BASW Cymru: turning social workers into criminals will worsen recruitment problems

Plans to criminalise social workers by charging them with ‘wilful neglect’ will set recruitment to the profession back years.

The warning came from Guy Shennan, Chair of the British Association of Social Workers, who added that the proposal showed a failure by Government to understand the complexity of social work.

Speaking in the wake of David Cameron’s announcement that social workers could face five years for failing to protect children from sexual exploitation, Mr Shennan said the Prime Minister showed a lack of appreciation of front line practice.

“Social workers are tasked with protecting society’s most vulnerable children, and they need support in carrying out this complex and demanding role. What they really don’t need is to be doing this complex work with the threat of jail sentences hanging over them.  

“Social workers need and deserve appreciation for what they do and not to be cast as potential criminals. How on earth are we going to retain experienced social workers in such a climate, or recruit new people to the profession? We already face a recruitment shortage in social work and this will set us back years.”

Mr Shennan added it was extra resources that would help protect children better, not the threat of prison for social workers.

“Rather than making such announcements shortly before an election, Mr Cameron should be pledging to reverse all the cuts that have been made over the past five years and commit to proper investment in children’s services. These services are under severe strain due to large increases in child protection workloads, coupled with the underfunding, and social workers are bearing the brunt of this.”

BASW Cymru Manager Robin Moulster added: “This is electioneering at its worst. While there may be a small percentage of a whole range of professionals who may wilfully turn a blind eye to situations, this is not the case for the vast majority.

“Many social workers are faced with increased pressures of work through large to impossible caseloads. We have information from one local authority in Wales that only 20% of social workers’ time is spent in ‘face to face’ contact with service users and their families. There are many issues facing social workers that can impact on service delivery, including; poor working conditions, poor management support, hot-desking, reduction in allowances to name a few.

“We have heard from BASW Cymru members that this latest announcement has made them feel really worried and under-valued. One member told us “The intensity of the work as you know, requires a completely differently response from government and this can only seek to lead all professions to become over cautious and criminalising the child protection network will not encourage the right people to enter into the professions and after 17 years of front line child protection practice, I certainly will leave.”

Mr Cameron announced a raft of measures to tackle child sexual exploitation (CSE) in the wake of failings exposed in Rotherham and Oxford.

These included extending the criminal offence of ‘wilful neglect’ introduced in the Criminal Justice and Courts Act this year; making CSE a national threat and setting up a new whistleblowing helpline for public sector workers.