Lack of social work experience in any team alongside lack of quality training in the job due to drastic budget cutting means lack of understanding about how to do the job.

Meanwhile fear of ofsted means many workers focus on audits – meaning placing targets and stats over quality work.

During the pandemic these targets and stats were easier to achieve due to the majority of the job being behind a screen.

The quality and understanding about what the work entails is simply just not there.

Ethically I felt this was wrong for some families who needed skilled work.

Heavy handed finger pointing social work was being hailed! Look at things now! Too many children in a broken care system. Outcomes no better or even worse than if they had stayed with family. Kinship care underfunded.

I will never go back and resent what is happening in social work in general where skills and experience are being lost to poor working conditions, pay and pressure brought on by toxic inexperienced high achievers who want to race up the career ladder without practice experience.

Ouch, now that does sounds crap! especially if you have a poor working relationship with your manager. Agree, performance related increments have been creeping in, you are right about that but not in my local authority as yet but are present in various forms in neighbouring authorities. We have – as no doubt you have – seen steady deterioation of T&Cs in other forms e.g introduction of 5/7 working, abolition of car allowances etc, etc on top of the 15-20% overall loss in the value of public sector pay in last 12 yrs, not that MacAlister is remotely interested in this sort of detail.

I wouldn’t be that certain Simon. Where I work everybody has their pay determined by a “performance assessment” submitted by their supervisor to a panel chaired by the PSW. Nobody gets an annual increment automatically. Social work is full of inconvenient truths isn’t it?

Please dont conflate legitimate critism with moaning. The report is fixated with ‘too much bureaucracy’ but make no attempt anywhere to present evidence and refuses to provide any examples of what is necessary and what could be made redundant. What there is is based on survey’s of general opinion. That is not robust research. The report claims that the the Early Career Framework will reduce the LAC and CP numbers based on a complete misprepretation of a DfE evalauation of NAAS and it only mentions workloads 5 times about which it presents no evidence or analysis. Social workers have been deliberately marginalised as have a signficant part of the care experienced community. Yes we do have to worry about the governmnets response agree on that but probably for entirely different reasons than yours.

Let’s deal with the hear and now Andy. We still have nationally negotiated pay scales (Spinal Column Points) with 5-6 annual pay increments https://www.emcouncils.gov.uk/write/LGS_Pay_01Apr21.pdf . Granted which grade you end up on depends on your local Single Status Agreement (see my other post below). In these proposals ASYEs will get stuck on their grade unless the suceed in progressioin to an ‘expert’ grade but will have to wait at least three years. Currently they can progress onto the next grade after one year subject to passing ASYE which 99% do. These proposals are detrimental for NQSWs.

A pay review body may come up with the best thing since sliced bread but each and every new job description in any local authority will have to go firstly through a job evaluation process and secondly approved by a local panel.

Due to the fact that employers use different job evaluation schemes this will result in some ‘expert’ social workers being paid on scales different from that of their ‘expert’ colleagues in a neighbouring authority, it will result in the very problem that the Review is seeking to address ending up in the very sanme place we are at now. It cannot impose a new national payscale without first making a statement as to how it proposes to address the SINGLE STATUS AGREEMENT. In short a new natioinal pay scale is pie in the sky in my view.

The government could of course respond by saying the only way to achieve a national pay structure would be to take social workers out of JNC national bargaining which the author of thos post and many other trade unionists in local government would strongly oppose tooth and nail. The other concern is that without the necessary ‘knowledge’ required at present to undertake S47 and hold child protection cases etc, new JDs for early career/NQSWs social workers could see a deterioation in pay and conditions until they can access the ‘expert’ grades (assuming they would be improved which I doubt).

In ther meantime, I would urge all social workers to raise these issues with their Trade Union and join one recognised by local authorities for collective bargaining purposes i.e. UNISON, UNITE, GMB if you are not a member.

I couldn’t agree more with you.