Campaign for quality social care services

People protected every day due to social work

STUC: by Chris Bartter and John Stevenson.

The Scottish TUC was told that a combination of increasing demand and cuts in social care funding threaten further tragedies as it backed a campaign to demand quality services in Scotland.

The situation is worsened by the use of tendering processes for home and residential care, that end up with lowcost companies taking over and driving down standards of care. The union also blames the concordat between the Scottish Government and councils as a ‘straitjacket’.

UNISON’s Kate Ramsden, herself a social worker, told the Congress, “Our members are social workers, home carers, residential and day care workers, occupational therapists, and a range of other staff in the statutory and voluntary sector.

“We are providing services in a climate where our work has been consistently devalued in the eyes of the public by the media and politicians; where the demands have increased as the resources have been cut; and where there is a serious lack of understanding of the work that we do.

“What do you think of when you think about child care social workers? Baby P? Brandon Muir?We only hit the headlines when there is a tragedy and the moving finger of blame needs to stop somewhere.

“But these attacks take attention away from the real issues for social work; chronic underfunding; poor staffing levels; too high workloads and excessive bureaucracy; and management cultures which are not “fit for purpose” and fail to support front-line staff and acknowledge their crucial task of working with intense and complex situations.

“These are the barriers to good practice that our members identified in a recent UK survey of child care social workers”.

Kate also pointed out that although child protection is the sharp end of social care, care for other vulnerable people is also threatened. “A Panorama investigation sharply pointed out the problems of relying on cost to supply home care.”

“But many thousands of children are protected day in and day out because of the work that social workers and other social care staff do”, she added.

“Many elderly people are able to stay in their own homes because of the home care and other support services that can be provided; and many adults with disabilities are enabled to lead the lives of their choosing.

“All this is achieved, despite all the problems, through the hard work and commitment of social care staff, and that should be recognised too.

“Inspections rightly point to practice and leadership issues but they never explicitly address resources. Too often they ignore the fact that there are too few people to achieve the standards we all want and this just covers up the problem”, she added.

“As well as this though, I am calling on all of you to support your colleagues in social work and to defend them whenever you hear them unfairly criticised”, said Kate. ..More on STUC pages

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