Supporting the Social Workers
The government’s plan to increase the budget for recruitment and retention of social workers will be as welcome to those who work in the field as it would in any other industry. The annoucement however by the Childrens’ Secretary that ‘we need the best people coming into and staying in social work’ is an unfair, implied criticism of social workers.
Of course social workers have had their failings, like any other group. And given the nature of they work they do, many of their failings will be tragic. But although social workers succeed far more often than they fail, they attract much more blame than praise. It is just that we never hear about their successes (the Children’s Secretary did acknowledge this).
The real problem in social work is the attitude of the tabloid media, who learnt years ago that nothing sells papers faster than the tragic abuse of children. And papers sell even better when a hate figure can be identified. Yet because the real perpetrators of the crime can generally not be identified for legal reasons, the next best scapegoat is always the social worker assigned to the case.
So social workers, who are not the criminals, get blamed whilst we rarely hear the names of the true offenders. And because none of us like the idea of working in a job that attracts such terrible publicity, and because few of us are anyway brave enough to become social workers, people avoid the profession like the plague.
But the solution for the Children’s Secretary is not to imply that today’s social workers are not the best people. Many of them are. The solution is actually much simpler. It is to curb the excesses of the tabloid press, whilst working with the social work profession to raise their profile.
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Tags: Career Advice, Career Change, Career Energy, recruitment, Retention, Social Work
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