GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

were finding that social work managers were going up the ladder very quickly,

which meant that the knowledge base of managerial support was really in

decline and that was having an impact on social workers. Peer support was

reducing because if social workers were that busy, they were spending less

time with their colleagues and particularly service user behaviour was a worry

for us, that there were more attacks and more physical abuse towards social

work professionals, another concern.

Moving on from that, to itemise the key findings then, what we have looked at is

that 46% of social workers were dissatisfied in 2018. We ran a similar study in

2017 which at the time was another large study with 2,200 social workers and

that figure was 41%, so not only has it increased, but it has increased over a 12

month period. This is the particular one I want to highlight, that seven out of

ten social workers continue to attend work when they are not feeling well. That

is okay. Well, it is not okay. It is okay in the fact that they need to get on with

their job, but the other side of that is that they turning up for work because they

have got increased deadlines and they have got jobs to complete in a certain

time. 60% of social workers are looking to leave their current job within the

next 15 months. You might say 60%, but already I have been notified by local

authorities that up to 50% and 55% of certain local authorities are now short of

social workers, they are now leaving the profession, so, again, another

concern, because everyone in this room will probably use the social work

service somewhere related to their family or their friends, either through

children, through adults or maybe their elderly parents. At the end of the day, if

we have not got the social workers to do the job, then that is a concern for us in

the union. 40% of social workers are highlighting aggressive behaviour and,

again, that is not acceptable, but overall social workers want to remain

dedicated to the service users we work with, but that is very difficult for us.

In summary, what I am asking for from the BGCM and affiliates is to assist us in

raising the issue and the hard working conditions of social workers, helping us

to argue that further and we are asking for strong leadership and that we all be

in support for social workers. We want to reduce the stress, we want to be able

to do the job. We also want to ensure time for reflective supervision, that social

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