Chair's Blog: From Birmingham to Liverpool to Cardiff

I am delighted to introduce this latest Chair’s Blog post, which is a collaboration between myself and BASW Cymru Professional Officer and fellow Boot Out Austerity walker, Allison Hulmes.

From Birmingham to Liverpool to Cardiff

There are many reasons to celebrate the Boot Out Austerity walk and many ways it can be celebrated - always guarding against complacency in doing so. One way to make sure that we aren’t complacent is to continue taking action, and anti-austerity action has been pretty much non-stop in Wales ever since. So this blog post - written in the main by Allison at the instigation and prompting of Guy - is both a celebration and - in its account of action - a guard against complacency. It’s a celebration too of the connections in BASW between its central and UK-wide functions - in this case represented by the BASW-SWU Austerity Action Group, overseeing the UK-wide campaigning against austerity called for by BASW Council - and the operations of its country teams - in this case BASW Cymru.

The words that Allison wrote in Professional Social Work (June 2017), after returning from the Boot Out Austerity walk - and very quickly becoming involved in campaigning against school holiday food poverty with the subsequent empty foodbanks - sum up why anti-austerity activism is at the heart of BASW Cymru:

‘As soon as I became aware of the walk, I knew right away that I wanted to be part of it because I am a social worker and I am angry…’

There are plenty of reasons that make lots of people in Wales share this anger:

As a child in Wales, the greater the level of deprivation you experience, the more likely you are to be placed on the child protection register or become ‘looked after’. This social gradient is steeper in Wales than in the other three UK nations (Elliott and Scourfield, 2017).

The numbers of children who have become ‘looked after’ has risen from 4,635 in March 2008 to 5,615 in March 2015, this increase having happened during the period that austerity policies have resulted in cuts to local authority budgets, reduced benefits, and growing family poverty.

The attainment of looked after children and those receiving care and support at all stages of educational assessment, from ages 3 to 16, was much lower than the average for all pupils. This impacts significantly on their future life chances.

According to the latest data, 710,000 people in Wales live in poverty - 185,000 children, 405,000 working-age adults and 120,000 pensioners. The poverty rate for disabled people in Wales is the highest in the UK, with 39% of disabled people being in poverty compared to 22% of non-disabled people.

We know that social work intervention happens mostly with families in poverty, and social workers at the front line are best placed to understand the impact that austerity policies have on those who need care and support. They witness first-hand the hardship, and they cope with the daily onslaught of doing more for less as local authority budgets continue to be slashed. Therefore, campaigning about anti-austerity policies and poverty needs to be central to social work and not at its margins.

So, what follows is a little of what BASW Cymru has been doing as part of its co-ordinated and collective anti-austerity strategy.

It’s important that anti-austerity activity is written into BASW Cymru’s business plan. This reflects the importance that the committee places on anti-austerity campaigning, allowing the  team to focus its resources and strengthen its ability to affect change.

In December 2017, Cardiff University hosted the official launch in Wales of BASW’s Austerity Campaign Action Pack. The event was well attended and proved to be a vibrant evening. This was supported in no small measure by guest speakers that included Cardiff People’s Assembly and Psychologists for Social Change. Since this event, collaboration with these groups has deepened and become richer, with more collaborative activity planned. The Campaign Action Pack has been shared with every social work education provider in Wales, local authority training leads and third sector partners.

In December BASW Cymru also attended a vigil following the tragic death of a young homeless woman in a park, near the social work department at Cardiff University. Homelessness in Wales has risen since austerity measures were introduced in 2010, and in February 2018 the Welsh Government launched an action plan to reduce rough sleeping, which included strengthening mental health and substance misuse services. BASW Cymru will be collaborating with other stakeholders to monitor the efficacy of the plan.

BASW’s Austerity Action Group is developing an Anti-Poverty Practice Guide for social workers, and as part of this process BASW Cymru hosted the first practitioner consultation event. As well as supporting social workers to practice in a poverty-aware way, it is also important that poverty awareness forms part of social work education. BASW Cymru were invited by the social work department at Swansea University to develop a teaching day for undergraduate students on social work activism. At the heart of social work activism is a deep understanding of the structural basis of poverty and its impact. The day was well received by the students, who engaged in respectful and thoughtful conversations. It would be great if teaching on this topic could spread to other universities around the UK.

It is important to hear directly from social workers and those who are experts through experience, and BASW Cymru will be developing authentic ways of collaborating with service users and carers. Sitting at the heart of the primary health and social care legislation in Wales, co-production is a legal as well as a moral imperative. BASW Cymru collaborates with others around key policy issues in Wales and takes every opportunity to write to the Welsh Government to raise concerns about policy that might impact negatively on those who need care and support. A recent example was a letter sent last November to Mark Drakeford, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services, prior to the government setting its two-year budget.

BASW Cymru have attended anti-austerity demonstrations in Swansea and Barry, to ensure that their commitment to anti-austerity activity is visible and public. These are also good opportunities to make connections and develop relationships with social workers and other organisations. Wales has a long history of community, with citizens able to meet directly with our politicians and effecting change is to be found in speaking and influencing as one voice.

2018 is a significant year - 70 years since the NHS was founded on the central principles of providing care that meets the needs of everyone, free at the point of delivery and based on need, not ability to pay. It has a special place in the hearts of the Welsh, given Aneurin Bevan’s role in its creation - and the first baby born under the NHS - Aneira Thomas - was born in Wales. It is also 70 years since the National Assistance Act abolished the Poor Law that had been in place since Elizabethan times, and 100 years since women won the (limited) right to vote. Our best hopes are that, in another 100 years, those looking back will say: ‘Those austerity action folks in BASW were brave and spoke truth to power in their relentless campaign to achieve equality and social justice’.

Here are the words with which Allison ended her June 2017 PSW article:

‘I am a social worker, a Professional Officer for BASW Cymru and I have hope. I walked because I had no other choice. I will continue along with my social work family, to stand alongside those we support, to directly challenge the impact of austerity in all its manifestations.’

We will continue, in the social work family of Wales, and the UK, and beyond. One of our next collective actions will be to walk, on 12th June, from Blackwood to Cardiff, the day before the BASW AGM there. As we walked together between Birmingham and Liverpool last April, this small town in the South Wales Valleys took on a particular significance. When Guy asked if a mutual acquaintance were Welsh, Allison responded, ‘Is he Welsh?! He’s from bloody Blackwood!’ The Manic Street Preachers are also from Blackwood, and we will be delighted to start our walk that day from where that politically committed band started. In their words - just changing the first and last lines -

WE WILL try to walk in a straight line

An imitation of dignity

From despair to where

From despair to HOPE.

Come and Boot Out Austerity with us! We will be rallying outside the Blackwood Miners’ Institute at 9am on 12th June, before walking the 15 miles to Cardiff.

Allison Hulmes and Guy Shennan

Professional Officer, BASW Cymru and BASW Chair