tweets such as the one mentioned detract from the dialogue.

As if it was that’ simple. When I think of the amount of time we spend in pratice agonising over children on the ‘Edge of Care’ or returning from ‘admissions’ panels surprised and sometimes shocked that they didn’t accept our arguement that it really was time we accommodated these children, or coming into the office on Monday morning to find the police had removed children without EDT having a chance to intervene, or reading all those serious case reviews where agencies had all these opportunities to act but didn’t -I wonder how you think that it’s that simple that we spend all our time ‘removing children’. On the other hand, I don’t disagree there are another group of children that don’t need to be in care and only if we put a bit more effort in or went that extra mile and could find the sort of resources that help alliances with the DUP we could do a lot better. I also wonder if, and Ray has been making this point now magnificently for some time that, if we didn’t have so many private companies making millions out of government contracts to line their own pockets and pension funds, or us having to waste public money on distractions like NAAF, we might have a bit more cash in the system to
do the sort of long term work you advocate. But if only it was that simple.

Long term support requires services that are commissioned to the individual needs of the community. Huge cuts to bugets have seen a significant reduction in commissioned services that have been integral to helping families and avoiding state intervention that’s not required. Eroding such support services leads to increased social work case loads and therefore less time spent with those children and families who require social work intervention. Fire fighting and crisis intervention fail to tackle the root cause leaving children and families in a cycle of a revolving door approach that fails to achieve positive outcomes.