A report by Andrew Walker is available for download on the website of the Uist newspaper Am Paipear at www.ampaipear.org.uk OR AM PAIPEAR’S FACEBOOK PAGE.
20th October 2011 from British Association of Social Work News
A former social work team manager based in a remote part of Scotland has written to his ex-employer raising concerns that social workers have been replaced by unqualified workers to carry out complex assessments of adults at risk.
BASW member Andrew Walker, who was a team manager at Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, has warned that many older people, who are vulnerable because they suffer from long-term conditions such as dementia or Parkinson’s disease, are being assessed by people employed as social care assessors.
Andrew Walker
The council employs the social care assessors, who are registered with the Scottish Social Care Council but do not have social work training, at Grade F, with a starting salary of £20,044, while social workers are employed at Grade I on a salary ranging from £29,092 to £31,792.
In a letter sent to the chief executive of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and director of social work Ian Macaulay, social and community services director, Mr Walker says the decision to employ social care assessors is a ‘retrograde step’, which will have ‘a deleterious impact on the standard of social care services to our elderly, disabled and most vulnerable service-users, at a time of significant increase in demand for community care services’.
He raises concerns that the adult community care team, covering the Uist and Barra areas of the Western Isles, now employs just one senior social worker, who divides his time between management and practice, a trainee social worker, and two social care assessors, one full-time and one part-time.
The original, generic social work team comprised five, experienced and qualified social workers.
“Social care assessors do not have the knowledge or skills to carry out these assessments,” Mr Walker told PSW. “Many older people are vulnerable and we are living in a very fragile community. The winters are harsh and we often have power cuts,” he added. “In many cases, their families are living some distance from them, often on the mainland, and they require complex care packages.”
Mr Walker, a social worker for 40 years, resigned in April two months before he was due to retire, following stress-related sick leave, which he says were caused by a number of restructures of his service that had left his team overworked and disillusioned.
He said a decision in September 2010 to cap home care hours and raise thresholds so that only those with critical needs received help was among the changes that had placed extra pressure on his team.
“Staff were meeting families and carers and having to say that although they [the service user] had been assessed as having substantial needs they were not able to respond, which was very hard for them and a very traumatic and difficult pill for the family to swallow,” said Mr Walker, adding that the team had been “overwhelmed” with work.
In a statement, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar denied the restructuring of the adult team was a cost-cutting measure and said assessment capacity had been ‘substantially increased’ by the changes. ‘The social care assessors, located within the Community Care Service, have proved to be of huge benefit, relieving social workers of non-complex cases and enabling them to concentrate on complex cases appropriate to their qualifications and grade,’ it said.
‘Cases are allocated appropriately in terms of complexity and there is a clear decision making process when experienced managers allocate cases that define what goes to a social care assessor and what goes to a social worker – this matches their skills, training and knowledge to ensure safe practice and protection of vulnerable adults. Social care assessors will all be provided with Adult Protection training,’ it added.
The statement by CNES is the typical nonsense we’ve come to expect from the White House. It may well be that the assessment capacity has been substatially increased but Mr Walker’s letter has not much to do with “assessment capacity”, it is “assessment capability” he is concerned about. To reply in this manner demostrates a great level of ignorance or arogance, and readers can make their own mind up on that one.
They then go on to try to cover themselves with the statement that “experienced managers” allocate the cases, however this allocation seems to take place without any assessment, if it did what is the need for the assessors. Who are these “experienced managers”, are they past experienced social workers? What are they experienced in?
Finally they state that Social Care Assessors WILL al be provided with Adult Protection training, admiting that they are not yet qualified in at least one area.
Would we expect managers to start deciding what happens to those in need of care in other care professions? Would we expect for example managers in the NHS to decide who or where a GP may refer their patients – no as they would do so without the knowledge and history of the patient and their individual needs. Managers will do things for the benefit of system structure and cost before the needs of those concerned.
Sorry for the spelling mistakes but this “LEAVE A REPLY” window is too small and it keeps on bouncing around on me.
well said Mr Placid Who could argue with that?……
Not me. Sums up succinctly all that we know and hate about CNES. If they have ‘experienced managers’ in any shape or form then I’m Ivana Trump.
Read the S.W.I.A special reports on C.N.E.S social work dept.
They are a damning indictment on a dept. that is clearly not fit for purpose, the S.W.I.A go so far as to recommend that the social work dept. be effectively taken over by another council’s social work dept..Such is the level of incompetence .
“in our meetings with some service users we observed some reluctance to raise concerns about service quality. One senior manager described this as a “culture of stoicism” “.That is a direct quote from a S.W.I.A report,was Mr Walker unaware ?.