Shropshire social worker caseloads ‘have doubled’
Wednesday 11th August 2010, 4:30PM BST.
Shropshire social workers have seen their caseloads more than double in five years according to a Shirehall union leader who said the situation was so bad that staff think working in London may be easier.
Patricia Wilson, branch secretary for Shropshire Unison echoed the comments of her deputy Lou Gladden who said last week the county was “very, very lucky” it has not had its own Baby P case due to growing workload pressure on council staff and funding cuts.
But a Shropshire councillor today said the situation was actually improving.
Ms Wilson said in one case a social worker had seen her workload increase from 22 cases in 2005 to 53 this year, with the pressure being so high she had decided to leave her post.
“She left quite recently because she had a current caseload of 53 which were high risk factor cases, these are not light touches these are 53 intensive cases,” said Ms Wilson.
“She has gone to work in London because she actually thinks she will be better off there. This is before the council has tightened its budget and I believe it is only going to get worse.”
Mr Gladden said last week the situation was already at “breaking point” and highlighted pressures in children’s care.
He said it was a “flip of a coin” scenario as to whether there would be a Baby P case in Shropshire.
Baby P – 17-month-old Peter Connelly – died in London in 2007 after suffering horrific abuse.
Councillor Cecilia Motley, Shropshire Council portfolio holder for Children and Young People, today said it was important to put the situation in the county in context and claimed the situation had improved.
She said: “Everybody would accept that since the Baby P case it has been very difficult to recruit social workers. We have had to rely on filling vacancies with agency workers, however we have in recent months carried out a major programme and we are actually employing more social workers now and we will shortly be able to dispense the agency staff.
“We are being very careful about case-loads and I think the situation has actually improved.”
By Russell Roberts
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It’s troubling to see these massive increases in caseloads. Social workers are under a lot of pressure already, and this only seems to be increasing. Some research by ‘Liquid Personnel’ has been bosted on the Community Care website showing increases in caseloads acrosss the county:
http://www.liquidpersonnel.com/2010/08/11/social-work-survey-4-in-10-social-workers-have-unmanageable-caseloads/
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Yes there is a massive increase in the caseloads of Social Workers, due to the damned if we do,and damned if we don’t scenario, but if one Local Authority has recently dropped 200 of their cases, so they can concentrate on safeguarding vulnerable children, the former could of occurred within other Local Authority’s as well?
I will be submitting a freedom of information request to all LAs within the UK,for their statistics.
The question is if a Social Services departments can drop cases,should they of been instigated in the first place?
The first Freedom of information request will be Shropshire.
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If social work departments across the country stop stealing children, under false pretenses from innocent parents they will have workable case loads, corporate greed is causing this overload problem. Corporate fraud, underhanded dealings lies and perjury in court does not help. For any decent law abiding social workers, who genuinely care about children must be totally demoralized with the corrupt system and the abuses of the authority by the majority of unscrupulous heathens who deliberately and callously destroy families to justify even having a job. It is time there was a big shake up in Social Services. I believe that this would be the best money saver for our overstretched and bankrupt government. Quite simply get rid of the chaff.
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