Why social workers in Merseyside are coming together

In the face of negative publicity and cuts to services, social workers are starting to find their voice, says Anna McLaughlin. Here she explains why she is involved in setting up a new BASW branch in Merseyside, which meets for the first time on Wednesday, 14 October.

I’ve been a social worker working in child protection for nearly ten years now. I love what I do and I couldn’t imagine doing any other job, but sometimes it feels like a really difficult profession to be in.

Social work is the kind of job that when you tell people what you do, the usual response will be an uncomfortable look followed by ‘I couldn’t do your job’. Just what you need when you’re on a night out and trying not to think about your ever-growing ‘to do list’.

I’ve got to the stage where if someone asks what I do for a living I’ll often just tell them I work in an office or behind the checkout at a supermarket to avoid the usual response and I know many of my colleagues do the same.

As well as the difficult nature of our work, most social workers will admit to waking up in the middle of the night thinking about all the things they need to do the next day. Often it’s not the type of work that causes us stress, it’s the volume.

So why do we sign up for such a thankless task? I think most people go into the social work profession because they have an inbuilt passion for wanting to help others. Social work is built on a strong value base, which is something many people don’t always appreciate.

Social workers care deeply about the people they work with. We might not always show it, but we do. Even if we just manage to make a difference to one person’s life throughout our career, then we have made a difference and that’s what we try and hold onto when we’re awake at 4am going through our ‘to do’ list.

Social work has had a really bad press over the past few years. All those cases reported on the news where social work practice has been called into question takes its toll on every social worker.

We feel a collective responsibility to try and portray our profession in a good light so when the press criticises one social worker, we all feel it. This also makes us feel vulnerable about our own job, knowing that often inaccurate and sensationalist media reporting often unfairly puts the social worker in the firing line and this means we could be next.

There are actually thousands of amazing social workers out there very quietly doing a brilliant job every day. But on soaps and TV dramas we are often either portrayed as heartless villains or incompetent idiots. In fact, the vast majority of social workers are highly professional, competent and deeply caring people and we want the world to know this.

The austerity measures being implemented by the Government are now starting to really bite across the country in all areas of the public sector and as every round of budget savings are made, our job becomes more and more challenging.

Budgets to protect the vulnerable are not ring-fenced and there will always be children and adults who need protecting. A continuing reduction in the resources going into public services budgets makes it harder to protect people and ironically increases the number who need us too. While we continue to attract people to the profession, for every batch of graduates who can’t wait to get started, we also have experienced social workers leaving the job because they just can’t cope anymore with the pressures of the role.

For all these reasons the British Association of Social Workers is setting up a new branch in Merseyside. Over the past few years BASW has been growing in size. Social workers are starting to find their voice and stand up for our profession and the people we are trying to help. Merseyside is well known for being caring, compassionate and just. The recent responses from ordinary people to the refugee crisis and the Neo-Nazi ‘White Man March’ demonstrated this perfectly and made me incredibly proud to be a Merseysider.

Social workers in Merseyside are no exception to this too. We want to champion the cause of the most vulnerable in society who have no voice and importantly show the Government that we cannot protect people without adequate resources to do so. So join us. Our first meeting will take place on Wednesday 14 October 2015 at 6.30pm in the Unite Building Liverpool and will be attended by BASW UK Chair Guy Shennan.

Anna McLaughlin
BASW Merseyside Shadow Chair