Social workers report caseload increase amid cost-of-living crisis
Emily Harle
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
The majority of social workers have seen an increase in their workload due to the challenges posed by the cost-of-living crisis, the British Association for Social Workers (BASW) reveals.
Nearly half of respondents to BASW’s annual survey of social workers said that workload was their biggest challenge, with 74 per cent saying they felt unable to complete their work during contracted hours.
The survey received responses from more than 1,500 social workers, and a quarter of respondents were managers, practice leaders, consultants or principal social workers.
The survey’s findings, published on World Social Work Day (21 March), show that the high demands of the role were likely being exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis, with half of respondents saying the number of people in poverty they worked with had increased due to the crisis.
A third of social workers were also found to be supporting people in need using their own resources, including paying for essentials.
The survey also found that 68 per cent of respondents agreed that the key challenge facing the profession is lack of adequate government funding for social care, closely followed by recruitment and retention.
Despite these challenges, the survey found high job satisfaction among respondents, with 59 per cent saying they are happy in the social work profession while 61 per cent added they are happy in their current role.
More than half said that peer support has the most positive impact on their experience in the workplace.
Ruth Allen, chief executive of BASW, said: “Social workers remain deeply committed to the people they work with and value the privileged, values-based work they do to promote wellbeing, social justice, empowerment and choice.
“The repeat reporting of poor experiences at work are unacceptable. This is underpinned by too high work demands and too few resources which are governmental and funding failures. But we can also do more through collaboration across the sector to improve working conditions. There are great efforts being made across some employers to change this.”
BASW has made a number of recommendations in light of the survey’s findings, including calling on the government to deliver an investment in social work, with a strong focus on improving recruitment and retention within the sector.
The organisation is also urging the government to deliver policies which address the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, such as ending the two-child cap on benefits and freezing evictions.
The findings of BASW’s survey come shortly after the organisation urged its members and other social workers to avoid working for a new Home Office agency, which was established to age assess young unaccompanied asylum seekers.
The Home Office’s National Age Assessment Board will review local authority assessments and carry out its own assessments where required, following recent legislation on age assessments for asylum seekers established by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.
BASW warned that joining the agency could risk compromising a social worker’s professional objectivity and judgement, due to government rhetoric about adult asylum seekers exploiting the system by feigning to be children.
