Councils urged to undertake social work healthchecks

Children’s and adults services directors have been urged to carry out a health check on their social workers, as recommended by the Social Work Taskforce.

Speaking at the National Children and Adult Services Conference in Manchester this week, Helen Lincoln, service head of children’s social care at Tower Hamlets Borough Council, which has completed its check, said it allows councils to get a picture about social work teams and what needed to change.

She said the local authority had done the check using an online questionnaire, to gauge views on four key themes – training, workloads, tools and management – which will be followed up with further discussions.

“I would have put money on the biggest complaint being around hotdesking and IT,” she told the conference. “But what came out was the poor quality of supervision across the board.”

She added: “It’s a honest learning debate. These things are not so good, we need to change them.”

Jo Cleary, executive director of adults and community services at Lambeth Council, reiterated the call and urged directors to “get on and do it”. The co-chair of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) workforce development network said the council had carried the check out in September and, while the number of responses was lower than she had hoped, it was still worthwhile.

“My challenge to social workers is you have to rise to the challenge as much as us,” she said. “I would really advocate you doing this.”