Social Workers

Martyn Day Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) for securing the debate and for his summary of the subject. I agree with him that we have to learn from people with experience of care, and that is happening in Scotland. The Who Cares? Scotland “1000 Voices” manifesto is about a pledge to listen to 1,000 young people with direct experience of care. That is very welcome.

As we have heard, social workers play a vital role in our society by standing up for the most vulnerable children and adults and ensuring that they are safeguarded from harm or supported to live independently. The work falls into the remit of a number of Departments—Education, Health, employment, social security and potentially others such as the Home Office and Justice—and it can often be multi-agency. Similarly, social workers work in a variety of settings, supporting individuals, families and groups within the community and working in homes, schools, hospitals or the premises of various public and voluntary organisations.

Social workers frequently work unsocial hours, and in making a positive difference to other people’s lives find themselves under considerable pressure and strain. Figures supplied by Unison highlighted the fact that 80% of its social worker members experienced

“emotional distress during the day”

and almost half felt “over the limit” with the volume of cases for which they were responsible. There can be no doubt that the role is challenging at the best of times, and of course if something does go seriously wrong, it can attract a huge volume of negative media coverage, significantly adding to workers’ stress levels.

Last year, Scotland’s Social Work Services Strategic Forum found that the public actually have a more positive view of social services than social service workers and institutions perceive. Overall, people in Scotland are positive about social services’ impact on society and believe that those services perform an important public role. Indeed, 73% of the public agree that social services play an important role in supporting the most vulnerable people in communities. That is a good statistic and one that we should not tire of telling people about.

I am pleased to say that that has also been my experience. My constituency is fairly typical of the demographic challenges faced across many parts of the country. That means that the role of social workers becomes ever more important in supporting people living with dementia and their family carers. When family carers, who are often advanced in years themselves, become ill, it is often to the social work service that they turn.

The recent bad weather—two weeks ago—brought knee-deep snow across my local area. I am aware of social workers going the extra mile until the situation stabilised. There are many examples of social workers going on foot from their own home to the homes of service users living in their neighbourhoods, and providing help with personal care when the social care providers were unable to get through the snow. I am aware of staff from children’s services in the Falkirk Council area, for example, staying on for double shifts and staying overnight at colleagues’ homes to ensure that they were ready and able to be back in work the next day. As a result, all the children and young people were cared for by a consistent residential care staff, despite the snow and freezing conditions. I am grateful for their efforts and commitment to the role.

Similar examples occurred in the West Lothian Council area, where staff went above and beyond to ensure that residents who rely on them for care were supported during the bad weather. Staff turned up for shifts when not scheduled to work, to ensure care could still be provided if colleagues were unable to come in due to the conditions, and helped out in other areas. To give just one positive example, a member of staff who went to pick up a prescription for a service user was told by the chemist of other vulnerable people unable to collect prescriptions, and delivered the lot. That kind of commitment above and beyond is often overlooked.

I take this opportunity to publicly put on record my thanks to all who helped out during those difficult days a few weeks ago, but social workers play a vital—sometimes thankless—role throughout the year. The recent inclement weather conditions simply helped to highlight how essential that role has been to members of our community.

In conclusion, social workers are highly qualified and professional individuals, who contribute greatly to our society and to the protection of our most vulnerable citizens. We must therefore ensure that they are not working under undue strain, and that they are adequately resourced to support the public services and meet the demands we place upon them.