SASW Meets with Foysol Choudhury MSP

This week, SASW National Director, Alison Bavidge met with the Labour MSP Foysol Choudhury to discuss ways the social work profession should be better supported.  

Mr Choudhury recently lodged a parliamentary question challenging the Scottish Government to move the role of social work away from being a ‘crisis response alone’ profession.

The Setting the Bar report found that: “Social work has deviated from the profession's posiiton on what it is and how it supports people. This is at odds with Scotland's vision for social work with a focus on prevention, early intervention and enablement."

The Scottish Government responded to say that they want to establish a National Social Work Agency that “will enable social workers to work more effectively with people to transform their lives and implement rights-based practice”.

While this is welcome, the National Care Service Bill currently lacks detail around how this objective will be achieved. This must be clarified before the Bill progresses. We need to know how it will deliver real and radical reform to the delivery of social work services in Scotland.

More immediately, the profession needs investment to scale up workforce capacity and ensure it is fully resourced. Otherwise, we will have a depleted profession before the National Care Service even comes into force.

Mr Choudhury offered to support SASW’s efforts to make these points to Scottish Ministers. We look forward to working with him and his team to urge them to make swift and significant improvements.

If you would like to be kept updated on this campaign or to offer any feedback, please contact our Policy Officer on jonny.adamson@basw.co.uk