Social workers are overworked but the data is hiding it

“Children and family social work has always been a challenging and busy field, however after 20 years in it I feel I can say that I have never seen things this bad.” Kerie Anne is a UNISON member living in London, and her view is shared by many social workers who speak to UNISON –  they frequently tell us that social workers have more work and are under more pressure than ever. But how to quantify this? Every year the government’s Department for Education publishes data on the children and families social work workforce, which includes data on caseloads. Unfortunately, we’ve found it doesn’t quite give an accurate picture. Now, this data is labelled ‘experimental’, which means the government knows it may have problems. Let’s look into it. According to the data, the average number of cases per case-holding social worker is 17.8. The local authority with the lowest average caseload is Kingston upon Thames with 10.2, and the highest is Staffordshire, with 26.4. However, there are a couple of problems with this data. Kerie Anne, who spoke to us in her capacity as a union rep, has worked as a social worker in an inner-London borough for many years. She explained why the data on average caseload doesn’t reflect a true picture. The first problem is that the report is not clear on whether a case means one child or one family. Kerie Anne says, “If it is counting one family as one case, this can mask the actual volume of work – for example one family might have...
Source: UNISON Health care news - Category: UK Health Authors: Tags: Article social work social workers Stand up for social work Source Type: news