Overseas social workers are no panacea

So much has been written about social work since the trial of Baby Peter’s mother and partner which attracted the attention of the media some 10 months ago.

By Nushra Mansuri

Apart from a tendency by some sections of the media to scapegoat the entire profession in light of this terrible tragedy there are also a number of journalists who have sought to dig a little deeper in order to understand the current situation faced by social workers engaged in child protection work in England.

Many have commented on the serious shortage of social workers across the country and how this is impacting on services and in turn has led to questions about what is being done to resolve this difficulty.

In truth, the recruitment crisis is not a recent phenomena; it predates Baby Peter by about ten years when colleges and universities began to see a decline in applications in social work training.

Ironically, it was the tragic death of another child that bought this issue to the fore – Victoria Climbié. The report of the subsequent inquiry led by Lord Laming called for urgent action to be taken as it was estimated that there was a shortfall of 5,000 social workers employed in children and families work.

In order to address the issue, the Department of Health launched a recruitment campaign in 2001 and by 2003 the two-year Diploma in Social Work qualification was replaced by a three-year Honours degree.

This certainly seemed to turn the tide as programme providers reported record numbers of applicants for social work training having to turn many away.

However, we are only just beginning to see the emergence of these new graduates. Many will only have qualified at the earliest in 2006 and others even more recently in accordance with when universities implemented the new three-year programmes.

Inevitably, there are still significant shortfalls in the current workforce. Crucially, local authority employers say that what they are really lacking is experienced qualified social workers.

We know that some will have left the profession through retirement but equally we know of others who are simply ‘burned out’ because of the unrelenting pressures. They will have therefore moved on or sadly withdrawn from practice through ill health.

Local authorities have taken a number of initiatives to try and fill vacancies including sponsoring individuals to undertake social work training in return for their eventual employment, contracting agency staff and recruiting more social workers from overseas.

The latter has led some overzealous journalists to depict this as a major scandal, claiming that overseas social workers are vastly overpaid compared to those trained in England, are ill-equipped to do the job in hand and are here opportunistically using their employment to fund their social lives.

Claims such as these are rarely based on fact (although I do think that most paid employees devote some part of their income to social activities and this is not a crime!) and sadly do even more to damage to the reputation of the profession which inevitably undermine attempts to stabilise the workforce and protect more children.

Furthermore, such unmitigated attacks on my profession do not seem to be mirrored in other disciplines where the recruitment of overseas workers has been government policy – ie the health service. Many are now lamenting the imminent loss of a significant number of GPs who came to practice in the UK from overseas in the 1950s and ’60s as they are approaching retirement.

Just like health, social work has benefited from its international contingent of employees for decades. Equally, there are those who have trained and qualified in this country whose ambitions have taken them across the globe to ply their trade elsewhere.

Nevertheless, I do recognise that there has probably been an unprecedented increase in the recruitment of international social workers and this creates both opportunities and challenges.

I certainly think that international social workers should be seen as a valued part of the workforce and if anything they are reflective of global mobility whether enforced or by choice. London is a prime example of this given that one in 20 of its inhabitants were born overseas.

Moreover, many of our international social workers are extremely well qualified given that the minimum qualification in social work in some countries is at Masters level.

Unlike England, where so much of what we do is heavily bureaucratised, those from other continents are likely to be more familiar with community-based social work and other creative models which could enrich the way we work and free us from some of the more meaningless processes in which we get embroiled.

Interestingly, there are currently initiatives being piloted in England in residential childcare based on social pedagogy which is practised in other parts of Europe such as Germany and Denmark.

To this end, social pedagogues from Germany have been recruited to work alongside aspiring social pedagogues in England to see if we can improve the way we work with children and young people.

However, not everything in the garden is rosy as overseas recruitment can end up being catastrophic in some cases.

Sadly, at BASW we have been contacted by some international social workers who have told us about the dreadful experiences they have had with their new employers in England leaving some feeling deskilled, dejected and returning prematurely to their countries of origin.

Essentially, these are cases where individuals have not received appropriate support such as orientation, induction and formal training in our legal systems and corresponding duties of social workers.

This is completely unacceptable but international social workers can be vulnerable where local authorities are remiss in their duty of care and perhaps have not thought carefully enough about the finer detail needed to make international recruitment work.

I see many merits in having overseas social workers. However they should not be seen as the panacea to the recruitment crisis – but rather as an important and valuable constituent in the workforce.

Nushra Mansuri is professional officer for the British Association of Social Workers, England