Should you set up as an independent social worker?

While the job offers more flexibility and a chance to call the shots, you should be prepared for a big change

A new wave of social workers may be turning to work as independents as the financial climate bites. But while some are forced to consider this type of work, others say it provides benefits such as flexible working.

While there have always been diverse forms of social work in local authorities, agencies and now the new social-work practice pilots, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) said independent practice was growing in popularity. This may be partly because of forced retirements and redundancies due to changes in local authorities.

“Many of these members will have already been practising independents but we are learning of a new wave of social workers entering independent practice due to a number of reasons,” BASW says. “This may be frustration with working conditions in the workplace and a vision that independent practice can restore their standard of practice.”

The organisation, which runs a network for independent members, said they now accounted for 11% of its total membership and numbers were “growing in parallel with total memberships”.

Wendy Showell Nicholas, a social worker who has been working as an independent since 2009, decided to leave her job managing a multiagency intensive-support team after the charity she was working for lost a tender and she didn’t believe the new organisation contracted to carry out the work – to which she was to transfer under Tupe – was being given enough resources to carry out the job.

“The biggest fear was not having a reliable income. You’re often paid at the end of a contract, which could be at the end of six months, for example. But there’s real variety, which is one of the things I really like about working this way.”

Showell Nicholas now carries out a range of assignments including fostering assessments, independent supervision for social workers working outside the statutory sector – in schools for example – and training teams on joint-working.

“You need to be really organised and good at workload management,” she says. “It’s critical to be prepared for the fact that you’ll be a social worker who owns their own business – this might be really difficult for a lot of social workers because we can be quite touchy feely. In organisations they take care of contracts and invoicing, but in effect you’re responsible for doing that, allocating your own work and getting your own work in. You can’t sit around waiting for it to happen.”

She says she also uses people skills gained as a social worker in a different context, “to help chase bills that aren’t paid”.

While she admits that going independent requires both “skills and stomach” and wouldn’t be right for everyone, Showell Nicholas says she has learned new skills since striking out on her own, including using technology to promote her business, running a website and opening a twitter account.

As a mother of four, Showell Nicholas has gained more flexibility with her workload by working as an independent. But she has also gained a voice. “Social workers get such a bad press and the public’s perception of us can be quite low. As an independent I feel I have more control over what I can say, which I hope elicits some trust.

“I’ve done a couple of management courses and when I was working in organisations I thought ‘why aren’t we doing this, why aren’t we being more efficient?’. Now I am.”

Showell Nicholas loves working for herself, but acknowledges that it wouldn’t be easy for everyone. LaMagia, a recent poster on a social care forum, said that while working as an independent was great for its flexibility it could also be isolating.

But as the social-care sector shifts under economic and structural changes, it may be an increasingly attractive option for some.

Hilton Dawson, chief executive of BASW, says career satisfaction could drive more peoplw towards independent working, but that many social workers could feel they were being pushed out of working for local authorities. “Local authority social work is losing some of its most experienced and best practitioners,” he says.

“This can be for career satisfaction, as it is a way of avoiding bureaucracy, but, more worryingly, with increasing retirement and redundancies, because there no longer seems to be a place for good social work in local authority planning.”

Showell Nicholas says she does see some of this, but now from the other side. “I work in a lot of different organisations where people are really demoralised, threatened with job cuts and asked to take on bigger workloads because of staff on long-term sick leave, for example. You need good-quality supervision or you’re not safe and people get demoralised. I’m happy I got out before all of this started.”