Social Work Policy Panel newsletter November 2025
Notes from November's meeting:
Update on the Scottish Social Work Partnership: Session Summary
On 11 November 2025, the Social Work Policy Panel hosted an update session on the Scottish Social Work Partnership, bringing together colleagues from across Scotland to hear about the formation of the National Social Work Agency and the Partnership. The session provided an opportunity for frontline social workers to engage directly with those leading these developments and to influence the strategic direction of social work in Scotland.
The National Social Work Agency
Eleanor McCallum, Participation and Engagement Manager supporting the development of the National Social Work Agency, outlined the agency's structure and remit. Set to launch in spring 2026, the agency will operate as an executive agency of the Scottish Government - maintaining connection to government whilst having greater independence and a specific social work focus.
The agency will provide professional social work advice to Scottish ministers and support the new National Chief Social Work Advisor, Joanna Macdonald. Key responsibilities include coordinating and developing national social work policy, overseeing social work education and learning, and overseeing, with local government partners, workforce planning and improvement priorities. The National Chief Social Work Advisor will report annually to ministers on the state of social work services and the workforce across Scotland.
The National Chief Social Work Advisor role will be statutory, putting social work on equal footing with nursing, medicine, and allied health professions - something the profession has never had before. This provides a formalised route to engage with ministers and local government leaders.
The Scottish Social Work Partnership
Flora Aldridge, Head of Operations at Social Work Scotland, explained how the Partnership brings together three key bodies: the National Social Work Agency (representing Scottish Government), COSLA (representing local government), and Social Work Scotland (representing local social work leaders). Currently in a shadow phase, the Partnership will be fully launched in June 2026.
The Partnership aims to ensure Scotland has a skilled, supported and sustainable social work workforce that upholds human rights, promotes social justice and discharges statutory duties on behalf of local government. Critically, it seeks to promote and reinforce the value of social work across all systems in which it operates.
An Advisory Board comprised of key stakeholders - including trade unions, professional organisations like SASW, Community Justice Scotland, regulatory bodies (Care Inspectorate and SSSC), and higher education institutions - provides guidance and helps ensure the voice of social work is heard. The Partnership represents a fundamentally different way of working, with a Memorandum of Understanding providing authority to coordinate activity across Scotland in ways previously impossible.
Current Priority Areas
In addition to the ongoing work to establish the Partnership, partners are currently focusing on three initial key policy themes, each led by a different partner organisation, with contributions from others:
- Social Work Education and Learning (led by Scottish Government)
Work includes developing a social work career resource to support the journey from qualification through career progression, establishing local learning partnerships to connect higher education institutions with practice, and implementing graduate apprenticeships. 26 new social workers commenced the first graduate apprenticeship pilot on 26 October 2025 across five local authorities - one employer received 96 applications for just six spaces. A new framework for social work education will be published in spring 2026, including post-qualifying standards.
- Workforce Planning (led by COSLA)
Currently, this strand focuses on workforce profiling and understanding demand for social workers, articulating the context that workforce planning operates within, and better understanding the workforce planning aspirations of the SSWP’s core partners. COSLA will work with other agencies to identify data to help with a future national workforce plan. This might include public health, workforce, and wider socio-economic data. An aim is to better forecast supply and demand, which amongst other things, could inform education and training provision. COSLA is also establishing new structures including a Special Interest Group focused on workforce shortages (a political group) and a there is also a recently established Chief Executive-led Local Government Workforce Board.Professional Governance and Leadership (led by Social Work Scotland)
Work includes developing a professional governance framework (particularly important for integrated settings where social work's voice can be muffled), creating mentoring frameworks for leadership, and delivering leadership development sessions. A self-assessment tool has been developed to help chief social work officers examine local governance structures and ensure social work visibility.
Discussion: Frontline Voices and Concerns
The Challenge of Demonstrating Impact
A panel member described a widespread concern amongst social workers: that despite extensive consultation and engagement exercises, change often fails to materialise in ways that frontline workers can see and feel. Social workers invest considerable time and commitment in engagement processes, yet frequently experience their profession being disrespected by other professionals and their concerns seemingly unheard.
Of particular concern is the challenge of local funding conflicts, where resources are diverted to other agencies leaving social workers unable to directly benefit the people they're trying to help. This represents one of the biggest reasons people leave the profession. As a result, the Partnership needs to actively fight for social work and directly address these resource pressures.
Flora Aldridge acknowledged these concerns, while emphasising that the Partnership must win hearts and minds by demonstrating real change, and that ongoing engagement will be essential to check whether the work is having the intended effect.
Visibility and Inclusion of Social Workers
The partners clarified that whilst the three principal partners lead the work, the Partnership includes all social workers in Scotland. Each priority area has working groups with social worker representation, and there are numerous opportunities for involvement.
Laura Kerr, from Social Work Scotland, recommended that local areas to organise and influence the Partnership. In Dundee, the chief social work officer held an all-staff event on profiling values and gaining national influence. Frontline voices are essential—they understand current practice realities.
Short-term versus Long-term Change
The short-term improvements include the way of working between partners and more coordinated responses to workforce pressures. Longer-term work will focus on strengthening social work's voice in integrated settings and broader systems, ensuring the profession's contribution is properly recognised and valued. However, partners were frank that this work does not come with significant additional funding but will use existing resources and structures more effectively and collaboratively.
Respect and Recognition of Social Work
Fiona Clements, from OCSWA/Agency team, highlighted a crucial task for the Partnership: helping people understand what social workers actually do. Most people outside the profession have limited understanding beyond stereotypes about care home assessments or child removal. The skills, knowledge, experience and complexity of social work practice must be communicated more widely.
The meeting noted that social work rarely receives positive public recognition - successful interventions that keep children safely with families or prevent crises do not make headlines. Whilst social workers do not need thanks from the people they help, the public does need to understand the difference that is made.
The Path Forward: Engagement and Strategic Planning
Louise Wright, Policy Manager at COSLA, outlined plans for continued engagement leading to the publication of a strategic plan in June 2026. Every comment and theme raised during this engagement period will be analysed and compiled into an engagement report by government colleagues, ideally following a "you said, we did" format to demonstrate how frontline input has shaped the strategy.
Importantly, the Partnership has joint political oversight in an unprecedented way. COSLA spokespersons for workforce and health and social care are working directly with Scottish ministers to discuss the social work workforce and the SSWP. This represents a significant structural improvement.
The strategic plan will pull together priority areas around education, workforce planning, and professional governance, but crucially will be informed by ongoing consultation about what matters most to practitioners. Partners emphasised the critical importance of social workers engaging with this process to ensure the Partnership truly reflects and addresses frontline concerns.
Conclusion: Grounds for Hope
Whilst acknowledging the significant challenges facing social work - including workforce pressures, resource constraints, and historical disappointments when promised changes failed to materialise - the session ended on a hopeful note. Partners demonstrated genuine commitment to making the Partnership work, backed by new statutory mechanisms and governance structures that provide new opportunities to address the problems facing social work.
Laura Kerr emphasised that the Partnership represents an opportunity to address a significant omission from the National Care Service discussions: proper recognition of social work's role and values in shaping and transforming systems. Louise Wright pointed to the impressive achievement of establishing a new national partnership with governance structures and ways of working in just six months, demonstrating partners' belief in making a real difference.
The graduate apprenticeship pilot provides tangible evidence of progress, with overwhelming interest demonstrating public appetite for social work careers. The challenge now is to sustain current social workers through continuing pressures whilst the Partnership's work takes effect, and to ensure that frontline practitioners can see and feel the impact of these structural changes in their day-to-day practice.
This represents ongoing work rather than a finished product. The invitation remains open for social workers to continue engaging, questioning, and suggesting alternatives to ensure that the Partnership truly serves the profession and, ultimately, the people and communities social workers’ support.
About the Social Work Policy Panel
All students, newly qualified and experienced social workers are welcome to come along to our events.
The panel is jointly run by the Scottish Association of Social Work, the Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser, and Social Work Scotland. It was created to bring frontline workers and policy makers in Government together to address the issues affecting social work today. It is an opportunity to influence those policy makers and the future of social work with your experience and knowledge.
As a social worker, we know you’re busy and facing lots of competing pressures. That’s why we want to make the panel as influential and meaningful as possible.
Get in touch with us through the panel mailbox: SWPP@basw.co.uk
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