Children and Young People Now reports that the UK government is set to create a new
organisation that they say will try to give social workers similar professional
status to doctors and lawyers. The organisation will, it is said, be tasked
with driving-up standards in children’s and adults’ social work practice,
education and training.
My first reaction is that all this sounds rather familiar
– a College of Social Work Mk 2 perhaps? If so why did the Government let the Mk1 College go down the pan? I dare say we can ponder that puzzle ad infinitum and be no wiser. There are
wheels within wheels, as they say.
My second reaction is that this proposed new body will never
confer on social work similar professional status to medicine and law unless it
is owned and governed by members of the social work profession. The medical royal
colleges and the equivalent legal professional bodies – the Bar Council and the
Law Society – are run and controlled, respectively, by doctors and lawyers. From
the scant amount of information currently available, the new social work body
looks like it will be some sort offshoot of government, combining the functions
of a regulator in addition to professional development. The nightmare scenario
is that it will be run by civil servants and government advisers and regularly
interfered with by politicians – a dire prospect.
I only hope I am wrong, because if the government is
creating the kind of malign behemoth I fear, that will effectively block the
achievement of full professional status for social workers for the foreseeable
future.
