'Marginalising and alienating' - social workers tell MPs about poverty

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 6 April, 2023

The impact of poverty on individuals, families and communities has recently been highlighted at Westminster by social workers.

An event was organised by BASW to promote its anti-poverty campaigning work, attended by MPs from across the policial spectrum.

Speaking at the event, the association’s chair Ruth Allen drew attention to BASW’s anti-poverty practice guide, aimed at helping social workers when working with people living in poverty.

She said: “We have been campaigning on poverty since the 1970s. Social work is absolutely embedded in relieving people of their social and practical problems as much as their emotional interpersonal problems.

“Poverty is so marginalising and alienating and we have prioritised it as a key area of campaigning and we will continue to do so.”

Dr Allen said the association would also campaign against cuts to council budgets and loss of preventative services “that were so crucial to break some of these cycles of poverty”.

She added: “So often we are hearing that social workers and other social care workers are having to work in the crisis environment much more, reducing their ability to work preventatively.

“Ultimately that is expensive in terms of life chances and wellbeing for individuals and for us as a society and the taxpayer.”

Dr Allen highlighted the correlation between poverty and families coming into contact with child protection services as well as the relationship between poverty and mental health.

BASW’s chair Julia Ross, a social worker for 50 years, said poverty had been a feature of her practice “all my working life”.

She added: “I know about it and I worry about it, and I worry about it particularly now because I see it has widened and deepened, become more circulatory, and there-in lie a lot of problems for us.”

Social worker Omar Mohamed spoke about how poverty impacted upon his early life.

“When I was about 13 years old, I was living in a garage with my mum and my two younger siblings.

“It took me an hour-and-a-half to get to school, the garage had mould in it, the health issues caused by the mould made it difficult in terms of my asthma. It was difficult seeing my mum extremely stressed dealing with paying bills and buying food.

“That made me stressed as a child and it became really difficult to live like my peers.”

Omar felt the support he got from social services was insufficient.

“When I sat opposite my social workers they used to tell me I was a child in need, a child that needed protecting. I heard these things and I thought ‘child in need of what?’

“It was always my parents seen as needing stopping, or the enemy, factors like my school attendance. But what was never the problem and the thing I needed protecting from was poverty.

“Poverty was never put on a child protection plan. It was never [seen as] the thing that was the reason and root cause of all the difficulties I was facing as a child. But if we had more support financially, we wouldn’t have been living in a garage.”

As a newly qualified social worker, Omar vowed to be the social worker he wanted as a child.

“Becoming a social worker, I told myself I would never be like my social workers, that I would definitely see poverty as the root cause of the problem and be able to address that, empower and advocate with people when it comes to tackling poverty as the root cause.

“But even as a social worker today I find that difficult and so I can only empathise with my social workers in terms of why they didn't help. Because how can social workers help? We have structures and policies in place that don't support poverty as the root cause.”

He called on those in power to do more to address poverty.

“There is so much more we can do in the policy-making arena to really support children, families and adults across this country to tackle poverty, because poverty is the problem and it's not something we can magically wave away - we need to actively fight it and it needs to be something that is done collaboratively.”

BASW’s communications and external relations officer Jonny Adamson urged politicians to work together along with social workers and people with lived experience to create a more equitable society.

“Make this your priority and be prepared to reach out to colleagues across the political divide and learn from work happening across the UK both nationally and locally to make change happen,” he said.

“Social workers see the devastating impact of poverty every day. it is a scourge on our society that limits life opportunities and exacerbates an array of social problems. Its human cost is above party political differences and now more than ever we desperately need politicians to realise that.”

David Simmonds, Conservative MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, said interventions had to be evidence-based.

“We have seen things like the troubled families project that began to build the evidence space,” he said. “We need to make sure the talk now with family hubs similar builds that evidence base, that it make the difference that it needs to make to the most vulnerable people.”

Simmonds questioned the success of Labour’s Sure Start programme which aimed to provide early intervention and support for families within communities.

Funding for the scheme was reduced under the Conservatives forcing many of the centres to shut.

“While I accept many people were very positive about the Sure Start programme service I certainly saw on the evidence in my own area it did not deliver the goods in terms of turning round the lives of our most vulnerable children,” he said.

“It simply didn't do it and the evidence emerging from the US, where it was piloted before it was introduced in the UK, rather supports that. We need to make sure we can identify the things that really make the difference to vulnerable children, not just the things that get the positive feedback.”

Simmonds also insisted the existence of food banks across the UK was not something to be ashamed about.

The former Hillingdon councillor said: “Food banks in Hillingdon opened in the late 2000s at the urging of the Labour government who felt that this was a good solution for a particular group of people for whom the combination of the benefit system and cash loans provided through our social services department were simply not a sufficient solution to ensure that children were fed.

“I don't see it as mark of shame that local authorities around the country have made sure that service which could do something that nobody else could has continued to this day.”

Simmonds also defended landlords who evict tenants in certain circumstances, despite BASW campaigning for a freeze on evictions amid the cost of living crisis.

He said: “I think we need to always have balance when we are talking about issues of eviction.

“I have constituents who are driven into poverty because the property they bought as an income in retirement is now occupied by tenants who haven’t paid rent for 18 months.

We have to be careful that one policy solution doesn’t create problems in another part of the system.”

Helen Elizabeth Hayes, Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, maintained the pandemic had “laid bare” existing inequalities in our society.

She said: “Throughout the lockdown I was contacted by families in my constituency for whom it was unbearable to be told to stay indoors in crowded conditions without space for their children to play and often without access to the privacy or the equipment that they needed to be able to learn.

“We know coming out of the pandemic that we have a crisis of mental health affecting children and young people, that many children were trapped in unsafe environments during lockdown.

“Support for children to recover from the impacts of Covid 19 should have been the top priority for the government.”

Hayes claimed cuts to services had contributed to the rising number of children coming into care over the last decade.

She added: “But the elephant in the room in any discussion on the challenges facing the most vulnerable children is poverty - 4.2 million children are now living in poverty in the UK, an increase of 600,000 children in the last decade, with sharper increases amongst lone parent families and families with more than one child.

“Poverty bears down on families with crushing weight, it makes it harder for parents to meet the needs of their children, it increases the prevalence of violence in the home and it worsens parental mental health. Poverty stretches families to breaking point.”

Hayes highlighted BASW’s 2022 annual survey published earlier this year showing three quarters of social workers responding believe the families they work with are being driven deeper into poverty.

She added: “It's no wonder that the increasing level of need is straining social workers and children services department across the country. Social worker vacancies are increasing as caseloads are rising. More than 5,000 social workers left the profession last year, the first time in many years the number of people leaving the sector outnumbered new starters.

“This is a worrying loss of skilled and experienced staff, but unsurprising when half of social workers feel unable to manage their workload and have experienced abuse while at work.”

Poverty and Social Work: The BASW Position Statement and Recommendations