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

[forgodssakes]

How are they getting away with this? The sector is in a recruitment crisis and services are stretched as it is, how can they continue to expect people to work under these conditions? 3.2% is pathetic compared to what nurses and teachers have been awarded. I expect that more people will leave the sector and social workers will continue to be criticised when things go wrong despite working under unworkable conditions and unsustainable caseloads. What can we do about this?

There will be the people on here who despise the profession and that will influence their views but I agree. I cannot recruit experienced workers. It’s on a knife edge.

A lot of people don't like paying public sector workers a fair wage but then whine when things go wrong...

Its shockingly low

This is the first year since I started work 3 years ago that we have got no newly qualified workers lined up to start in September and we can’t recruit students into our team who may stay after qualifying as there is not the experienced staff to be able to supervise them!

Teachers have only been awarded 4%.

What can you do?

Ask your union to lobby for better pay and conditions

Work rule/go on strike

Leave

It's shit but those are your options

I don’t think 3 years really counts as experienced.

The most experienced social worker in our team who is not a practice consultant or advanced practitioner is 4 years qualified, I think that tells you something.

That’s terrible. I’m a university lecturer and we’ve been awarded a below inflation rise. We also struggle to recruit lecturers. Course is an nhs allied health professionals degree and nhs colleagues won’t come over to HE as they say they earn more in the nhs.

which seeing as nhs wages aren’t great says a lot.

we are also struggling (nationally) to fill such courses. Partly because of rubbish nhs wages. So in five years time when there’s a massive shortage of nurses, etc I’m not sure what they’ll do. 🤷🏻‍♀️. Recruit from abroad I guess.

I have had to cancel my annual leave twice this year. I didn’t get home until 10pm one day last week after placing children halfway across the country and driving back and I was back at work the next morning. It isn’t sustainable.

I genuinely believe the small differences to other public sector pay rises is to purposely create discord between us.

Where are you getting your figures for other professions from?! Nurses are getting 3.6%. Not saying it’s right, but you need to check your facts before alienating other professional groups who might well support your position.

Nurses got a 5.5% pay rise last year.

Wasn't the bigger pay rise for nurses to counter the low pay rises for years previously?

And still the starting salaries for nurses are generally several thousand pounds short of the starting salary for a social worker? The nurses have got quite a way to go to catch up with social workers and getting a percentage increase a couple of points higher is never going to close that difference.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

Public sector pensions more than make up for it.

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.