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?

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.

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 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.

😂They really don't.

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.

How much do you earn?

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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%

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

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.

I think nurses are also underpaid and deserve more . I am not sure why what I earn is relevant but I earn around 37k and I work about 50 hours a week and I have a huge level of responsibility. The reality is that being qualified for three years shouldn’t classify you as being experienced, but it does. When most of your team is made up of social workers in their first year of practice, then you are treated as being experienced . Newly qualified social workers in their first year of practice shouldn’t be holding children on child protection plans and they also shouldn’t be writing court paperwork, but the reality is that they are.

Some of my colleagues are working from 6am in the morning. We are losing staff faster than we can replace them. I regularly work Sunday nights to catch up before starting on Monday. I love my job but for 37k I am underpaid.

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

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.

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.

Quite agree, see my recent posts.