BASW Cymru calls on social workers to reassert “non-negotiable” values

Social work must reassert its “historic battle cry” of standing up for the poor at a time of conflicting professional pressures and a “disastrous squeeze on resources”.

That was the message from BASW Cymru Committee members who called on social workers to support each other in upholding the profession’s guiding values and ethics. The Committee was responding to concern from members who find it increasingly difficult to ensure service users get the support they know they need in a climate of cutbacks.

In a statement, Committee members warned: “There is now a fundamental deep-rooted conflict in the social work psyche when it comes to delivering efficiencies. It is clear that the efficiency agenda has pushed into the wilderness the moral and ethical considerations so very precious to us as social workers, carers and protectors.”   The Committee said the impact of cuts to services on the vulnerable was, “beyond what can be or should tolerated by the social work profession”. The statement added: “This was social work’s historic and cogent battle cry: ‘What can we do to help the poor?’ Yet again in the 21st century, we are the ones working with those totally excluded from participating in a culture obsessed with wealth-creation and damning of those who are ill, disabled, unemployed … outcasts in their own land, pariahs made to feel worthless.”   In the face of this, said the Committee, social workers must “stand up and fight … recapturing that most precious of moral ground”.   They also called for the profession to have an “ethical approach” to service planning and delivery; for social workers to make treating people with respect and empathy “non negotiable” and for social work values to be embedded into all professional activity.