UNISON, the UK’s largest union, today laid blame for failures in child protection services, firmly on the shoulders of the Government’s devastating council cuts.
Commenting on today’s Ofsted report which found vulnerable child care inadequate in 1 in 7 councils, Helga Pile, UNISON National Officer for Social Workers, said:
“How many children need to suffer and how many reports highlighting the dangers inherent in child protection services do we need before the Government takes action?
“UNISON has warned time and again that staff freezes, unmanageable case loads and a massive increase in referrals are a toxic combination and vulnerable children are suffering as a result.
“This Government is cutting budgets so hard that councils are faced with impossible choices of where the axe should fall. We need a well-funded service to encourage staff retention, with a higher ratio of qualified, trained staff and proper supervision put in place. Social workers want to be able to spend more time with families in need and less time at their desks.”
A recent joint survey of social workers by the union, employers and other organisations found that many reported widespread use of agency workers as a result of recruitment freezes. Other strategies reported include informal arrangements between teams to help each other out; prioritisation and “stacking of cases”; …raising of thresholds at which referrals are accepted (childrens); and team managers taking on cases.
Some reported that they feel employers are using ‘bullying’ tactics to pressurise social workers to accept additional workloads.
In children’s services some comments suggested greater use of unqualified workers doing assessments which are then nominally signed off by social workers.