It has been a difficult year for social services and two under-reported inquiries have painted a grim picture of the sector.
In July, the Commons education committee suggested that the chronic shortage of experienced social workers, growing workloads, and a high drop out of newly-qualified social workers are making it harder than ever to run adult and children’s services with sufficient staff. The committee reported a national vacancy rate of 17% and said the average length of stay in the profession was eight years – compared with 16 for nurses.
A second report (pdf) last month from the National Audit Office (NAO) stated that only 23% of childcare services were given a “good” rating by Ofsted. Some 20% were found to be “inadequate” and 635,000 children were referred to local social services, according to the latest annual statistics. Almost 400,000 children were placed under some form of protection.
The wide variations in the effectiveness of services are more worrying. Effectiveness, judged by the need for re-referrals to social services, ranged from 6% to 36% between authorities, and from 3% to 44% for repeat child protection plans.
In most “good” authorities social workers had between 10 and 14 cases, 7% were agency staff and the authority had 11% vacancies. In the “adequate” services, caseloads were as high as 35, 22% were agency staff and vacancies were also at 22%.
“Nationally the quality of help and protection for children is unsatisfactory and inconsistent, suggesting systemic rather than local failings,” the NAO concluded.
The brutal central government squeeze on services, up to 50% or more, is a key factor.
In July, the Department for Education pledged to transform children’s services by 2020 (pdf) but the NAO expressed doubts over whether this will be achieved. “There is little information on outcomes for children who are, or have been, in need of protection,” the NAO said. “The department measures volumes and timeliness of processes, but has no data or outcomes for children in need – except for education outcomes. But it does not know which approaches provide the most effective help and protection.”
Judy Foster’s new book, Building Effective Social Work Teams, draws on 40 years’ experience in social care, along with a year-long study observing and interviewing staff in three social work teams. Foster has identified a critical vacuum: a lack of training in management skills. Social workers are being asked to lead teams without training on the demands of the job. The College of Social Work, which could have provided such courses, was closed down by the government in 2015.
Foster has held a variety of jobs in social services, starting as a childcare officer, progressing to be the head of training in a large inner-city department, to developing national training standards for children and young people in care and for mental health. She founded the Social Perspectives Network.
Foster believes that core social work values have been maintained across a generation, but recognises the increased pressures on the profession today: complex legislation, critical media scrutiny, and large caseloads.
“Social workers are the first to be blamed when child tragedies occur, but society still expects them to provide expert help and support for families and adults in trouble,” she notes. “Over the years, there has been public and political pressure to put greater emphasis on throughput of cases with targets for service delivery, rather than interventions supporting the complex practical and emotional issues of service users. This trend needs to change with social work teams properly supported and empowered to find long-term solutions for the growing numbers of service users.”
The three teams on which much of the book is based involved three different groups of clients: younger adults with illness or disability in the community, arranged care for people discharged from hospital, and support for mentally ill homeless people.
The findings confirmed her experience that successful teams need a supportive environment involving five factors:
- Clear local procedures based on national legislation.
- Good management support structures with participative well-chaired meetings.
- Well-qualified staff and management encouragement for continuous learning.
- Delegation of decision-taking, giving more responsibility and autonomy to social workers.
- A reflective environment with supervision to plan interventions for service users.
The book also highlights the value of mental space: “If staff cannot unpack the feelings evoked by the work, they will either leave (pro-active types) or burn out (reactive types). The team with the most challenging client group provided the greatest variety of mental space: informal sharing, joint working, supervision, case discussions, team meetings, learning forums, consultancy and more. The other two teams, good at informal sharing, lacked the capacity to provide regular supervision. The absence of debriefing after a violent incident contributed to prolonged sick leave in a respected member of staff.”
Foster’s last proposal was for a cadre of senior social work leaders to speak for the profession in the media, so the role is recognised as a crucial public service that needs to be properly resourced.
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