Social Work Policy Panel newsletter June 2026
Social Work Policy Panel Newsletter – June 2026
Notes from June's meeting:
Working Across the Divide: Culture, Leadership and What Integration Really Asks of Us
On 2 June 2026, the Social Work Policy Panel hosted its final session of the current term. Awais Mashkoor, Lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland, presented findings from his research on health and social care integration, drawing on interviews with those leading and chairing integration spaces across Scotland. The session was facilitated by Frank Reilly on behalf of the panel partners: the Scottish Association of Social Work, Social Work Scotland, and the National Social Work Agency.
Integration Designed Structurally, Lived Relationally
The central argument of the presentation was straightforward: integration has been designed structurally, but it has to be lived relationally. A decade on from the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014, Scotland has governance frameworks, joint boards and reporting structures. What it does not yet have, Awais argued, is the relational infrastructure to make those structures work. Integration is not only an organisational arrangement. It is a daily practice, asking people to work across different professional cultures, different accountabilities, different languages and different assumptions about risk, care and responsibility.
The research identified a persistent cultural gap between two systems operating in the same space. Social work brings a person-centred, rights-based, strengths-focused approach, with accountability rooted in local democratic structures. Health brings clinical pathways, evidence-based protocols and a governance culture where protocol is often the primary safeguard. These are tendencies, not stereotypes: there are deeply relational practitioners in health, and highly procedural pressures in social work. But the differences are real, and they shape who feels confident speaking in integration spaces, whose language dominates, whose evidence counts, and whether social work feels like an equal partner or the smaller partner in a health-led system.
Four Patterns from the Research
The research identified four recurring patterns in how integration is made to work in practice.
The first is trust: not trust in the abstract, but specific, personal trust built over time between particular people. Some of the most significant integration decisions, Awais noted, only become possible because of relationships built long before the decision appeared on an agenda. This is why turnover matters. When people move on, they take trust with them, along with knowledge of how to navigate a room or bring a group along. That cannot be manufactured quickly.
The second pattern is making hard calls together. Integration did not happen in conditions of abundance. It happened when budgets were tight, demand is rising, workforce capacity is stretched, and communities are attached to services that may no longer be sustainable. Different systems approach these decisions differently: health asks whether something is clinically safe, social work asks what it means for a person's life and community, finance asks whether it can be afforded, and communities ask why they are losing something that matters to them. Integration requires people to hold all of those questions at once, without letting one cancel out the others.
The third pattern is local intelligence. The most effective leaders in the research were not relying solely on formal consultations. They went where people already were, gathering the kind of practical knowledge that shapes decisions but rarely appears in formal data. The governance challenge is how that knowledge travels upwards. If decision-making becomes too centralised or too procedural, those at the top lose contact with the very intelligence that makes decisions sensible. Local stories, Awais argued, are not weak evidence. They are system intelligence.
The fourth pattern is psychological safety. The most effective integration spaces were those where people felt genuinely able to ask questions, challenge assumptions and admit uncertainty. In spaces where professional language dominates, people are often excluded not because they were not invited, but because the language of the room makes it difficult for them to participate. Giving community members a seat at the table is not the same as giving them voice. Participation without support can become tokenism, and creating real participation requires facilitative leadership that is deliberate, not accidental.
Discussion
The session generated substantial discussion from participants working across a range of settings. Several themes emerged clearly from the conversation.
There was broad agreement that the structures created in 2014 were not sufficient on their own. Participants working in integrated settings described the persistent experience of working in siloed cultures, where collaboration is desired in principle but structurally impeded in practice. Multidisciplinary team meetings are difficult to convene, decision-making often bypasses the ground-level work that has already been done, and the reforms intended to shift resources towards community-based care have largely not delivered that shift. As Awais acknowledged, in many areas the budgets of health and social care remain comfortably separate, despite the stated aim of integration.
A participant working in a hospital setting described a live example of the structural tension the research was pointing to: advocating for a rights-based discharge plan for a patient with capacity who wished to return home, against pressure from a clinical team taking a more risk-averse position. The case illustrated how different professional cultures approach risk, the weight given to family concerns against the person's own expressed wishes, and the vulnerability of social work voice when operating as the only non-NHS employee in a clinical environment. Awais' observation in response was that this was not a disagreement between individuals, but a structural tension between professional cultures with different assumptions about risk and accountability.
The importance of pre-existing relationships was raised directly in this context. Where social workers have established working relationships with clinical colleagues, professional trust tends to moderate these tensions. Where those relationships are absent, the same disagreements can become much harder to
resolve. This spoke directly to the research finding about relational infrastructure: when it is in place, it absorbs friction. When it is absent, friction becomes conflict.
A participant working in a learning disability team proposed a more radical structural response: a pooled national fund contributed to by all local authorities and health boards, held separately from individual organisational budgets, and used to develop shared accommodation, day services and supported living provision accessible across Scotland. The argument was that competition for separate pots of money creates the conditions for blame and fragmentation, and that genuine integration requires shared investment with shared goals. Awais acknowledged this reflected one of the core aims of the 2014 legislation, which has not been achieved.
The question of what comes first, structural reform or better relationships, was put directly to Awais. His response was clear: you cannot ask people to build trust across a divide while that divide is reinforced by their pay slips. The relational work of integration has been distributed disproportionately to those who are already underpaid, and that is not a success story. It is a structural problem. Structural inequality has to be addressed alongside relational investment, not instead of it.
The Collaborative Practice Programme
Cultures and Leadership for Integration (CLI) – Available from September 2026
Developed through the University of the West of Scotland with Scottish Government support, the CLI programme is designed to support practitioners, leaders and community members working across health and social care integration. Following a pilot with six cohorts, the programme will be available to all from September 2026 delivered through UWS's Centre for Continuing Professional Development. It is open to frontline social workers, health practitioners, third sector managers and others. For more information, contact Awais Mashkoor here:Awais.Mashkoor@uws.ac.uk
The programme draws on a literature review on culture, leadership and integration, a 2024 convention involving practitioners from health and social care, third sector, Scottish Government and academia, and two years of co-production with practitioners. The research papers and reports can be accessed in the links below:
Research and reports
CLI Literatre Review (Report 1, 2024): https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/publications/culture-leadership-and-integration-cli-in-the-development-of-the-
CLI Convention Report (Report 2, 2025): https://zenodo.org/records/14918771
Published paper, Politics & Policy: https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/publications/negotiating-centralization-how-local-networks-reshaped-scotlands-/
Doctoral thesis: https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/publications/the-role-of-local-political-leaders-in-shaping-the-planning-and-i/
CPD course and profile
Cultures and Leadership for Integration course page: https://cpd.uws.ac.uk/w/courses/369-cultures-and-leadership-for-integration-funding-available
UWS research profile: https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/persons/awais-mashkoor-2/
Awais also offered to return for a dedicated session on the CPG programme and the research underpinning it.
End of the Current Panel Term
The Social Work Policy Panel has now concluded its sessions for 2025-26. The panel will return in September 2026. Details of upcoming sessions and any changes to how the panel is delivered will be circulated by email in advance. We hope those of you who are able to take a break over the summer have a well deserved break.
About the Social Work Policy Panel
All students, newly qualified and experienced social workers are welcome to come along to our events.
The panel is jointly run by the Scottish Association of Social Work, the National Social Work Agency, and Social Work Scotland. It was created to bring frontline workers and policy makers in Government together to address the issues affecting social work today. It is an opportunity to influence those policy makers and the future of social work with your experience and knowledge.
As a social worker, we know you’re busy and facing lots of competing pressures. That’s why we want to make the panel as influential and meaningful as possible.
Get in touch with us through the panel mailbox: SWPP@basw.co.uk
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