GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

are always able to represent social workers, because everyone involved with

our organisation needs to be a qualified social worker and registered as a

social worker and that goes for myself, members of the exec, all our trade

union officers, we are all qualified social workers and we all understand the

code of conduct and also what it means to be a social worker. Our unique

selling point since 2011, I would argue, I suppose we all know how difficult it

can be for a social worker, we all work under tremendous pressure. We

understand that pressure from the Social Workers Union perspective, because

we have all been there and actually I still practise in child protection for my

licence, so I understand how difficult it is working with vulnerable people.

Therefore, we are able to use the specialist knowledge and we advocate on

behalf of social workers, both individually on a one-to-one basis through

representation, but collectively as we are growing in strength in the union, we

are trying to do that as a collective group of our organisation, so that is a bit

about who we are.

The next thing is why did we set up the Social Workers Union? Prior to 2011

we all belonged to what is called the British Association of Social Workers, that

is our professional body, but there was a growing concern that our professional

body, we had advice and representation prior to 2011, but we were not always

recognised by local authorities and other organisations, so we put it to the AGM

about setting up a union in 2011, so since then it has been a great learning

curve, but, I suppose crucially, all our members in the British Association, the

professional body, that is something they wanted, so the establishment of the

Social Workers Union now means that our members, our professional

organisation, can also belong to the union and that is a choice. They have got

to pay up and join the union or if they want they can just remain with the

professional organisation.

Our membership at the moment in the UK, there are over 100,000 social

workers in the UK, we set up in 2011 and in 2017 our last stats were 12,000

paid members, so that has been a great learning curve for us as a union. In

the last eight months our membership has increased by 3,000. I suppose it is

hard being a brand new union, but the message is getting out to new social

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