SOCIAL WORK in Scotland is facing another major upheaval. The national care service (NCS) consultation and subsequent Bill published in June, proposes the removal of social work from local authority control and its transfer to a National Social Work Agency, which will come under the purview of Scottish ministers.  

Launched with almost no detail about why such drastic change is needed or what it will look like in practice, it will have the impact of depressing the morale of already demoralised social workers and will no doubt see even more of them leave a profession that is already under the cosh.  

As a social worker for 42 years, I know first hand the key role that social work staff can play in the lives of the families and individuals they support. They are often among the most disadvantaged in our communities and their need for social work services is very often underpinned by poverty and deprivation.  

However, with non-judgmental support and understanding, based on respectful relationships, openness and honesty, social workers can make such a difference to their lives.   

Unison is the trade union for social work staff and our Scotland social work issues group (SWIG), of which I’m a founding member, has always seen our role to advocate not just for social work pay, terms and conditions, but also for social workers to have protected caseloads, regular and high-quality supervision and empowering and supportive management cultures, to enable them to deliver the kind of service that most of us came into social work to do.  

Despite this, the situation for our social work members has worsened year on year. Austerity has brought huge cuts to council funding with knock-on effects for social work services. Managerialism and blame cultures in the wake of negative publicity add to the pressures.  

Community supports have been run down with many ended altogether. At the same time, the impact of wider political decisions by governments at Westminster and Holyrood has seen demands on social work services increase.  

Unison Scotland’s survey of social work members in 2019, Safe from Harm showed a workforce under enormous pressure, exhausted and undervalued. Social work teams are facing severe underfunding with staff describing heavy workloads and staff shortages and work pushed down to less qualified staff.  

A more recent Unison Scotland survey, Keeping the Promise, and a survey by Social Work Scotland (formerly the Association of Directors of Social Work), Setting the Bar, reinforces these concerns.  

It describes an ageing workforce, with almost one fifth nearing retirement age and a staff group who are struggling with administrative burdens, fearful of making mistakes and living with the moral distress of having to work in ways that don’t align with their professional values. It reports that one in four social workers graduating don’t make it to six years in the job.  

Unison has begun to work with Social Work Scotland and the Promise Scotland, the agency charged with implementing the Independent Care Review, both of which share our concerns about social work caseloads, staff turnover and the impact on practice. Social Work Scotland has called for a maximum caseload to benchmark staffing need.  

Then, just when we thought we were making some progress, along comes the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. Its proposals for the future of social work will have the effect of undermining local democracy and will also sever key local relationships, so important to providing multi-agency supports to families in need and adults and children at risk.  

This has been tacked onto a much-needed review of social care in the wake of Covid. We hoped that social care staff, so critical during the pandemic, would be better valued and paid and that profit would be taken out of care. Sadly, there’s little evidence in the Bill that these aspirations will be met either.   

What we failed to see coming — because there was no mention of it before the proposals for the NCS were published — was the idea that social work other than adult services would be incorporated into the NCS.  

Even then, the detail was woefully inadequate. Unison and many other organisations and individuals responded with our serious concerns and demands for more information. It seems this has been largely ignored and if anything, the Bill has even less detail.  

The Scottish government has promised further consultation — but on what? It is still almost impossible to see how this will look in practice, the implications for social work staff and what the benefits will be for service users.  

Their promise of “co-design with stakeholders” rings hollow when we don’t even know which stakeholders we are talking about — and when the legal framework for how social work will be delivered has already been laid down in the Bill.  

The contrast with exercises like the Independent Care Review is stark. It began with a consultation about what worked for care-experienced children and what needed to change, drawing on the views and experiences of children and adults with direct experience of the care system. The NCS proposals relating to social work have not.  

Just when the Promise seemed to offer hope for investment in front-line social work services to enable workers to practice in the kind of relationship-based way that children and families want; just as we embark on a joint campaign for manageable caseloads and front-line investment, the NCS Bill threatens to send us all tumbling backwards.  

Kate Ramsden is a member of Unison’s NEC.