The real scandal in social care

I've always thought that an essential in any good system of social care provision is content staff.

Too often we ignore their needs and treat them as if they are invisible even if we're in the same room and I'll admit here that I've been as guilty as anyone else on a social services training course when the room divides into carers on one side and 'professionals' on the other. A few ex-colleagues of mine had worked, or even continued to work as carers, but this aside there was always to my view an element of snobbishness and power imbalance present in the many interactions between ourselves and carers.

Though a few of us did speak out about the conditions faced by carers it was a topic well down the list for us, far below issues like personalisation, or even the personality politics of the department.


But the treatment of carers is so integral to the system it should be the only issue we're talking about. Why? Well we really need to look at this holistically. If we want a system based on dignity and respect then that standard needs to apply to everyone. If care staff are treated with dignity and respect then we can in turn expect service users to be treated the same. Turning an indifferent eye to care staff being paid below the minimum wage endangers our ideals as much as mistreatment in a care home.

Losing touch

It's surprising how quickly we can lose touch with things. It's coming up for two years since I left social services to enable me to study for a masters in social policy and whilst for the first year I kept in touch with the department and the wider world of social care this year has been different. I've lost touch with all but one former colleague and also feel out of touch with developments in the field as I no longer have a view from the ground. Incidentally I'm sure this is also something which is experienced by many senior managers.

So amongst all this it was nice to catch-up with an old colleague last week. They themselves left last year to pursue a social work degree after a number of years as an unqualified care-manager. I was curious about what they made of their experiences so far as in the past I've questioned just how well a social work degree prepares someone for what is a hugely demanding and complex role.

Their view was suitably mixed. They felt that there was indeed a gap between the ideal of the theory they were taught in the classroom and what actually happened in practice, but they also felt that what they had learnt had been valuble in enabling them to improve upon their practice.

Overall this left me feeling much better about the relavance of the social work degree, but it does illustrate what a strange area social care is more than any other as it is caught between idealism and pragmitism. As a worker the course of action which you feel best meets the text-book ideal must always be balanced against the limitations imposed by the availability of funds, the amount of time available to work on any one case, or the state of the local care market.

I was surprised to hear though that many newly qualified social workers have found it difficult to secure a job. Being out of touch I just don't know how the cuts are affecting my old department, but always thought that we had been running with unfilled vacancies for so long that it wouldn't be possible to cut anymore. As I said to my old colleague, as we well knew from experience, the job doesn't go away no matter how few people there are to deal with it the work never ever dries up. It's not as if it is a factory which can just slow-down it's production line. Just how are people coping I thought, is staying behind until 10pm becoming more routine than extraordinary I asked? I just can't imagine how it would work with less people.

My friend was also unsure, but one thing they did know was that the uncertain job market meant that the competition for the best placements was intensifying. They told me that you really need a placement with a local authority unless you want an uphill struggle to find work once you qualify.

When is a social worker not a social worker...

When is a social worker not a social worker? Apparently the answer is when they're impersonating one as Tracey Smith, an 'unqualified assistant social worker' found to her cost resulting in a conviction and fine of £230. I won't dwell on the particulars as it's all in the original Guardian article, but just to say the deception seems to have been mainly based around job references and CV 'creativity'in which she had claimed to have been a social worker.

Ethically this is rather dubious and of course not defensible in any way, but I wonder if the question over what is a social worker is quite so clear-cut. I always remember my first day working for social services; being shown around my biggest shock was that most people were not social workers, in fact apart from the team manager there was only one qualified social worker in a front-line team of 12-15 people. The rest held job titles ranging from admin to information officer, contact assessor and unqualified care manager.

One thing which struck me about my time in public service was the importance attached to job titles. For every visiting professional, dignitary or student social worker we introduced ourselves in turn by name and job title. Each title had a carefully worked out job role courtesy of HR and fitted into a well defined pay structure, not to mention office hierarchy as hilariously demonstrated by this Clare in the Community cartoon (Scroll down to October the 10th).

Despite their importance within the organisation, to the general public such distinctions didn't matter, most would differentiate between admin and a social worker, but almost all, like I had before I joined, just assumed that everyone else was a social worker. Sometimes though this assumption would break down. My first role was answering the telephone, the system broadly operated in the following way: I would take down a persons details and an outline of their particular problem then pass this onto the social-worker who would then call them back or put the form in a tray for one of the other unqualified workers to deal with. Occasionally I would be asked if I was a social worker...

Caller: are you a social worker?

Me: No, I'm a receptionist

Caller: So you can't help me then?

Me: I can see if I can help you, would I be able to take some details from you, then I'll pass them onto the social worker?

Caller: No, I need to speak to the social worker. Now.

Me (to social worker) Umm, I've got someone who says they want to speak to you.

Social Worker: I'm busy I'm afraid, tell them I'll call them back. Take some details.


Pretty much whenever the assumption that I was a social worker broke down the whole system went out the window.

So this poses an interesting question, I was not impersonating a social worker, but to do my job I was relying on peoples assumptions that I was a social worker. My bosses I hasten to add were fully aware of this fact as I told them this many times. Eventually my old job role of answering the phone was shipped out to Capita, would people then stop assuming they were speaking to a social worker when they called in? every so often we'd be told by someone, sometimes even from a professional, that they had spoken to a 'social worker' the day before when in fact the person they had spoken to was based in the call-centre.

Aside from all this within the organisation, job roles though strictly defined on paper also have a habit, especially in times of staff shortages, of developing grey areas round the edges. I've seen safeguarding adults work being done by what we called 'unqualifieds' and it's also not unusual for a newly qualified social worker in a small team to be under the wing of a more experienced but unqualified worker for up to a year.

It was all brought home to me when I was having a conversation with a French Canadian chap and his girlfriend in a hostel on the continent. We were talking about our jobs over dinner. I had described my day-to-day job role to them, but the girlfriend had struggled with some of the language and terms I was using. She asked her boyfriend to help interpret. I picked out two words among what he told her....... 'social worker'