Diary of a social worker
Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 17 May, 2022
An entry from June's Diary of a Social Worker column in PSW
Since my last entry I have started another agency job. I am not the same social worker I was. The experience from my last post has changed my outlook and left me despondent about my profession. I no longer hold faith in the system I work within, instead viewing the running of local authorities by directors and senior management as lost, out of touch with the children and families and the core of social work values.
I see social workers working long hours, caring for the children and families they work with, giving their own time to follow the directions of those above which could be spent with their families and friends. They are pressurised by data of visits, meetings, assessments and the demands for court work; parenting assessments, sibling assessments, SWETS [Social Work Evidence Templates], position statements.
Then there's the local authority's own heavy demands on paperwork, forms, audits, a scrutiny of work, and social workers having to prove to every inhouse department they have done what they say they have; commissioning, fostering, legal, placements. What would Munro think of quarterly summaries? There’s the additional pressure of covering family time contacts because there are no contact workers, taking children to and from schools, delivering food and clothing. This is without the emergencies, duty, urgent referrals. I hear social workers tell me they are burnt out, working during holidays, feeling anxious and worried, not sleeping...
How can these directors and senior management continue this way? This does not meet the needs of the children and families, it is a tick box, data-driven, business model approach. It is destroying the profession, leaving social workers feeling unappreciated and chasing deadlines.
We don’t need deadlines, we need to be able to assess children and families and allow that assessment to take as long as it needs for us to feel we have grasped as best we can what is happening. We don’t need deadlines for visits, we need to assess each family individually and conduct the frequency of our visits based upon risks and needs.
We need space and time to do our jobs, senior management and directors who show us respect and provide us protection, who know how to focus solely on the needs of the families and children and not on their Ofsted ratings. I see local authorities seeking quick-fix answers for their Ofsted rating by buying in Signs of Safety for astronomical figures. Then completely deskilling social workers, undermining their ability and knowledge by providing templated tick box-esque templates for meetings, visits, assessments.
Throwing money at changing forms is not the answer. Currently all I hear is rhetoric from directors and senior managers in local authorities – how they are child centred, the posters they put up in offices, the messages they give in emails. Social workers will work in a child centred way if they are allowed to do their jobs. Listen to the Munro Review, be brave enough to strip back this managerial business approach. Directors need to stop focusing on their own reputations and the need to show they alone improved an Ofsted rating.
A social worker holding a caseload does not care about an Ofsted rating. They care about the children and families. They work hard to empower, enable and improve lives. They cannot do this easily in the working climate that has been created. That is the barrier to better children's services, not the social workers.
Will this change? I cannot see it. I see more people leaving frontline children's social work stressed, feeling unappreciated, berated by data, along with the personal impact of dealing with people’s crises and trauma on a daily basis. With no support from senior management who show no authentic care or insight or understanding of what the profession is actually about.
We should be one combined profession, every local authority on the same hymn sheet, making the change needed to improve the services we provide. Instead, they are all individually run like a business by the same type of people, quantifying social workers, childrens and families and competing for ratings.