Emma was proud to give the keynote address and chair the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) Summit on 21St January 2016. The Conference saw the coming together of social workers, clients, academics, trade unionists and organisations from across the sector, working in children’s social care, adults, learning disabilities, mental health, and Probation.
The summit was a celebration of social work as well as an opportunity to discuss the issues and challenge facing the profession and the solutions to these challenges. It is imperative that in this current climate all those who practice, teach or who are involved in social work in any way use their voices to make a difference and advocate for a better social work future, because if not then all of the people who receive a service will be the ones who suffer.
You can read the Chair of BASW’s blog on the day by clicking here and you can read Emma’s speech below:
‘Good morning everyone, my name is Emma Lewell Buck and I am the Member of Parliament for South Shields, just over two years ago I was practising as a social worker in frontline child protection and I was a cabinet member on my local council for adult social care services.
I am so proud of my profession,
I believe that most social workers are, despite the messages that come from Government and the press a selfless and dedicated group of people who go the extra mile for the people they work with.
The problems social workers face are not of their own doing or by their own design, many people in the profession whom I speak to regularly are very candid with me and will tell me that things are not getting better they are getting worse.
And this should be no surprise to anyone who is following what this Government are doing to services and the most vulnerable in our country.
Sure Starts and early year’s services decimated, disability benefits slashed, public sector job losses on a massive scale, support services and advice services closing, mental health services stripped to the bone, NHS creaking at the seams and an adult social care system that is broken. The fact is you simply cannot separate social work from the wider environment because it is just that a part of an overall social system, you deplete one part the other part suffers, in this case it is sadly social work clients who suffer.
Review and reform has never fully brought about real wholesale change, I feel we cannot simply continue to talk around these issues anymore we need serious efforts on the ground to fix social work and be proactive in addressing problems. But we do not need to re-invent the wheel, simple fixes to IT, case recording requirements and administrative support would have always been a good starting point, yet for some reason, perhaps because they are not headline grabbing enough for Governments, they are never seriously considered.
There is no doubt this current Government have certainly got our profession in their sights,
The Prime Minister not so subtlety with his focus on reform of social work education, assessment and accreditation has gave a clear signal that he feels the problems are with social workers themselves and has further stuck the boot in by reinforcing best and brightest will come from Frontline and Frontline only.
The Government’s focus on adoption also totally misses the fact that to focus on adoption to the detriment of early intervention and other services that could keep a family together and spending money towards the end of a child’s journey through services as opposed to at the very beginning could actually in some cases prevent foster care and adoption.
They have introduced a watered down version of privatisation of children’s services whereby a not for profit arm of a for profit company can take over statutory services, it is obvious to see what perverse incentives could arise from this and we only need to look at the crisis in adult social care to see how well the market has managed caring for our most vulnerable.
The Troubled families’ agenda seems to be repeating the work done by the old child in need teams yet with in less experienced workers and a lack of robust clarity around its effectiveness or value.
Mental health services are at breaking point, serious and repeated underfunding coupled with Government policies such as sanctions and the work programme are increasing and exacerbating mental health difficulties leading to a crisis led model where early intervention is becoming impossible.
Adult social care has actually passed breaking point with a reported funding gap of 4.3 billion by 2019-2020 and continual difficulties in getting sufficiently trained staff to carry out home care visits.
Finally the much lauded Care Act has since its introduction confirmed all of the fears Labour expressed in the passage of the Bill that the principles and vision in the Act would not be made possible unless some new money was put into the system. Reports have shown that for some service users their experiences have been of a decrease in choice and provision since the introduction of the Act.
All Governments have choices in how they allocate finances, this Government have thrown money into the wrong places and taken it from the right ones, service users overall are not getting the service they need or deserve and as usual hard working social workers are being blamed.
Yet in spite of all of this the profession survives and excellent work happens every day in all areas of our country, many of our children and adults are protected from harm and their lives improved, this is something, I, they and we all in this room should all be proud of. I hope we all have a great day and some excellent discussions.
I will now hand back over to Guy.’
