Completely agree! I am leaving SW after 28 years, moving to a charity into an unqualified, but to me a real SW role. My repetitive strain injuries will I hope heal after all the typing that we do these days and I hope that despite the drop in income I will enjoy more freedoms to act and be creative and focus on being person and not admin centred. How wonderful to just get on and do some therapeutic and supportive work without being hampered by having to be Jack of all trades, by doing all the admin and form filling! I have spent many years watching other’s from the side-lines doing real SW, whilst I just carried on sat in front of that screen typing endless and disproportionate forms, carrying out tasks that someone unqualified could do and all the time wondering why the hell I bothered to qualify and keep jumping through the hoops we do to remain so. It’s sad, but I think that Care Management in adult social care has diluted SW role (I remember in one authority, we all had to refer to ourselves as Care Manager’s regardless of qualification/registration).
Oh well – bye bye Social Work and good luck to all those that remain.

That isn’t good..getting paid the same as Social Workers and not qualified..Bizarre!

Also, do not get me started on the issue of public services being run on business models and being reliant on the markets.
Pay staff fairly for the work they do, and employ support staff to do support and administrative work.

I agree with you Catherine, therein lies the problem.

I absolutely agree with Dawn. Very little has changed in the past 24yrs of practice. On a positive note, caseloads have reduced significantly from 60+ to a third (or less). Despite this, the issues remain. The Munro review talked of excess burocracy, sadly this remains an issue. Excessive paperwork reduces the quality time spent with families and children. There are inexperienced managers. There is covert and overt bullying by some managers. Social workers have complex caseloads, the quality of assessments and court reports in some cases need to improve, children are being left in neglectful situations for far too long (multiple years of the same interventions and plans with little change). Workers struggling to understand the complexities of disguised compliance. Staff moral is low, staff and their opinions are not valued. The more able you present as a practioner is the more expectations and cases allocated to you to the point of social work burn out. But social workers are replaceable so out goes one and another is employed albeit via an agency. Poor pay, not enough experienced workers on the ground to support the newly qualified or less experienced social workers. Long hours, not enough pay for working almost 7 days a week. A lack of team spirit since staff are usually remote working and desk hopping. no sense of team and settled community support therefore, low work moral . I recall sitting in a team in a static desk. This was a clear luxury but it was expected since it was simply a way of working. The insular, nuclear approach is dangerous so needs reviewing. I appreciate that councils have sold off the buildings but to not review but a solid team spirit carry a team through tough times and the workforce is less likely to be so transient. When the profession is truely respected, then it is easy to see the changes that we are all desperately wanting since the conversation not be so repetitive. The idea is not to further damage the profession, but for us to improve and move the conversation on to make the service cutting edge. One which we can all be proud of.

1. Review all tasks and ask people that are actually doing the work to decide which ones make a difference in a child’s life and do those. ATM ofsted and the DFE decide what is important via performance measures and because LA’s are held to account on them everyone dances to that tune.
2. Allow the voice of the child to be acted on – we have teenagers that have asked for virtual visits as its the platform they prefer ….but we visit in person anyway as if they were virtual the LA would be in trouble with ofsted
3. SW in my authority cant claim plain time for the masses of additional hours they work whilst doing huge journeys around the country to see kids in placements. They are told to claim TOIL that they never have space to take – wonder why people are leaving???

Good point – makes you think about what power social workers actually have

Until there are capped case loads on a weighted basis giving time for social workers to undertake the work in a planned and structured way then nothing will change and social workers will continue to leave the profession.