Below inflation pay rise for social workers and social work England fees to rise to £120

I don’t have one extra year of experience- I qualified in 2012- so 13 extra years? Is that enough?

And where do you think your average child protection social worker is practicing?

Yep I bet your whole one year more experience in teaching made all the difference.

The reality is experienced social workers are moving away from practice at a rate of knots, because the demands of the job are pretty much impossible. There are many places where the most experienced social worker is 5 years qualified. I know of social work teams that don’t have a qualified worker at all. Which is an absolute disaster for public protection, on both counts. A starting salary of £37k isn’t great for the level of complexity and the potential consequences of the decision making involved, so people move up the line faster than is ideal because there’s no one else prepared to do the job.

You’re right there. I was promoted prematurely. But I have survived very rough east London inner city schools and done my time. Three years is new blood. Sink or swim.

Many ways, but the most glaring is that you think most of a social worker's first three years of practice is training? What the what now?

So you went into management after 4 years but don't consider someone with 3 years teaching 'experienced'? 🙄

Exactly this. You don’t belong in management after 3 years- you are still learning the job.

I'm an ex social worker.

Scarily I've heard from colleagues still practicing that there are social workers become Team Managers after 3 years. Absolutely frightening.

In what way am I being a total div? The fact that is the way you choose to communicate shows everything I need to know. It’s sad that’s how you choose to represent social workers- because I don’t know any like that.

This is inevitable when there is NHS worshipping, it sucks up all the money, unfairly.
Most is wasted on admin managers.

Don't be a total div please

OP you ate absolutely right. My department isn't as dire as yours and we pay better but we are in the south so that might make the difference. I do agree it's a massive crisis though.

OP- You are not an experienced professional in any way. The fact that your department is in such dire shape and you feel you are important is reflective of the state our country is in. £36k for three years work (most of which will have been training) is more then adequate. Complaining about that publicly and online undermines all those that have dedicated decades to the public service because they love what they do and appreciate the welfare state.

They really, really, really don't ! 😂

Quite agree, see my recent posts.

I didn’t say people with 3+ years experience were leading a team. However, if they have been doing the job for longer than 50% of their colleagues they would be considered ‘experienced’. No organisation can magic truly experienced people out of a hat.

Apologies if I release a tsunami of responses but not sure how to quote more than one post, or even if I can.

I know a lot of teachers, Police Officers, Paramedics and other public servants do a lot of ‘social work’. I also know a lot of Social Workers would love to be in a position to help with educating vulnerable families if they could actually get to have contact with them.

No, not a Social Worker but I have seen the damage/devastation caused by the turn over.Cases started but SW leaves and the case handed over again and again to a new SW, children falling down the cracks, etc. etc. Then the SWs and their management being shredded for ‘failing’ when their workload increases all the time.

A subsequent poster (possibly OP) has said 3 years in the job shouldn’t be classed as experienced and I agree; perhaps I should have said if you are the in the 50% of staff who have been in the department for 3+ years you become de facto ‘experienced’.

I’ve not met a SW who was doing the job for the money or wanted to be pay scaled as ‘experienced’ when they aren’t.

Not sure what your politics have to do with this.

Yes nurses and teachers do always seem to get more than any other public sector group.

I assume social workers are on the same pay scale as other local authority staff? So it's part of a pay negotiation which covers a huge number of people and therefore any increase has a massive cost. It's also hard to get a mandate for strike action.

Shocking state of affairs. You get nothing for your money.

Inflation moves about but it’s not far off current inflation and is in line with what it was a couple of months ago and is expected to fall.

I don’t think it’s an unreasonable pay rise - they do a hard job but so do a lot of people in private sector and everyone I know in private are getting between nothing (retailer) and 3%

I’m not pitting professions against each other, social workers have a very clear and unique legal responsibility for public protection that others don’t have. We aren’t better, or worse, or harder working necessarily. Nursing and teaching (who are most often compared to social workers from a pay and conditions point of view) have dedicated trade unions with collective bargaining powers, that act in their professional interests, social workers don’t and so tend to come off worse in collective bargaining.

In fact the best way to promote the profession is to join the Social Workers Union and strengthen it to fight for social work.