Six out of 10 social workers believe their ability to make a difference day-to-day was being affected by cuts to budgets and resources, a new report by trade union Unison has found.
The union warned that ‘swingeing budget cuts’ may create short-term savings, but would be at ‘far greater cost both financially and socially in the longer term’.
It said extra financial support from Government would enable councils to employ more social workers to tackle ‘dangerous caseload levels that currently make it impossible for social work staff to do their jobs effectively’.
The union said official figures showed that councils cut spending on social services staff by £746m for adults and £147m for children between 2010/11 and 2012/13, as central government cut more than £5bn from the grants it made to councils.
Unison’s national officer for social workers, Helga Pile, said: ‘We see a lot of crocodile tears from this Government over the plight of children in care or in need of protection and over the growing number of elderly needing support.’
Its charter for change called for the government to ‘urgently focus on how to provide extra funding to enable more manageable working conditions in social work’ and all social work services to be required to regularly publish data on average caseloads so that they can be ‘held to account for the consequences when caseloads are allowed to spiral upwards’.