Iam64
We had child protection services that were respected by other countries. 13 years of austerity alongside a government that doesn’t value public services leave us in terrible situations.
We need to invest in support services. We need to recruit and train mature people. I was 30 when my training was funded and I got a very small salary from the home office to complete the 2 year certificate of qualification in social work.
When I became the manager of a team 5 years later, my team had 2 young graduates, 2 unqualified social work assistants (both excellent_, we had an ex probation officer, an engineer, a merchant sea man, a hair dresser and someone who’d been an admin worker to the team. All brought good life experience, all had their training paid by our local authority and had a very low salary during the 2 year training.
Now we have 18-22 year olds doing a degree in social work. They’ve no life experience and are thrown into safeguarding. Though our last group of students told us the course lecturers advised them to avoid work with children and families because there are no support services and ‘you might end up on the front of the Daily Mail
Why would anyone get into £70,000 of debt to be a social worker in the current climate
Isn’t child protection often the end result of lack of funding in education,housing, unemployment ( eg in places where there is no longer any industry but nothing replaced it job wise). Just as the NHS is crippled by treating people with illnesses that might be prevented if there was less poverty.