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This movement has now spread from New York around the world with demonstrations of over a million people globally on 15th October representing the biggest co-ordinated global protests since the movement against the Iraq war in 2003. These actions have drawn crucial attention to the economic and social injustice and massive levels of inequality that characterise the current economic system.

In social work we are seeing massive cuts to services and their negative impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. Social workers face cuts to their pension provision, a pay freeze and attempts to privatise services or replace paid workers with volunteers. Attacks on the welfare state and benefits are disproportionately impacting on those in greatest need with social work service users facing ever greater poverty, distress, and a return to charity not rights. However, while ordinary working people face redundancy and pay, pension and benefit cuts, the directors of companies on Britain’s FTSE 100 index of top companies saw their salaries increase by 49 percent last year, and tax avoidance and evasion by large corporations and wealthy individuals cost the UK government £95 billion last year in lost revenue.

SWAN welcomes the attention that the Occupy movement has drawn to the injustices perpetrated in the interests of this tiny minority of the rich at the expense of ordinary working people. We also welcome the support of Occupy London for the November 30th public sector strikes against austerity cuts to pensions that will involve tens of thousands of social workers around the UK. SWAN condemns any attempt to forcibly remove the Occupy protesters from outside St Paul’s in London or any of the other camps, and urges SWAN members to support Occupy actions and events and build the wider movement for equality, democracy and social justice.

While SWAN welcomes today’s news that the City of London Corporation and St Paul’s have suspended their legal action against Occupy LSX in London, SWAN expresses its outrage that such action has been considered against peaceful protesters and also condemns Glasgow Council for proceeding with legal action against Occupy Glasgow.

SWAN National Steering Committee (1st November 2011)

See also a statement from social workers involved in Occupy Ljubljana in Slovenia here.

We will shortly be posting reports from SWAN activists who have joined Occupy protests around the UK – watch this space.

On Friday 15th April I attended my first Social Work Action Network (SWAN) 6th National Conference in collaboration with In Defence of Youth Work. Although an annual conference took place in summer 2010 in Glasgow, the above was arranged in Birmingham in response to the level of cuts proposed by the Coalition Government.

SWAN is comprised of social work practitioners, academics, students and service users, united in their concern that social work activity is being undermined by managerialism and marketisation, by the stigmatisation of service users and by welfare cuts and restrictions.

There were a variety of speakers, ranging from those working in the profession, to UNISON activists, to service users relating their experiences, to disabled activists at the forefront in fighting the austerity measures, to international practitioners, researchers and activists. I attended the workshop entitled: ‘Educate, Agitate, Organise: UNISON responses to the Big Society’. The presenters were Helga Pile – UNISON National officer for Social Care, Helen Davies – Branch Chair Barnet UNISON & adult’s social worker, Simon Cardy – UNISON Steward Wolverhampton Branch & children’s social worker, Sharon Campion – Sandwell UNISON, Social Work Convenor and Independent reviewing officer.

I expressed my deep concerns at the meeting with regard to the level of resistance taken by UNISON in response to the fiercest levels of cuts on an unprecedented scale since the Second World War. I described the recent UNISON member’s meeting I attended in Coventry, where UNISON’s magnificent alternative budget was launched. I was in awe to see that finally my union was beginning to rise from its knees. Unfortunately, short lived, and my disappointment soon returned, as the branch officers then immediately invited discussion on compulsory redundancies.

Numerous attendees at the SWAN workshop demanded that UNISON direct and lead a viable and constructive fight back. Numerous attendees insisted UNISON call a general strike in unity with all other unions. Once again, a UNISON official managed to incite nothing but disappointment with a non-committal and passive response for the audience.

There were three vibrant international perspectives presented at Conference from South Africa, Greece and following the Arab revolutions. They discussed social work in their international context and the resistance against the cuts and privatisation methods attempted.

John McArdle, from Black Triangle Campaign, (disability rights campaigner) introduced a session on ‘Building Alliances to Defend Services’. He informed conference of the recent suicide of a service user. He stated the service user had left just two letters behind him to explain his actions. The first letter was from the Benefits Agency informing him his Disability Benefit would now cease. The second letter was from his local Housing Department informing him his Housing Benefit would now cease.

I fear if these cuts go unopposed, many more of us will have first-hand knowledge and experience of such horrors. The most vulnerable sections in society have already begun to see no other alternative than to take their own lives as a direct consequence of these atrocious cuts. Cuts to people’s benefits and care packages result in further intensified poverty and despair to an already marginalised section of society.

A divided house is easier to destroy. Therefore collective strike action from all public and private sector unions in the form of a general strike can be the only recourse left. There are tens of millions of people in this country who work in the public sector and/ or use our services. Solidarity across all professions and service users as exemplified by our contemporaries in Greece, Egypt, and South Africa are the examples we should be now be looking to. Please UNISON lead a fight-back, before more people die.

July 2011

The latest newsletter includes articles on strikes by social workers in Southampton and Birmingham against austerity cuts to pay and pensions; a critical overview of the Munro Review of child protection; an analysis of social enterprises and social work practices and their implications for practice; a discussion of the link between privatisation of social care and the abuse of learning disabled residents at the private Winterbourne View Hospital; and a member of the Case Con radical social work collective in the 1970s considers lessons from that period for today’s struggles. There is also a round up of SWAN activities and events from around the regions.

Please forward this newsletter as widely as possible to your colleagues and networks.

Dispatches encourages SWAN members and supporters to write about activities, actions, meetings, and debates in your group/region for the next newsletter so please send in your articles, news, comment and photos to Dispatches by clicking here.

SWAN  London has joined forces with other campaigns and events over the summer. SWAN London representatives spoke at the protest over Elaine McDonald’s treatment by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (a woman whose night time care was cut, which left her wearing pads overnight, despite being fully continent). You can see more here: http://tinyurl.com/645rluq

SWAN London also lent its name to a joint letter to put pressure on BMJ/RCN recruitment fairs to ban Atos Origin, the private company responsible for discriminatory assessments of benefit claimants on Employment and Support Allowance: http://tinyurl.com/5w32x4p

A SWAN London representative also spoke on social work and campaigning at a national student conference organised by BASW in June and addressed the new student cohort at London South Bank University. The group has also launched a blog at: http://swanlondon.wordpress.com/

Report by Dan Morton

SWAN members supported a small but lively lobby on 4th August 2011 at St Pancras Hospital in London against mental health cuts at the Camden & Islington Foundation Trust. The lobby was called by the Defend Whittington NHS campaign .  The Trust proposes to implement massive cutbacks – 60 staff will lose their jobs, as well as pay cuts for many remaining staff, the closure of 100 beds, and the replacement of trained staff with unqualified workers. The lobby was attended by social workers, service users, nurses and local campaigners. Plans are being made for petitioning, a public meeting and further protests. For more info: dwhc.org.uk

Report by Rich Moth