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.
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
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.
Labour Social Work Group 