Campaign launched to get media to ‘change the script’ on social work
Social Work England is calling on the media and entertainment industry to change the way it portrays social work.
Negative storylines to contribute to a poor public image of the profession, recent research undertaken by the regulator has found.
Only 11 per cent of social workers and 44 per cent of the public think that social work is respected in society, lagging behind doctors (90 per cent), nurses (86 per cent), and pharmacists (82 per cent).
Nearly two fifths (39 per cent) of adults polled by YouGov for Social Work England, felt practitioners often got things wrong.
The 110 social workers polled in the survey linked negative media portrayals to negative perceptions of the profession and a lack of understanding about what social workers do.
Launching its Change the Script campaign, Colum Conway, chief executive of Social Work England, said: "It's a campaign about how social workers are portrayed in the media and on television. It was interesting that a key theme in our research was how social workers were disappointed in how they were portrayed, and that portrayals were undermining their professionalism, and the expertise and complexity of their work.
"This campaign aims to shift that notion, working alongside others including the unions and representative bodies like BASW who have been trying to encourage the media and television to present social work in a different way.
"Not everyone will experience a social worker in their lives, not in the way that we all experience teachers or doctors or nurses, so we will have a perception of the profession that is based on our experience. For people who don't experience social work, the only perception they get is an inaccurate misrepresentation of social work in the media.
"A lot have people in the profession have said they want to see the way social work is portrayed on TV challenged and moved forward, as that's the way a lot of people set their perceptions around social work. It's the really quite narrow, stereotypical role of social work that I think needs to be considered in greater detail."
The Change the Script campaign involves a video featuring two young men who talk about their experience of social work and how it made a positive difference in their lives.
One who is in care observes: “A lot of people think social workers are going to swoop in and make choices for you. Actually, it was more being empowered to do things for myself.”
The other received support when his mother was in a hospice, saying: “If I’m being brutally honest, Sharon saved my life.”
The video received funding from the Department for Education, in support of the wider campaign, which Colum said has arisen around the recommendations coming from Stable Homes Built on Love in terms of building confidence in social work.
The regulator is urging people and organisations to share the campaign’s messages and imagery through social media channels.
The campaign comes in the wake of the BASW Social Work Journalism Awards launched last year to promote more responsible reporting of the profession as part of a wider drive to improve public perception and understanding.
Social Work England is also urging social workers in England to say what they think about regulation, professional standard and perceptions of the profession by completing a new annual survey.