Social worker crisis ‘getting worse’ – claims head of children’s services

The crisis with social workers continues as a warning of “an epidemic of stress” is issued and the head of children’s services at Birmingham announced that his staff average around five weeks sick leave every year.

Citing the Baby Peter case as a catalyst for the problems, Colin Tucker revealed that staff were off for roughly three-and-a-half times the national average for other sectors. The main reasons were stress, anxiety and depression but being overworked was another significant factor. At any one time, between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of social worker posts in Tucker’s department were empty.

Tucker said: “What the Baby Peter situation has done, in my view, is cause a loss of nerve among other agencies, which is reflected in a much higher level of referrals to the child protection team. In one area, Aston, just one team alone now deals with more than 700 referrals a month.”

Helga Pile, Unison’s national officer for social workers, agreed that the Baby P case had had a major knock-on effect across the sector.

“Since the Baby Peter case there have been many more referrals involving court appearances,” she said. “Because of the pressure of work a lot of staff end up preparing court papers at home, or even on holiday. It’s something that just absolutely has to be done before you stand up in front of a judge.”

She also reckoned there had been “a marked increase in the level of hostility” towards social workers since the case, adding to stress levels. The other problem was workers were having their independence taken away from them.

“One member was telling me that even for something as simple as referring someone to meals on wheels she had to go through two separate tiers of management. This feeling of having no control can be very stressful,” Pile said.

However, the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: “We’re addressing historic recruitment and retention problems but let’s be realistic – there is no quick fix to the challenges faced by frontline social workers over the last year. Our social work task force set out groundbreaking long-term reforms to training, career structure, workloads and pay to transform the profession – all of which ministers accepted.”