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

I've worked in it but never employed. I have a private pension and a shitty little Nest pension, which I will cash in next year, when I'm 55. I took plenty of the stress of teaching, without getting the Financial package. I didn't want a permanent position.

Me too. And I have 14 years of experience and am a manager- as is my husband (not a teacher by but comparable salary). The fact is mortgage plus bills plus childcare plus bills means we can’t afford to pay in to our pensions because we need to live now and as educated person I am well aware of how short sighted and stupid this is.

Oh yeah, I will just buy my food shop on my future pension pot 🙄

Also, it's an average salary pension so if my shitty salary remains shitty, my pension is also shitty...... Oh and I also make pretty big contributions myself, you know, out of my shitty salary?!

So piss off with that crap.

If the pension is so great why are people not falling over themselves to work in the public sector? You could too if you like it so much

It's the same with all public sector jobs bar the greedy the civil service. I don't think pitting the professions off one another, is a useful approach.

And yet when something goes wrong, and someone dies in awful circumstances people will ask what were social workers doing. There aren’t enough social workers to provide a remotely decent service, public protection is a primary function of social work and we can’t keep people in the profession.

If you can afford the bloody pension! I’m sick of hearing this. I’ve had to opt out of the pension as I can’t pay my bills otherwise!

You still get a better one than private. Also, aren't the left always talking about paying more tax to help the economy? You can't have it all ways.

Nurses got 3.6%, not a million miles away from 3.2%. I think both are unacceptable.

Blue chip FTSE100 company employing 5000 people.
We got 2%

How much do you earn?

Why is this even ld trope always dragged out in threads like these? Long gone are the days when PS workers got a golden handshake at 55 or 60.

😂They really don't.

I don't think it helps your cause to call out other public sector workers, who are more or less all getting pitiful pay rises and would be on your side.

We should be talking about taxing billionaires properly.

Always one. 🙄Which are not like they used to be. We also pay percentages into them. Also a pension of a low wage isn’t suddenly mega bucks at retirement.

Weren’t public sector pensions supposed to be decent and attractive to gain more staff back in the day? My 2015 section is not the same as my 1995 section.

I can't identify where, but my friend is a Director of Social Services. They did exactly this two years ago - recruited from Africa. They all left within a year. They said nothing would induce them to continue working in a broken system in a broken society - and that wasn't an indictment of the social work practice, but the appalling conditions in which social workers are expected to work, take all the blame, and then be abused for doing the job we asked them to do.

Teachers often say they’re expected to be social workers, which doesn’t reflect the legal duties and powers reserved for social workers - supporting kids in school does not equate to social workers by any means. It’s one of many very challenging careers but has a pretty unique position.

Three years isn’t experienced however 25% of social workers leave the profession entirely after just 6 years which means at 3 years many are half way through their social work career.

Public sector pensions more than make up for it.

Getting the email raising SWE about 10 mins after the pay rise email just added insult to injury.

What do SWE actually do?! Coz they aren't even reading the reflective pieces again this year!

No I disagree here. You are similarly inexperienced and should not be leading a team.

I see the roles are different (although teachers particularly in deprived or inner city areas do a lot of social work and I’m sure social workers do a lot of educating vulnerable families) but many of the problems facing both professions (low comparative wages, low staff retention, unpaid overtime, mental/emotional stress/trauma are the same). I assume from your post you are a social worker. I have immense amounts of respect for social services but not necessarily for people who have done the job for three years (which in teaching would only be one qualified year) and already have this level of entitlement. It happens a lot in teaching, ECTs who think they should be a head of department or SLT purely because they want to start on £50k+. No one should go in to teaching, social services or nursing because they want a huge disposable income- it just isn’t realistic. I am lifelong Labour supporter and fully advocate a living and comfortable wage for all- but I would never expect to earn above the national average with three year’s experience.

It’s alright, they’ll recruit from overseas…

£25,000 sounds like a lot of money to somebody from India/Zimbabwe/Nigeria.

This country really needs to sort itself out.

there is no way I would consider a teacher of three years as in any way ‘experienced’.

If you are the only person working on the team with three years experience then you are ‘experienced’.

Why is social work different?

Different working situations, different responsibilities, different workloads.

I’m surprised, given your family, you don’t see the differences.

This. And I’d argue that nurses do a similarly very valuable job but one that benefits a far greater proportion of our tax payers.

It shouldn’t be a race to the bottom- unfortunately 14 years of Tory has created this.

Why is it impossible? I am an experienced teacher (qualified in 2012, have worked in management since 2016) and there is no way I would consider a teacher of three years as in any way ‘experienced’. Why is social work different? I come from a family of social workers (both parents and my sister) and I know there is huge overlap between the two professions.

In my experience a lot of Social Workers are over-worked, underpaid and undervalued. Sadly, they often start with high ideals and expectations and are very quickly disillusioned, hence the huge turnover.
However, some are inarticulate, sloppy and badly supervised but keep their jobs because they are ‘bums on seats’.

As with other professions, we need to value them more and make sure they can do their jobs to the best of their ability.
It is impossible to compare SWs to other professions.