Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Its that day already. We are going to be briefed today at work, on the staffing review. Initially most people thought it was about regrading and the need to get qualified people working in local Area Teams. There's a dearth of ordinary social workers in Scotland and it does have an effect. This most undervalued of societies' workforce (and I am not one) who get vilified every time something goes wrong, but rarely praised for what goes right, are pretty much under siege. Some of the work they should be doing, in terms of getting in there early and making a difference to young people and to families is not happening. Its not happening because they are so short staffed they can only deal with critical child protection stuff day in day out. Which brings me back to the need to get people back to the basic social work. Most of Scotland's local authorities are desperately trying to recruit social workers and most are increasing staff salaries, grades and in some cases conditions to entice people to come to them and work and to stay. Hence our staff review. Prophets among us are suggesting that it'll be further reaching than just gradings and salaries. There is the suggestion that there will be major changes in the structure, to move people into the local teams. That strikes me as being more of a stick than a carrot. You build up teams and relationships that work well together and every 5 years or so, someone somewhere seems to decide that there is a better way, so you demoralise people, move them around and generally mess up something that, if it didn't work in the first place was at least beginning to take shape. Watch this space.

posted by timesnewroman at 6:40 AM  

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