The Labour Social Work group is a campaigning membership organisation. We seek to contribute to the improved wellbeing and life chances for some of the most vulnerable members of society, by strengthening the place of socialist principles within social work policy and practice and within the broader social care services. We work towards achieving these aims through collective action in local groups and through participation in national policy debates both within and outside the Labour Party
There is much which is positive in the recent review in England of children’s social services, including the call to reverse the funding cuts of the past 14 years and the focus on family support and on kinship care, but with a few concerns and anxieties as well:
HOLDING BACK EXPERIENCED SOCIAL WORKERS AS EXCLUSIVELY CHILD PROTECTION SOCIAL WORKERS
The proposal, which was accepted by the Conservative government and which continues to be piloted and promoted by the new Labour government of holding back experienced social workers to only become involved with families when there are child protection investigations and plans has all the warning bells of unintended consequences:
The thrust of the MacAlister review to provide more help for families when they start to struggle will be undermined by even more families, usually in the midst of significant poverty and deprivation, being drawn into child protection processes and procedures as the means of getting attention and engagement from experienced social workers.
Other workers and agencies will talk up concerns about families as child protection concerns to get any involvement from, and the insurance cover of the involvement of, experienced social workers. But all the families will get is continuing contact with less experienced and confident workers with experienced social workers being held back and limited and trapped in monitoring and surveillance roles.
The social workers in the specialist child protection multi-disciplinary teams will be more centrally located as specialist teams need to cover a wider area. They will be more remote from communities, will not have local knowledge of neighbourhood networks, and will have much more limited relationships with early years services, neighbourhood police officers, GPs, health visitors, youth workers, schools etc within a community area. In essence they will parachute in to do a child protection investigation with limited local intelligence and then leave.
There has over the past 14 years been an exponential growth in child protection investigations (+152% since 2009-2010), but only 33% lead to child protection case conference. In effect, families have had the threatening intrusion of a child protection investigation with no significant concerns then found about the care of their children.
Even when there are concerns leading to child protection plans these are not about physical abuse (7%) or sexual abuse (4%) but about emotional abuse (37%) and especially neglect (49%), which are heavily related to families under stress and going under when immersed in longer term poverty with no light at the end of the tunnel. These families need help not the anxiety-provoking and harassing oversight of child protection plans by this new breed of exclusively child protection social workers and remote multi-disciplinary teams.
CONTINUING TO ALLOW PRIVATE FOR-PROFIT PROVISION OF CHILDREN’S SOCIAL CARE
Unlike in Scotland and Wales (and unlike in practice Northern Ireland) England has not turned away from private companies providing residential and foster care for children. BIG profits are being taken from the public funding for children’s care services whilst poorer quality care is provided remote from children’s families and at a distance from the children’s social workers.
The MacAlister review commented on this concern but the recommendation was for the better commissioning and purchasing of private sector services through regional commissioning and purchasing consortia. This will only make it worse – local authorities and social workers will have even less knowledge of the private sector placements they are making. Not only will the placements be at a distance but the commissioning will also be at a distance.
This tanker of privatisation does need to be turned! Two ways forward whilst not a big bang destabilisation of current arrangements on which local authorities have become dependent, so a softly softly approach is necessary:
• Make available a larger capital grant to local authorities to rebuild their own local capacity in residential children’s homes and require local authorities to file an annual report with the DfE on their plans and progress in having sufficiency in directly managed and provided local children’s care services. • Have a requirement within the national data sets and performance measures to report on what proportion of children ‘looked after’ are within foster care and residential services directly managed by the local authority, and have as a part of Ofsted inspections and each local authority report a focus on whether children are being cared for within the local authority’s own area.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: evidence for the Public Bill Committee (February 2025) Mike Stein
Summary • The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes important and welcome measures to improve the lives of children in need of help, protection and those living in and leaving care.
• To ensure all children and young people are able to fulfil their potential will require Government action to address child poverty, end austerity and rebuild public services. These are the foundations stones upon which the legislation must build to transform children’s lives
• By ratifying the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) the UK have endorsed a commitment to ensure all children:
• have the right to live free from poverty
• are entitled to be protected; to participate in decisions which shape their lives, and; to be provided with services to meet their needs
• Paragraphs 6 to 14 (in italics) contain the main recommendations
Mike Stein is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of York. A qualified social worker, he worked in probation and children’s services. From 1975 at Leeds and 1995 at York University, Mike has carried out and directed pioneering research studies: on young people leaving care, in the UK and internationally; the neglect and maltreatment of teenagers, and; those who go missing from home and care. Mike has also been involved in the preparation of Guidance and training materials for Leaving Care legislation, including the Children Act 1989, the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and Planning Transition to Adulthood for Care Leavers, 2010. He acted as the academic adviser to the Quality Protects research initiative and was a member of the Laming Review on ‘Keeping Children in Care out of Trouble’. This evidence, submitted in a personal professional capacity, arises from Mike’s long standing commitment to promoting the rights of young people through research, policy and practice.
The right to live free from poverty 1. In response to the increase in children living in relative and extreme poverty (destitution) since 2010 (over 700,000 increase since 2010, currently over 4 million children, including 1.8 million children in destitution) and MP’s concerns about the impact of the two child limit on benefits, the Government set up a ministerial Child Poverty Taskforce in July 2024 (supported by a Child Poverty Unit in the Cabinet Office), and due to report in ‘spring 2025’.
2. The taskforce is an opportunity to consider the comprehensive evidence of the impact of poverty: how poverty severely damages children’s health, education and wellbeing and is closely associated with an increased demand for children’s services, and is causally associated with children coming into care.
3. The policy implications include: the need to reverse the two-child limit on benefits, end the benefit cap and introduce an ‘essentials guarantee’, to ensure all families have enough income to meet their needs without having to resort to the indignity of charitable aid.
4. The Government have made a general commitment to end austerity and rebuild public services (September, 2024). Since 2010 the Conservative government’s austerity policies, including major reductions in local authority funding, have had a devastating impact upon children’s services. This has included cutting the Sure Start programme, major reductions in local authority family help, substantial cuts to youth services and the rationing of young people’s mental health provision.
5. This has resulted – in conjunction with the rises in child and family poverty – in increased demands for a range of preventative services, high levels of unmet needs until they reach crisis levels, and entirely ‘preventable’ additional numbers of children coming into care. This is the context for the implementation of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
6. The Government’s Child Poverty Taskforce should detail evidence of the impact of child poverty and inequality on children’s health, education and wellbeing and introduce comprehensive proposals for addressing these in conjunction with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
The right to protection 7. In a Bill designed to protect children, and in the immediate aftermath of the Sara Sharif tragedy, the removal of the ‘reasonable chastisement’ defence of physically assaulting a child, is urgently overdue
The right to participation 8. Given the welcome direction of policy to enhance the rights of children and young people, the Bill should ‘place a duty’ on the local authority ‘to seek and give due consideration to the wishes and feelings of children’, to participate in family group decision making meetings
The right to provision 9. The Bill should ensure all children in care be legally entitled to receive ‘care’ until they are 18 years of age. At present this is denied to, and discriminates against, many young people, aged 16 and 17 years of age, who are ‘placed’ in poor quality unregulated accommodation, and often exploited, many miles from their families and communities
10. The Bill should ensure the provision of children ‘staying close’ to their accommodation and former carers, entitles them to the same assistance, including financial support, as those ‘staying put’ in foster care: a failure to do so discriminates against the former far more vulnerable group
11. The Bill should extend ‘priority need’ under homelessness legislation for care leavers from 18 years up to 25 years of age
12. The Bill should define the purpose, describe the type of regime, detail the funding and stipulate the intended outcomes proposed by Clause 10 –‘widening places where looked after children can be deprived of their liberty under the Children Act 1989’
13. The Bill should introduce measures to end profiteering in the provision of all children’s social care, including residential and foster care placements, children’s homes and any specialist residential provision, to end the ongoing transfer of much needed funding from children’s services
14. The Bill should ensure the provision of a locally based family and community service with experienced qualified social workers, for early help, children in need and child protection work – not just the latter group, as proposed, as this will seriously undermine the Bill’s provision for effective early intervention
There was very little time given for preparation of submissions but a small group of members led by Prof Alisoun Milne RSW put together this short submission with the offer to expand and provide evidence on the points made. They were concentrating (as is this particular Select Committee Inquiry) on current state of services rather than on the long term record of adult social care. Labour Social Work Group members have also contributed to fuller submissions made by research, professional and advocacy groups. Readers are recommended to search on line to see other detailed submissions. LSWG will be submitting evidence on the role of social work within adult social services to the Commission on Adult Social Care set up under the Chairmanship of Baroness Louise Casey. Contributions to this work, especially from practising social workers and researchers will be very welcome
Written evidence submitted by Labour Social Work Group (ASC0012) HEALTH AND CARE SELECT COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO COSTS OF INACTION OF REFORM OF SOCIACARE
The Labour Social Work Group a member-led group that seeks to contribute to improved wellbeing and life chances of some of the most vulnerable members of society. Our members provide community and personal social work services, research and training across age and needs groups, and work collaboratively with people who use services, their carers and advocacy groups.
We wish to address the following two questions posed by the Committee: ‘What is the cost of inaction to individuals and how might people’s lives change with action on adult social care reform?
Where in the system is the cost of inaction on adult social care reform being borne the most? ‘
We believe that the way councils deploy their resources to both meet and prevent people’s needs for care and support requires fundamental reform. The current system gives priority to complex cases with high levels of need to the detriment of meeting many people’s needs, and the needs of their family carers, in a preventive way.
The NHS uses a different model to deploy resources that gives more weight to prevention. We think that this and other models should be explored for adult social care. Inaction on reform is being borne by the NHS (e.g. unnecessary admissions to hospital, earlier than needed admission to a care home), family carers (who are at much greater risk of breaking down, being harmed by caring) and by adults with care needs who find themselves ‘ineligible’ for access to publicly funded services, including social work.
It has long been known that best use of public money happens when resources are allocated to meet the unique needs of individuals as they aspire to make their lives the best they can be – support that is personalised. Social work skills are required to support people to identify the best use of resources to make this a reality.
The Care Act remains the right legislation. Properly applied, it can have a significant transformative impact on the productivity and effectiveness of the sector and the lives and wellbeing of adults with care and support needs and their families. We can provide both the evidence to support the above statements and the ways in which the Statutory Guidance needs to change if the Committee would like to pursue this as a way forward. December 2024
UNLEASHING THE POWER OF SOCIAL WORKERS IN THE CAMPAIGN TO TRANSFORM SOCIAL CARE
Social work values are Labour Party values. We call upon the Labour Party to unleash the power of social workers to play a vital part in transforming social care and the support and protection for children, older people and working age adults with disabilities. This will play an important part in reducing the pressures on the NHS and mainstream education services.
TO RELEASE THE POTENTIAL OF SOCIAL WORKERS THE NEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT MUST TAKE STEPS TO–
PREVENTthe need for people to be cared for away from home
In the context of a commitment to reduce poverty and inequality and its devastating impact on children, families and adults, social workers can work with local authorities, community groups and voluntary organisations to provide the inclusive services that people of all ages need: to be safe at home, to thrive, and to become active contributors to their communities and the economy. This would reduce to a minimum the number of people for whom care away home is the only viable option.
PROTECT children and adults of all ages from abuse and neglect
Social workers have the personal qualities and interpersonal skills to form trusting relationships with children and adults who have complex needs and/or struggle to engage because of negative experiences of people in authority. Social workers have sound legal knowledge and expertise in assessing risk and taking prompt action to protect people who are being abused or neglected. This includes making expert and sensitive judgements about the safety and wellbeing of people experiencing crises in their mental health or when their capacity to make decisions is impaired.
PROMOTE human rights and access to timely care and support
Social workers are effective advocates for people who are being treated unfairly or discriminated against; in supporting people to get the care and support to which they are entitled; and promoting social justice.
PROVIDE leadership
Social workers provide focused, supportive and inspiring leadership to colleagues at all levels from frontline casework to chief officers.
REVERSE the trend of privatisation
The Labour government should end the policy of outsourcing care services to profit-driven private sector providers. When children young people and adults cannot remain at home they should receive high quality not-for-profit local care to meet their needs. Government should fund and empower local authorities, community groups and voluntary sector organisations to use their local knowledge to develop services that reflect the needs of local people.
RECRUITmore social workers to replace those lost through stress and unsutainable working conditions
The Labour government should recruit potential social workers to initial qualifying courses in research-active University Schools of Social Work that prepare them to work with people who are at all stages of the life course, rather than restricting them to specific age groups or specialist areas of practice. Social workers need to appreciate the complexity of human connections. People live in multi-generationalfamilies and communities and their problems and needs intersect and are inseparably connected. Expand the supply of these courses.
RETAINskilled, experienced social workers
The Labour government should keep social workers in public services by providing salaries, terms and conditions that reflect their level of skill, expertise, knowledge and the demands of the role.
Provide working conditions that reduce bureaucracy, promote professional development and wellbeing, including regular professional supervision, and dedicated time for professional development, reflective discussion and peer support.
MANIFESTO FOR A LABOUR SOCIAL CARE AND SOCIAL WORK SERVICE
As a group of committed Labour activists and social work professionals, we urge an incoming Labour government to commit to:
Provide an ‘essentials guarantee’ for everyone dependent on welfare benefits
Entrust the delivery of social care services to democratically elected local government
Restore the fundamental principle that Every Child Matters
Ensure fair, respectful and effective social care and community services for older people and adults of working age
End Labour’s ambiguity about the value of the social work profession and commit to its support and development across all domains of service delivery
PROVIDE AN ‘ESSENTIALS GUARANTEE’ FOR EVERYONE DEPENDENT ON WELFARE BENEFITS
The Conservative government’s inhumane policies have doubled the number of families living in destitution to 1.8 million, including at least 1 million children (Rowntree Foundation and Trussell Trust 2023). People with disabilities are going without essential care or being threatened with eviction because they have to pay for their homecare out of benefits (Guardian May 28 May 2023).
To address the urgency and desperation resulting from extreme poverty the Labour Party should fully support the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Trussell Trust scheme to enshrine a claimant’s legal entitlement to an ”essentials guarantee”. ‘This would lift children (and adults) out of destitution and poverty which – as Sir Michael Marmot’s review comprehensively evidenced – seriously damages their health, education and welfare, incurring both short – and longer- term personal and economic costs (see Guardian Letters, Prof. Mike Stein, 26 October 2023; Guardian Leader, 31st August 2023).
Labour should review and reform the Benefits system to remove anomalies and injustices such as adults of working age who are reliant on Universal Credit and are unable to work or engage in education due to illness or disability, being charged for essential social care; and adults of working age who are terminally ill being unable to access pensions to which they have contributed until they became too incapacitated to work.
ENTRUST THE DELIVERY OF SOCIAL CARE SERVICES TO DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Even within inevitable budgetary constraints, as with schools and health services an incoming Labour government must move away from the mismanaged and grossly under-funded social welfare and care services they have become under this Tory government.
A clear way forward, that accords with Labour’s policy direction, is to cut back on overly intrusive micro-management by Central Government (specifically the over-reliance on private consultancies and short-term ‘pilot’ approach to funding allocation) and entrust most funding and detailed policy and service provision arrangements to democratically accountable local communities. Local Authorities have the legal accountability for the assessment of need for social work and social care services, and in partnership with health and community partners, for safeguarding vulnerable people from a range of harms.
There is no contradiction here with Labour’s policy direction of creating a National, locally delivered, Care Service. ‘Labour recognises the preventative impact of high-quality, holistic and relational social care, which can keep people well and supports independent living for longer. As such, the National Care Service will be a needs-based, locally delivered system, where people are helped to stay in their homes for as long as possible and where disabled adults have choice and control over their support.’ National Policy Forum Final Report to conference.
Such arrangements leave the way open for detailed but also flexible arrangements for the delivery of different components of the service, in particular the place of social workers and broader social and mental health services that will be available to adults, children and families tailored to the communities in which they live.
Flexible devolved arrangements arrived at in light of population need, geography, transport, are equally relevant to adults and children (as just one example, there are many families where both parents and children have disabilities or have experienced trauma, where increasingly elderly grandparents with disabilities are stepping in when children need protection). We therefore urge that Labour policies for locality-based social work and social care services for children and adults must be considered alongside each other (as indeed happens in some local authorities, for example that have a ‘Director of People Services’ and Scrutiny arrangements that combine adult and children services).
The first step to ensuring that local authorities/ other devolved arrangements can fulfil their statutory and human rights duties to provide the range of social care services to appropriately meet differing needs is to arrive at a new funding model. The present funding system is broken: many are left without necessary services or wait so long that their conditions deteriorate. We concur with Clive Betts MP who opened a House of Commons debate on social care services on 8 March 2023: ‘We cannot carry on believing that the existing local government settlement finance system, with occasional top-ups from Government on an ad-hoc basis every year or so, will sustain adult social care for the longer term’.
3. RESTORE THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE THAT EVERY CHILD MATTERS
Helen Hayes MP as Shadow Children’s Minister spoke out forcibly against the Government’s response to the Review of children’s social care, saying ‘There is no vision for the direction of children’s social care. There is no ambition for our most vulnerable children. There is no cross-cutting commitment from the top of government to deliver better for every child and every care-experienced person in every part of our country.’ (House of Commons, 3rd February 2023). This continues to be the case as the Department for Education picks off small parts of the recommended reforms. On coming into office a Labour government will need to urgently review Tory plans for the sector.
We welcome the critique of the years of neglect, mismanagement, and wasteful expenditure of public funds during the Tory years that has been made by Labour Shadow team members and Labour MPs. We welcome plans to reverse the damage done to ‘universal’ services (child care, schools, youth work, social security system, housing and homelessness services).
We welcome clear statements that prevention, partnership and community are at the heart of Labour’s vision for child and family services. Set in the context of the current rights-based legal framework (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Children Act 1989 as amended), these continue to provide the framework for any necessary changes in democratically accountable community and rights-based child and family social services.
Early Years and neighbourhood family centres
We support the developing plans for an Early Years education, day care and family support service and urge that policy and detailed plans build on the learning from the Labour government’s Sure Start and Every Child Matters and Care Matters provisions.
The Tory government’s ‘Family Hubs’ programme is an under-funded, pale shadow of these. In addition, top-down structures for micro-management and unnecessary ‘evaluations’ (the research messages are already clear) result in unnecessary costs and reduce local flexibility. Whatever funding is available (and the present funding allocation does not come close to the conclusions of the Children’s Social Care Review) should be provided to all local authorities on the basis of an agreed model to assess population needs. This should result in the development of a comprehensive network of Family Centres for children across the age groups, with an emphasis on support for the diversity of families These must be ‘open access’ and ‘joined up’ with the wider ‘universal’ services.
Respect and collaboration
The Labour government should Invest in models of social work practice and service provision which increase the involvement of children, adult family members (including kinship carers and family members and carers of children in care) in decisions both on service design and individual care and support plans. One aspect of Government policy to be welcomed and built on is the introduction of family meetings into family support, protection, court and in-care services.
An incoming Labour government should set up effective cross-departmental structures (to include local government representatives) so that housing, social security, schools, health services (especially child and adult mental health and addictions services), youth and adult justice safeguarding services work collaboratively. Labour should consider setting up a Government Department for the Family (recognising families in all their diversities and across generations) to reduce poor co-ordination and costly duplication. This is especially necessary for parents who have disabilities and children with complex health, education and care needs.
Asylum seeking or migrant children and families
The new Labour Government should urgently repeal the ‘Illegal’ Immigration Act 2023.
Alongside broad provisions for all refugee, asylum seeking or migrant families and those with ‘no recourse to public funds’, Labour should enact legislation to require that asylum seeking or migrant children are legally ‘looked after’ by local authorities under the 1989 Act provisions (within DfE government department remit) and not subject to the authority of the Home Office.
Children in need of protection and in local authoritycare
Labour policy teams need to be making detailed plans now so as to be ready to provide for children and families with high level and specialist needs and to replace the Tory government’s ill-thought through, poorly evidenced actual and planned changes to community-based and in-care services.
Policies including those for social worker career development must ensure there is continuity of relationships with social workers and other professionals across ‘early help’ and child protection, in-care and care leaver services.
Labour should end the profiteering in children’s social care by increasing the supply and range of high quality local authority foster families, and children’s homes as homely environments where the diverse needs of children and young people in care can be met. This should be achieved at the local level and with regional planning as appropriate for those with very complex needs but without the added bureaucracy and the failed market approach underpinning the Government’s plans for ‘regional cooperatives’.
Labour must end the discrimination against young people living in independent and semi-independent accommodation by enacting their entitlement to ‘care’ up to 18 years of age.
Labour should consult with care experienced children and adults and advocacy bodies on how to introduce care experience as a ‘protected status’ under the Equalities Act for all qualified young people.
Labour should implement the robust research findings on promoting the resilience of young people from care to adulthood. Specific measures that should be put in place for all children in care and care leavers are needed to ensure access to leaving care services, to help young people with life skills, education, employment and training, housing, finance and wellbeing, and support those who require additional help – those from diverse backgrounds, young parents, those with mental health problems and disabilities, LGBTQ+, and asylum-seeking young people.
Labour policy shouldensure that children and young people in and out of care have access to rights-based services, to independent advocacy services, legal advice where needed, and support by care experienced individuals and groups.
FAIR, RESPECTFUL AND EFFECTIVE SOCIAL CARE AND COMMUNITY SERVICES FOR OLDER PEOPLE AND ADULTS OF WORKING AGE
A broken system
The priority that is having to be given to the NHS’s urgent needs, especially hospital discharge, has distracted attention from the fundamental and vital purpose of adult social care. This includes but goes well beyond the essential role that social care can play in preventing many avoidable admissions to hospitals and costly residential care and nursing homes. As well as the implications for the NHS, these avoidable admissions are actively damaging to the health and wellbeing of the people concerned, bearing in mind that older people rapidly lose physical strength, confidence and self-care skills and become demoralised as a result of even brief hospital admissions, which can compromise their independence and care options on discharge.
More than 50% of national expenditure on Social Care and the area of greatest demand and cost pressure on local authorities comes from the needs of adults of working age. This includes people with a wide range of disabling conditions, including the effects of chronic long-term illnesses, physical disabilities, learning disabilities, troubling mental health and other conditions which disadvantage their quality of life and their ‘ordinary life’ opportunities. The future Labour government should invest in local councils to enable them to use their detailed and specific knowledge of need in their area, to develop and deliver personalised services to people in their own homes, in partnership with voluntary and community organisations.
Very large numbers of people of all ages living in their own homes in the community desperately need to receive a service, but are deemed ineligible, or are receiving services that are insufficient or of inadequate quality, often because of the inadequacy of local government funding.
The current model of social care funding and provision is broken. Social care provision is currently provided in a fragmented and uncoordinated way by many different organisations, mostly from the private sector. Care home businesses have been purchased by private equity companies that have asset stripped them so that they have become unviable, and then closed down, creating instability, and undermining the safety and wellbeing of highly vulnerable people. Domiciliary and even more so residential care is currently of variable and too often unacceptably poor quality; although it should be acknowledged that some providers, often smaller organisations, provide care that is exemplary.
Building a skilled, responsive and effective service
The future Labour government should urgently provide the funding needed to cover, for example, the gap identified by council political leaders of all parties, Directors of Adult Social Services, and NHS leaders, in what is needed to stabilise care providers, to cover the real costs of inflation, of more people ageing and living longer with disabling conditions, and to fund the increase in the national living wage.
There is an ever-deepening crisis in recruiting, training and retaining social care workers, and a parallel workforce crisis in social work (see Section 5). There are 152,000 care staff vacancies currently, and around 390,000 care workers leave their jobs annually (Report of National Audit Office and The Guardian 10 Nov 2023). The Tory government has repeatedly promised but failed to make available the funding needed to provide the training, pay and career structure that is essential to give social care the skilled and reliable workforce that it desperately needs. This needs to be an urgent priority for the new Labour government.
Labour should prioritise measures that provide meaningful support to relatives and carers and to voluntary organisations working in the community to provide important preventive help.
Adult social care within a local authority’s statutory responsibilities will always require qualified and registered social workers to undertake a number of specific tasks – for example, assessing the needs of more deeply troubled people or people who have complex comorbid health conditions and and/or challenging relationships within their family or carer network, safeguarding of adults most at risk, mental health and mental capacity/deprivation of liberty judgments.
An increasing number of older people are facing situations characterised by uncertainty, fear, poverty, transitions, complexity, change, loss, social vulnerability (e.g. poverty, poor housing, living alone, isolation, poor diet, self-neglect), and risk. These interleave with health problems to amplify the depth and impact of both health and social problems. These circumstances require confident professional values and social work skills – for example, showing respect, empathy, understanding ‘wants’, analysis and interpretation, negotiation, having ‘difficult’ conversations, managing others’ anxieties and undertaking careful, nuanced risk assessments.
There is a linked need for social workers in Adults’ services to have expertise in working with family carers: to assess carer needs including risks related to providing care and providing support and advice. An increasing number of family carers are older themselves and have their own health issues. Appreciating and taking account of this dyadic context is an important part of the social work role. Tensions between older people and carers arise often; these need to be resolved and the care and support needs of both parties addressed.
Labour policy should give priority to services which enhance the quality of life and independence of people according to their own wishes, as advocated by the #socialcarefuture movement. This does not just mean endorsing statements such as ‘Nothing about us without us’ and ‘We all want to live in a place we call home, with people and things we love, in communities where we look out for each other, doing the things that matter to us.’ It means implementing policies which assure these outcomes.
END LABOUR’S AMBIGUITY ABOUT THE VALUE OF THE SOCIAL WORK PROFESSION AND COMMIT TO ITS SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENT ACROSS ALL DOMAINS OF SERVICE DELIVERY
As demonstrated by eminent Labour former social workers such as Clement Atlee and Mark Drakeford, social work values of compassion, dignity, inclusion, human rights, and social justice are also core Labour values.
Labour policies for the provision of democratically accountable partnership-based community and residential social care services must include recognition that professionally qualified, registered social workers are a distinct professional group within statutory and voluntary sector social and health care services. They are essential to the fulfilment of many statutory responsibilities and safeguarding duties for both children and adults.
In particular, social workers are central to the service provided to people whose experiences and personalities make them resistant to engaging with mainstream services. To do this they mobilise partnerships with family members, community services and professionals from other services to respond to complex needs and support people to exercise choice and achieve greater independence, and to make their own positive contribution to the lives of others.
There is a well-documented crisis in the recruitment and retention of social workers across adults’ and children’s services, leading too often to lack of or unplanned changes of social worker. All too often trusting relationships are not established: deterioration in health and wellbeing results in people no longer receiving the assistance they need in their own homes. In short, an effective, ethical, and reliable social work service is essential to meet the Labour aim to emphasise preventive and community services, and to meet the needs of those in greatest distress and at risk of serious harm.
Taking note of the impact of the high vacancy rate and the documented harm and distress that this is causing, a Labour government must, as a priority and in consultation with professional associations, Trades Unions, democratically elected bodies, educators, and the regulator take steps to improve the recognition, recruitment, payment, training, and retention of social workers.
Specifically, a Labour government should urgently fund, consult on and put in place a high-profile national recruitment campaign to encourage people from across ethnic and social backgrounds to apply to train as social workers. This must be backed by a review of the adequacy and cost effectiveness of the funding streams currently available for social work education, and the immediate increase of bursaries to HEI social work students.
Noting that the social work recruitment problem is compounded by an acute retention problem, much of it caused or made worse by high vacancy rates, and stress caused by dangerously high workloads, a Labour Government should take steps to improve the professional support and supervision available and increase locally accessible post-qualifying training across all fields of social work. LSWG supports the recommendations of Trades Unions, Labour LGA and BASW on workforce development and pay and conditions of service for social workers and all those within the broader social care and social/ community services.
A Labour government should call a halt to the moves under the Tory government to use specialist initial training routes which limit the range of knowledge skills and career options and fragment the social work workforce at the point of entry to the profession. Whilst the development of some specialist interests is appropriate during initial training, and additional specialist knowledge and skills have to be acquired once in employment, early identification with and training focused on a particular age or needs group (as is currently a policy direction with child protection and mental health) limits the career flexibility that is important to employers and to individual social workers and improves retention within the profession. It also limits the breadth of practice experience and leadership capability of those who become senior managers, policy influencers and directors.
A Labour government should, additionally, take steps to reduce the need for and extent of social workers in statutory roles being employed by profit-making recruitment agencies, which imposes additional costs but also crucially means that those who need a social work service are faced with multiple changes of social worker, making it impossible for them to establish a trusting relationship with the professional accountable for making key decisions about the services available to them.
About Labour Social Work Group
This Manifesto for social care and social work services under a Labour Government comes from the Labour Social Work Group- a member-led group recognised by the Labour Party which seeks to contribute to improved wellbeing and life chances of some of the most vulnerable members of society, by strengthening the place of socialist principles within social work policy and practice and within the broader social care and community public and voluntary sector services. As social workers we provide community and personal services, research and training across age and needs groups, and work collaboratively across public services and the voluntary sector, with people who use services, their carers and advocacy groups.
THE LABOUR SOCIAL WORK GROUP UNLEASHING THE POWER OF SOCIAL WORKERS IN THE CAMPAIGN TO TRANSFORM SOCIAL CARE
Social work values are Labour Party values. We call upon the Labour Party to unleash the power of social workers to play a vital part in transforming social care and the support and protection for children, older people and working age adults with disabilities. This will play an important part in reducing the pressures on the NHS and mainstream education services.
PREVENT the need for people to be cared for away from home
In the context of a commitment to reduce poverty and inequality and its devastating impact on children, families and adults, social workers can work with local authorities, community groups and voluntary organisations to provide the inclusive services that people of all ages need: to be safe at home, to thrive, and to become active contributors to their communities and the economy. This would reduce to a minimum the number of people for whom care away home is the only viable option.
PROTECT children and adults of all ages from abuse and neglect
Social workers have the personal qualities and interpersonal skills to form trusting relationships with children and adults who have complex needs and/or struggle to engage because of negative experiences of people in authority. Social workers have sound legal knowledge and expertise in assessing risk and taking prompt action to protect people who are being abused or neglected. This includes making expert and sensitive judgements about the safety and wellbeing of people experiencing crises in their mental health or when their capacity to make decisions is impaired.
PROMOTE human rights and access to timely care and support
Social workers are effective advocates for people who are being treated unfairly or discriminated against; in supporting people to get the care and support to which they are entitled; and promoting social justice.
PROVIDE leadership
Social workers provide focused, supportive and inspiring leadership to colleagues at all levels from frontline casework to chief officers.
TO RELEASE THE POTENTIAL OF SOCIAL WORKERS THE NEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT MUST:
REVERSE the trend of privatisation
The Labour government should end the policy of outsourcing care services to profit-driven private sector providers. When children young people and adults cannot remain at home they should receive high quality not-for-profit local care to meet their needs. Government should fund and empower local authorities, community groups and voluntary sector organisations to use their local knowledge to develop services that reflect the needs of local people.
RECRUIT more social workers to replace those lost through stress and unsutainable working conditions
The Labour government should recruit potential social workers to initial qualifying courses in research- active University Schools of Social Work that prepare them to work with people who are at all stages of the life course, rather than restricting them to specific age groups or specialist areas of practice. Social workers need to appreciate the complexity of human connections. People live in multi-generational families and communities and their problems and needs intersect and are inseparably connected. Expand the supply of these courses.
RETAIN skilled, experienced social workers
The Labour government should keep social workers in public services by providing salaries, terms and conditions that reflect their level of skill, expertise, knowledge and the demands of the role.
Provide working conditions that reduce bureaucracy, promote professional development and wellbeing, including regular professional supervision, and dedicated time for professional development, reflective discussion and peer support.
There was a preliminary ‘catch up’ meeting at café of Methodist Central Hall – a good opportunity to ‘touch base’ since committee members and those actively engaged in preparing policy submissions over Zoom had not managed to meet up in person since our last pre-Covid members’ meeting in Westminster in later 2019. 16 of us were there- a good mix across social work practice, research and policy with children and adults, those with active roles in practice and others with the voluntary/ advocacy groups, and research. Interesting conversations between those in more or less active Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs), some with Labour MPs and others hopeful of selecting candidates with a chance of being elected. Anne was also able to pass on information/ reflexions from 2023 Labour National Conference.
Co-hosts for members’ meeting (2-3.30) were (Lord) Mike Watson and Emma Lewell-Buck MP. (Baroness) Hilary Armstrong (LSWG Patron) Andrew Gwynne (Shadow Care Minister) and Rachael Macaskill (MP for York) contributed to discussion and were there for most of the meeting.
Additionally present were 18 members / supporters. 8 members/ supporters (including Shadow Children’s Minister Helen Hayes and 4 other parliamentarians) sent messages that they would have liked to come but were unwell/ couldn’t make the time.
The meeting was haired by Dr Anne Cullen Chair of Labour Social Work Group and Policy Officer Banbury CLP
Mike Watson welcomed those attending and introduced the two speakers.
Anna DixonMBE Anna outlined her over 25 years’ experience in health and social care, including key roles as Director of Strategy and Chief Analyst at the Department of Health, Director of Policy at the King’s Fund and Chief Executive of the Centre for Ageing Better. Of most relevance to Labour’s future plans, she chaired the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care (June 2021-Jan 2023) is the Labour parliamentary candidate for Shipley constituency in West Yorkshire and has a good chance of being elected as its MP. She noted that there is a high likelihood of a future Labour Government following the main recommendation of the Fabian Society Report on adult social care ‘Support Guaranteed’ that there should be a National Care Service alongside the NHS, but with important differences from the NHS in terms of how the service is provided locally.
In particular Anna drew on the work she had done as part of the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care. She emphasised the need to recognise that social care is more than personal care, and the need to start from a position of trust between the people who provide and use care and support, with ‘co-production’ at its heart. She raised the question for attendees- what will be the role of social workers in providing this service in the future?
Anna has kindly provided the following links to some of the work that she referenced:
Initial report of the Archbishops’ Commission; Reimagining Care Commission
Ray Jones (Emeritus Professor of Social Work at Kingston University and St. George’s, University of London, and a registered social worker has 50 plus years’ experience in children’s and adults’ social work and social care as a residential worker, social work practitioner, senior manager, teacher and researcher. He has led inquiries following the deaths of children and adults and from 2010 until 2016, and oversaw children’s services and child protection improvement in five areas of England. In 2013-2014 he was appointed by the Welsh Assembly to advise on the Welsh Social Services and Well-Being Bill. He is the author of eight books including ‘The Story of Baby P: Setting the Record Straight’ (2014); ‘In Whose Interest? The Privatisation of Child Protection and Social Work’ (2017) and ‘A History of the Personal Social Services in England’ (2020). In 2022 he was appointed to undertake the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in Northern Ireland.
Under the heading ‘The politically chosen austerity targeted at poor families and public services’ Ray provided stark data and evidence of the decline in services for the increasing numbers of children and families going through difficult times since the end of the last Labour Government. (His briefing note is on LSWG website and will be sent to key members of the Labour Shadow team). He particularly highlighted the skew of funding and services toward more coercive child protection services (a 152% increase in child protection investigations between 2009 and 2023 and a 41% increase in children in care (especially older children). To the question, “Does investment in help for families make a difference?” he provided evidence for a clear “Yes”. He also linked the evidence of deteriorating services and the slewing of funding away from family support with evidence about the growth of privatised provision of services for children in care. His messages for the next Labour Government: Tackle child poverty: help rather than threaten children and families; rebuild local public services with sustainable funding; drive efficiency and effectiveness by stopping the flow of public funding to remotely owned private companies and build local, integrated teams and services. He concluded with this overarching statement about the necessity of changing the narrative: Even when the economy is in difficulty (actually wrecked in 2008 by the bankers, then by politically-chosen austerity, Brexit, and Truss – along with the pandemic) and money is tight Labour could and ought to start changing the narrative to profile that public services are a positive good, that big profit taking out of adults and children’s social care is unwelcomed and a hindrance, and that children and families immersed in poverty need help rather than blame and stigmatisation.(for Ray Jones’ Power Point presentation email: laboursocialworkgroup@gmail.com
Andrew Gwynne led off a lively discussion on the place of social work within a Labour Government’s plans for adults’ and child and family social work and social care services. Andrew followed on from Anna to emphasise that the sort of National Care service for adults the Shadow team are working towards must avoid the monolithic tendencies of the NHS. Whilst there will be a key role for Central Government in ensuring funding and setting the expectations, over-arching values and principles of an inclusive and rights-based service, it will be for local authorities and other public and voluntary sector organisations and service user led groups to decide the shape of and ensure the sensitive delivery of local services. He also picked up on the theme of the negative impact of poverty, inadequate housing and poor community infrastructure that resulted in too great a use of residential care and of the ‘cliff-edge’ as young people move from children’s to adult’s services.
Contributions were made by members and parliamentarians and there was a notable recognition of the inter-connectedness of community and residential care services for children and families, disabled adults and elders. There was reluctant acceptance that progress can’t be as speedy as needed because of this government’s financial mismanagement, and that a ten year programme will be needed to get to the quality of service needed. Those actively involved in providing or researching services pointed to the specific contributions of social workers. Whether at the assessment stage of a service or providing longer-term support, care or therapy, time is needed for trusting relationships to be established between the person needing the service, family members and fellow professionals. Rushed decisions too often result in getting the balance wrong between risk and personal/family choice and usually come unstuck, or result in unnecessary distress and unhappiness. Social workers need to know that employer support will be available to them as they work with family members in taking decisions that that may involve an element of risk.
Points raised were (but see also attached LSWG’s draft briefing for a Labour social work and social care service):
Important to broaden the discourse from ‘social care’ – too often seen as actual physical / residential care (at its worst ‘bed-blocking’) to all the other services in the community or for those in residential care that are necessary for ‘a gloriously ordinary life’.
For working age adults with disabilities, most of whom have been badly impacted on by rises in cost of living, their access to local authority services is severely challenged because they are required to contribute to the cost of the delivery of that these necessary support services from diminished incomes.
Labour can’t just settle for slight adjustments to the services they will inherit. Too much is wrong with present government services across adults’ and children’s social services. Big changes are needed. This does not need major legislative change (though some changes in mental health legislation are urgently needed) but rather changes in the way funding decisions are made and the ways in which present legislation is implemented.
In adults’ and children’s services better ways are needed for balancing the ‘risk appetite’ of politicians and senior managers, if the agreed policy and practice move towards ‘co-production’, and greater emphasis on community-based family support services are to be achieved.
Team work across statutory and voluntary ‘universal’ and ‘targeted’ services is essential but greater recognition is needed, by Labour Party national and local politicians and policy makers of the essential part to be played by qualified social workers in achieving broad policy aims. More emphasis on community social work is needed, in initial and post qualifying training, and in funding allocation
In essence, social workers are an essential part of the service to people with complex needs. To do this, both at the assessment stage and in providing longer term skilled assistance, they need time to get alongside adults and children, to establish trusting relationships. They use their knowledge and skills to work with family members not only on the task of risk assessment but also in continuing risk management.
A recently published research report has really brought into focus the special contribution of social workers to services for older people (‘Social work with older people research’ https://swopresearch.wordpress.com/research-findings/
Social workers also have skills in communicating with community groups and across professions, and in ensuring that the voices of those who need services are heard and acted on.
To realise its aims for improved services, a Labour Government must take urgent action on high social worker vacancy rates, and over-reliance on agency workers which result in damaging frequent changes of social workers.
Links need to be strengthened now between Unions, LGA and professional associations (BASW, ADCS, ADASS) to be ready with policies to counteract serious recruitment and retention problems. As well as making up salary cuts, and improving in-service support and supervision, there are problems with initial training (including student bursaries) and opportunities for specialist and advanced post qualifying training.
There was broad agreement that an ‘elephant in the room’ when considering how to repair damage and move forward for local authority adult’s and children’s social work and social care services is the wreckage that is the present system of local government funding, But there are no clear indications of how a Labour government will tackle what has become a serious limitation to the necessary moves forward.
A Labour Government must work with LGA to reduce the scandalous waste of funds going to private residential care providers. Lessons can be learned from those local authorities (across the UK nations) that are building in-house children’s homes, and also from the Labour Government in Wales that is in the process of ending the use of private for-profit children’s homes. This is especially the case with respect to children in care, disabled children and adults. Partnership with charitable and service user groups is an important way forward.
Anne thanked Mike Watson and Emma Lewell-Buck and their PAs for hosting the meeting and for their continuing support, advice and encouragement to the group (including willingness to ask Parliamentary Questions, and including material from our briefings in their speeches to Parliament. She also thanked Hilary Armstrong for her continuing support as Patron and Hilary, Andrew Gwynne and Rachael Maskell for contributions from their perspectives as parliamentarians and as constituency members. Special thanks to Ray Jones and Anna Dixon for important insights and pointers to way forward. And best wishes to Anna in her election campaign.
by Kerrie Portman. Care Experienced Labour Party member and Cambridge University Student
During my studies at the University of Cambridge, I conducted research into how political parties can be more inclusive of Care Experienced People, using the Labour Party as a case study. I chose this area as I am a Care Experienced and a Labour Party member. Unfortunately, I was bullied and excluded within my first CLP, though have since foud inclusion in other Labour circles. Political inclusion is allowing everyone having a fair chance to speak their political opinions and Care Experienced people should be no exception. Care Experienced People face systematic increased disadvantage such as higher rates of loneliness, premature death, unemployment, mental illness, and suicide attempts. These are not divorced from politics, making our inclusion within political settings even more important. Political parties can help create a sense of identity, shared commonality, and sense of belonging. Including Care Experienced People in political discussions can help us feel included and reduce the ‘othering’ and out-grouping. Political parties investing effort into including and valuing Care Experienced People within the Party and policies can improve the quality of life for Care Experienced People and aid the emotional duties of Corporate Parentship. Labour, specifically, has a legacy of inclusion and this targeted campaign brings increased responsibility.
During my research, I conducted primary research, conducting semi-structured interviews with Labour Party members. During this, I found four key themes emerging; a lack of data rendering Care Experienced people invisible unless they made it known they were Care Experienced, a lack of cultural humility and CLP’s being set in their traditional ways, assumptions and the need for CLP’s to understand the importance of listening to the views of Care Experienced people to better be able to help the full spectrum of the community and training and terminology and how alienating this can make CLP’s and politics in general.
At the end of my research project, I included an appendix of all the recommendations from my interviewees, which can be roughly divided into two categories; cultural shifts and practical suggestions. All interviewees agreed that Care Experienced People deserve to be more included and more involved within the Labour Party and I hope the recommendations are seriously considered
Identifying the barriers Care Experienced people face
Make it more welcoming to people in general
Creating a safe space for Care Experienced people to share their experiences
Creating policies that address structural barriers
Recognising Care Experienced people as a specific demographic and marginal group culturally
Increasing the visibility of Care Experienced people
Creating networks, collectives and/or groups at CLP and regional level for Care Experienced members
Educating members on different ways to engage
Placing more emphasis on different forms of participation
More education on Corporate Parentship
Seeking input from Care Experienced people when writing manifestos
Speaking to Care Experienced people and treating them with respect when issues are raised
Specific support for Care Experienced members who want to run for positions (for example, looking at transferable skills)
Having guest speakers who are Care Experienced speaking to CLPs
Creating a Care Experienced Officer role within the Labour Party and having someone to specifically support Care Experienced members
Reducing specialist terminology
Being aware of new members
Outreach to those who can’t attend branch meetings, as well as related local charities and organisations
Specific outreach to recruit Care Experienced members into roles
Advocating for being Care Experienced to be a Protected Characteristic and pass Motions to act as though it is
Promoting Council Tax Reduction Schemes and other adaptions to improve the lives of local Care Leavers
Mentorship for Care Experienced people
Delivering (i.e. papers and reports) in a more accessible way
Discussing which councils and CLP’s have implemented things that support Care Experienced people and things that haven’t worked
Alternating the time, location and formal of meetings
Making meetings “less tedious” and more engaging
Putting thighs for Care Leavers in the manifesto to “signals something really positive to Care Leavers and other people with similar experiences”
Holding regular meetings that explain the basics of the party, what they’re doing and how people can be involved
Co-Hosts Lord (Mike) Watson of Invergowrie– was for 7 years Labour Shadow Education Minister in Lords Emma Lewell-Buck MP has been Labour MP for South Shields since 2013 before which she was a child and family social worker. Shadow Children’s Minister 2016-19 Mike and Emma worked closely with (among others) members of the Together for Children Alliance, and LSWG to successfully steer Labour amendments to the 2017 Children and Social Work Act through parliament.
Chair: Dr Anne Cullen RSW isChair of Labour Social Work Group and Vice Chair Banbury CLP. Anne has worked in local authority services for both children and adults and in a large teaching hospice as a social work practitioner and manager. She is a past Chair of the Association of Palliative Care Social Workers and is currently a Schwartz Round mentor for The Point of Care Foundation.
A discussion on a future Labour social work and social care service will be opened by:
Anna DixonMBE Anna is Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Shipley. She has over 25 years’ experience in health and social care. Anna’s key roles have included: Director of Strategy and Chief Analyst at the Department of Health, Director of Policy at the King’s Fund and Chief Executive of the Centre for Ageing Better. Anna chaired the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care (June 2021-Jan 2023) and received an MBE for services to wellbeing in later life in 2021. Anna is the Labour parliamentary candidate for Shipley constituency in West Yorkshire.
Dr Ray Jones is Emeritus Professor of Social Work at Kingston University and St. George’s, University of London, and a registered social worker. He has 50 plus years experience in children’s and adults’ social work and social care as a residential worker, social work practitioner, manager, teacher and researcher. From 1992 to 2006 he was director of social services in Wiltshire; he was the first chief executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence and has been Chair of BASW. Ray has led inquiries following the deaths of children and adults; was the independent chair of Bristol’s Safeguarding Children Board, and from 2010 until 2016, oversaw children’s services and child protection improvement in five areas of England. In 2013-2014 he was appointed by the Welsh Assembly to advise on the Welsh Social Services and Well-Being Bill. He is the author of eight books including ‘The Story of Baby P: Setting the Record Straight’(2014); ‘In Whose Interest? The Privatisation of Child Protection and Social Work’ (2017) and ‘A History of the Personal Social Services in England’ (2020). In 2022 he was appointed to undertake the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in Northern Ireland (email laboursocialworkgroup@gmail.com for PowerPoint.
Labour Social Work Group 