One Complaint Every Week For Children’s Social Workers

The number of complaints made against Edinburgh’s child care social workers has soared to nearly one a week, according to figures released today.

Council chiefs said the increase was largely due to the introduction of a more robust complaints system following the setting up of a dedicated children and families department.

Union leaders said the number of complaints was still small given the thousands of cases the city’s 230 children’s social workers deal with each year.

Parents have voiced concerns about the level of contact with their children, not being consulted on plans made for them and the content of social work reports.

Social workers not being available or failing to return phone calls have also proved to be a contentious issue.

The complaints against social workers were all logged as relating to “staff or professional practice”, and increased from 11 in 2002 to 49 last year.

The city’s social work department has been under fire in recent years with a number of high- profile cases, such as the death of baby Caleb Ness, and has had to improve its child protection work accordingly.

This has involved hiring extra social workers and creating a “super-department”, which covers schools and childcare.

Tory social work spokesperson Kate Mackenzie said the rise in complaints highlighted the increased pressure on social workers in recent years and called for a bigger recruitment drive.

She said: “Social workers are under a lot of pressure in often complex situations, so mistakes will happen from time to time. But one way to reduce complaints is to reduce the pressure on existing social workers – who I think on the whole are doing a very good job – by hiring more social workers.

“However, we walk a very fine line in terms of trying to find the money for this.”

A spokesperson for Unison, said: “The type of decisions that social workers are involved in – decisions that affect children and their families – means there will always be a bigger chance of attracting complaints.

“You are talking about decisions to remove a child or perhaps control access in often very complex family situations.”

The former social work department was replaced by two new departments – children and families and health and social care – in April 2005.

The city children’s social workers typically deal with around 2500 cases every year.

Councillor Andrew Burns, the city’s children and families leader, said: “The children and families complaints procedure has been reviewed and developed since the creation of the new department.

“A move towards a more robust and effective system of complaint recording has since evolved.

“We now more accurately capture the nature of each complaint about social workers and the teams in which they operate.”