This article draws significantly on Community Care Inform legal editor Tim Spencer-Lane’s analysis of the original tribunal judgment. Social Work England carried out a “serious abuse of its power as a regulatory body” in allowing its fitness to practise (FTP) processes to be “subverted to punish and suppress” a practitioner’s protected gender critical beliefs. That was the damning verdict of an employment tribunal in a judgment issued this week. The ruling was to determine remedies to compensate social worker Rachel Meade for the harassment she received at the hands of both the regulator and ..read more

The government plans to publish data on every council’s waiting times for adult social care assessments and services, it has revealed. The DHSC announced the plans in guidance on councils’ use of its ring-fenced market sustainability and improvement fund (MSIF), a grant designed to drive improved performance in adult social care, including by cutting waiting times. The statistics will cover the average time people wait from a request or referral for a service to, firstly, an assessment, and, secondly, the service starting. The figures will be broken down into the four main service types: com ..read more

The next government should take forward reform of the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA) and implementation of the Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS) in its first 100 days in office, the incoming Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) president has said. However, Melanie Williams said she was not expecting either major party to implement the cap on care costs and associated reforms to the adult social care charging system should they win the next election. Williams took over as ADASS president from Beverley Tarka at its annual spring seminar last week, meaning she will see the ..read more

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. Increasing qualifications levels for the adult social care workforce – linked to higher pay – is among the ideas under consideration by the group developing a 15-year strategy for the adult social care workforce. Other potential proposals include providing registered managers with a supported year in which to develop, developing a graduate training scheme for that role or making it a degree-level position. The ideas were shared last week by David Pearson, co-chair of the steering group ..read more

The government will collect data on social workers’ salaries in its annual census of the local authority children’s services workforce in England. Councils will be required to submit figures on each permanently employed practitioner’s base annual salary in next year’s census, for the 12 months ending 30 September 2025, according to guidance published this week by the Department for Education. They will also have to provide information on whether they offer some or all of their social workers recruitment bonuses, retention payments, relocation packages, performance rewards, car allowances or ..read more

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. The government’s axing of a social work leadership training scheme risks undermining support for practitioners as well as the retention of managers, principal social workers have warned. The chairs of the Principal Children and Families Social Worker (PCFSW) Network said the loss of the Pathways programme – used by all but 10 local authorities – had left a gap in management training as some councils had not budgeted for alternative provision. This meant investment in managers was dimins ..read more

By Upasana Rajagopalan Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. Denise Monks’s passion for social justice is evident not only in her work now as a professional officer at the British Association of Social Workers, but also her beginnings in the sector. While working at Stockport Council in 2002, just a few years after qualifying, she noticed a gap in support for parents with learning disabilities. So she created a specialist team to bridge it. She developed resources for children’s social workers to communicate effectively with ..read more

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. The turnover of directors of children’s services (DCSs) rose for the third consecutive year in 2023-24, on the back of high numbers of interim appointments and leaders moving between councils. In total, 62 DCS appointments were made across the 153 local authorities over the past year, up from 50 in 2022-23 and a recent low of 39 in 2020-21, revealed the Association of Directors of Children’s Services’  (ADCS) annual update on the role. This is the second highest figure since ADCS s ..read more

The government has proposed overhauling a key disability benefit in the face of its “spiralling” caseload and costs, in a move labelled “dangerous” and “reckless” by charities. Its green paper on reforming personal independence payment (PIP) floats restricting access to the benefit and replacing regular cash payments with other types of provision. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) proposals are premised on the idea that PIP does not account for the significant variations in additional costs that different disabled people face in their lives. They are also designed to contain pr ..read more

This article presents a few key pieces of advice from Community Care Inform Children’s guide on shame and how it may present in children and parents. The full guide looks at the role shame might play in a child’s life and provides guidance for practitioners on how to minimise its ongoing effects. The guide explores theoretical frameworks that can help us understand shame and approach direct work with children and families where there are behavioural presentations of shame. Community Care Inform Children subscribers can access the full guide here. The guide was written by Laura Hanbury, a fa ..read more