What is reasonable Ernesto ? This is the point the employers are failing to understand what is a reasonable adjustment. This is the very fact why we will always need disability rights legislations because of attitudes like your own. There is always an excuse, or a cost or another reason why we can’t make a reasonable adjustment. I see society as the problem here and not the individual. What kind of profession are we ? When in the class room we preach anti-oppressive/discriminative practice, empowerment, and emancipation when in reality the very profession itself has little or no time for person’s of any difference. Sometimes it’s just about basic values, common decency and respect for other human beings. As the saying goes you come and try walking a mile in my shoes. You will experience rejection and damage to your self worth. And why ? Because your are different and may go about approaching your work in a different way or might need a bit more time to complete a task.

Think about the bigger picture here, the governments wage war on running down the welfare state and tell people to get a job as you’re not disabled enough to be on benefits. Then when you fight your way through an unfair and unjust employment application process. You’re then met with additional barriers in the work place. We should try to welcome as much difference as possible into social work as the bigger picture is that society is made up of difference. Whether this be race, class, gender or disability. We cant really say we are inclusive when certain employers and groups cant accept anything out of what they perceive as the norm.

Social Workers go through years of training and obtaining required qualifications, but when they come into Local Authorities (LAs) are they allowed to do the job they have trained so hard for, I feel not.

For within LAs social work is geared around systems, which at the best of times are a barrier to good social work, not counting the extremely large caseloads given to social workers.

Unfortunately social workers are in the middle for they are directed by social work managers to work within the limitations of LAs systems and when go to their clients, their clients are wanting what these systems will not allow to be delivered, when legislation, which is also seriously deficient, says should be possible.

As social workers know what is generally available, they do, when they should not, only put forward what they feel can reasonably be agreed by the system.

Should the day ever come when clients wishes will be possible the full costs of Care Plans will not be known, for they have never been put forward to be costed.

But funding for social care is a major problem and it has always been, but 10 years of austerity cuts on LAs was bad enough, but then came COVID-19 and the money available was even further distant from what is required.

This is why all LAs are well over budget and some could go bankrupt and this all leads to a further deterioration of social care, making the most vulnerable even more so.

In the next few years, without substantial Government funding for social care, LAs will reduce the number of social workers they employ, so they can balance their budgets, thereby increasing workloads for social workers even more, resulting in less choices granted for the persons in need of care. This at a time when needs are substantially increasing.

Every aspect of social care is suffering not just in respects of Social Workers, but care homes, home care, respite, supported living , hospices, etc. Good quality care should always be delivered, but in many instances this is not so, for the care profession is desperately short of care workers. There are insufficient people coming to do care work, which is not surprising when the abysmal pay is taken into account with poor working conditions, working unsocial hours, etc.

This leads, in some instances, in poor quality care being given and this is not picked up on CQC (Care Quality Commission) and LAs inspections.

In fact, are these inspections done to the highest standards or are some organisation and poor practices allowed, so that the numbers of care organisations and care workers are not reduced further.

If the delivery of poor quality care is not stopped, then the quality of care will diminish even further.

Not a good analysis of care in the UK, but one that is desperately in need of improvement.

Please support my petition, Solve the crisis in Social Care,

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/solve-the-crisis-in-social-care

This may not solve everything, but it will be a good start.

It’s a shame many articles on here obsess over discrimination and oppression instead of giving more weight to critical thought and reflection, which seem to be forgotten as part of the foundations of social work.

In general, over the last decade, the Tory Government have waged an underhanded and thinly veiled war on the vulnerable, deprived, chronically ill and disabled members of British society. It is certainly time for a change of attitude and a reminder of the laws in place to provide protection for those with disabilities

That in 50 years as a formal enterprise working with and, supposedly standing up for the most vulnerable, oppressed and discriminated against in society that social work organisations cannot even protect their own employees and prospective workers from discrimination. .

What an expression of failure.

I know from personal experiences over 37 years of social work that the above rings true.

I feel that the two ticks kitemark and the words ‘positive about disabled people’ which employers frequently flaunt in recruitment, is a scam. Any social worker who tries to ask for “reasonable adjustments” in practice will normally get short shrift unless it’s something easy to provide like a special chair, after all most social workers are chained to their computer desks these days.

In my last employment I came with one declared disabilty and left with two, the latter entirely caused by the employer. I was eventually dismissed on capability grounds in a situation of their own making.

https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2014/june/most-2-ticks-employers-fail-disabled-people