Social workers say pressure to hit performance targets is taking priority over spending time with vulnerable children and adults, a survey has revealed.
Of the 1,571 social work practitioners who responded to the survey conducted by recruitment specialists Liquid Personnel, 72% said targets took precedence over meeting with service users. Just 13% disagreed. One social worker in the Midlands commented: “The job these days is target led and not what real social work is about.”
The survey was conducted in partnership with Prof Eileen Munro, who conducted a review of child protection services in 2011. Her review found that bureaucracy and managerialism were stifling social work; three years on, in her foreword to the survey, she says: “Despite the removal of many nationally prescribed timescales and targets allowing more local flexibility, time with families still seems a low priority in many offices.” Some 59% of the social workers surveyed disagreed with the statement “I spend enough time face-to-face with service users”.
Morale is also an issue in the profession; 49% reported morale in their team as being low, with only 14% saying it was high. Personal morale was rated slightly higher, with a third (33%) of respondents describing their own morale as low. One possible reason for this, the authors suggest, is that “social workers are accustomed to looking at the emotional needs of others, and as a result could be more sensitive to the emotional state of their colleagues”.
Cuts to services conducted under the coalition government have also had a noticeable impact. Just over a third (35%) had seen a cut in frontline social work posts in the last 12 months, while 38% had seen managerial posts go. Three in five had seen cuts to administrative roles in the past year, suggesting that local authorities are trying to protect the frontline where possible. But this was still damaging; of those who had seen cuts to administrative and support staff, 89% reported that this had had a negative impact – more than the 88% who said that cuts to frontline posts had affected their ability to do their job effectively. This may be one reason why social workers are still reporting that they do not have enough time to spend with service users, as cuts to administrative staff mean more bureaucratic demands on those at the frontline.
Responding to the survey, Maris Stratulis, England manager at the British Association of Social Workers, said: “Our members are utterly fed up with this polemic that lack of funds means you have to accept poor working conditions. We need to have a proper, honest debate rather than being told to put up and shut up.
“It is a pity that ministers and our chief social workers are not standing up and telling it like it is by making public statements on the relationships between staff morale and budget cuts.”
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