BASW responds to National Social Worker Healthcheck report

The Local Government Association (LGA) has released the National Social Worker Healthcheck Report.

Maris Stratulis, BASW National Director for England, said: "The Local Government Association (LGA) England has published the first report of findings from its a new survey of how well employers are meeting the employers standards for social workers which the LGA hosts. BASW has worked closely with LGA on the recent review of the ‘heath check’ Employers Standards and on the survey questions, alongside ADASS and the Principal Social Workers networks. This is the first, high level report for the 2020 survey. More analysis will be published and every participating organisation will get its own confidential report.

"We look forward to continuing to work with LGA on developing the survey, interpreting the findings and supporting employers and social workers in practice to improve working conditions and compliance with the standards."

Dr Ruth Allen, CEO of BASW said: "This is an important step forward in understanding how well organisations are doing overall in providing good working conditions and support for social workers against the revised ‘Employers Standards’ for England.  It has taken a new approach, reaching out directly to social workers to give their individual views, employing a more rigorous methodology and providing a benchmark for subsequent years and further development of the survey.  I was pleased we could help with questions and there have been some revealing responses.

"It was essential a good survey was undertaken particularly this year during Covid to help our understanding of the impact of the pandemic and the challenges to support the workforce coming through this.

"While the average scores for each Standard overall are encouraging, the responses to individual questions – for instance by sub-groups of respondents, by field of practice and by region - show important and revealing differences. This is important information for improvement and for bodies such as BASW, SWU and other trade unions and social work development organisations working with employers and practitioners to make changes.

"Going forward, we want to ensure the LGA’s survey Employers’ Standards survey is clearly focused on registered social workers. Some other social care disciplines were included in this survey by some organisations. All disciplines and colleagues in wider social care have the right to be heard on their experiences, but the specific experiences of social workers must be the focus of this annual survey if we are to tackle and resolve some of the systemic, thorny working conditions and wellbeing issues that particularly affect social workers in their complex roles.