Frank argues cogently and eloquently that “… (s)ocial
workers' jobs are made harder by constant attacks on their profession,
increased workload and deep budget cuts”. He says that in 30 years he has never
seen it so bad.
In particular he complains of:
- Shrinking resources with which to do preventative work
- “Laborious and unwieldy” data-collection systems
- Being “chained to the desk” by poor IT and huge levels of administration
- High caseloads and workloads
That all sounds very reasonable and very accurate to me. If
you wanted to create an environment in which people find it difficult to work
effectively, and where it is easy to make mistakes, Frank describes the blueprint
of it very well. That’s the reality of lots of ‘children’s social care’
workplaces in modern Britain (and I expect elsewhere as well).
