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Aug 23
2010
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Communitycare.co.uk recently reported a survey which showed that four out of ten social workers regard their caseload as 'unmanageable'. This is, of course, an unacceptable situation, as unmanageable caseloads add up to stress, poor-quality practice, a higher level of mistakes, increased sickness absence, a failure to learn and very poor morale. Some people would see this as a management challenge: what are managers going to do to address these problems? This is a legitimate question, but I would want to present the situation in broader terms as a professional challenge: what are we, as professionals - whether practitioners, managers, educators or whatever - going to do about it? Of course, there aren't any magic answers to this complex problem, but all the more reason, then, for people to support one another in finding ways forward, rather than just staying quiet and hoping that 'they' will sort it out eventually. Bureaucrats say 'they'; professionals say 'we'.
In an earlier posting (http://www.socialworkfocus.com/myblog-admin/trying-to-do-the-impossible.html) I warned of the dangers of trying to do the impossible. This survey shows that this is an issue we need to take very seriously.
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you mention the "management challenge" around practitioners trying to do the impossible, posing the question of what are they/we going to do about it? I would suggest that management, or the lack of it is part of the root cause. There is a staggeringly "dense" level of bureaucratic management in local authority social work. This "dead wood" needs to be pared down. There is a need to revisit team structures. Cluster multidisciplinary teams together led by a case-holding senior practitioner overseeing co-working social workers, clinicians and support staff. Above these teams should be a principle practitioner, holding Team Leader responsibility for the performance of a number of teams but not holding specific cases but able to takeover any case, as required, when complications necessitate their removal; first, from the "coalface" practitioner, who passes the complex case on to their senior practitioner, overly complex cases can them be transferred to teh Team Leader, when complications necessitate their specialist management.
Principle practitioner Team Leaders would then report to the Department Head, able to pass on informed practical experience to the director and remain "hands-on" and approachable by the "coalface" practitioners, who are only "1 degree" removed from the Department manager.
Simplistic, true; streamlined, true; effective, time would tell. I believe that the "Hackney/Harringey" model could be, further, finessed by simplifying it's top management structure, in this manner.