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A key problem for looked after children is the lack of continuity in their relationship with the local authority social worker… This lack of a continuous personal relationship also creates problems for social workers themselves… [who] enter their work with a strong moral purpose, idealism, energy and enthusiasm. However, once into the job, they often feel de-motivated, overwhelmed by bureaucracy and deprived of autonomy… Current organizational structures also have other problems, especially a lack of incentives for efficiency and innovation.

SWPs were proposed as the solution to these challenges, and the Children and Young Person’s Act 2008 provided the new legal framework, enabling local authorities in England and Wales to discharge (i.e. privatize) the ‘corporate parenting’ function of social work services for children in their care. The case for SWPs rests on three key arguments advanced by Professor Julian Le Grand, an education advisor to the Conservative Party. First, he argues, SWPs will provide a level of consistent corporate parenting expressed in the personal relationship between the child and their social worker. Second, workers demoralised by bureaucracy would be attracted to a ‘professional partnership’ governance model akin to a General Medical Practice or small firm of lawyers. Third, social workers would be motivated by a sense of professional autonomy and owner control of their partnership organisation. Three models for SWPs are suggested: a ‘professional practice’ (social enterprise) run by a partnership of social workers legally independent of the local authority, a ‘third sector’ (not for profit) model run by a voluntary organisation and a private sector (for profit) model.

Six pilot SWP schemes were due to be in place by the end 2009 — although one of these was put on hold as the local authority felt there were too many financial risks. The intention was a three-year period to test the various SWP models and, depending on the outcome, the preferred model would be pushed out across England and Wales from 2012 onwards.

Here in the West Midlands two councils, Staffordshire and Sandwell, signed up to the pilot scheme. In the latter, the Sandwell Child Care Co-operative (SCCC) won the contract to take over social work services for 100 children in 2009.  This organisation claimed to be a ‘non profit making company… that would ensure common ownership between directors and staff, with social worker employees having a numerical dominance on the Board’.  This cooperative is a pioneer of the Con-Dem Coalition’s ‘small state/big society’ social enterprise adventure. It is also an example of how oppositional ideas such as common ownership and the cooperative movement can be incorporated in a neo-liberal project. As theorist Raymond Williams wrote in the late 1960s in his brilliant analysis of the role of culture and hegemony, ‘the decisive hegemonic function is to control or transform or even incorporate alternatives and opposition’.  Williams’ ideas can be applied to many of the events now taking place around the development of the SWP pilots.

A regional SWAN conference held in March 2010 agreed to campaign against private social work practices. Following this, the regional steering group issued a challenge to   SCCC in the form of an open letter. Our statement argued ‘there is no evidence that social workers are frustrated entrepreneurs who need a profit motive or a bonus to do their best for children’ and that social work practices are a sort of ‘human asset stripping’ from local authorities. We called on social workers not to volunteer if given the option of whether to work for SCCC. We copied our statement to over 300 email contacts, regional SWAN members, local trade union branches, and the social work print media as part of our modest but very public attempt to confront SCCC.

The founder of SCCC Laurie Gregory responded by issuing his own statement.  Gregory said: ‘I actually believe the Co-operative approach is an imaginative socialist one for the purposes of social care provision and feel much regret that the Co-operative movement has been asleep for the last 20 years during which billions of pounds have been outsourced, mostly to “profit making” organisations’. He added ‘early in negotiations, it became apparent that no social workers were transferring from Sandwell MBC to the pilot because of the very high proportion of unqualified staff and the level of agency staff [there] who would not have rights to transfer with TUPE protection. All posts within the project were geared to Local Government levels of pay with an emphasis on seeking qualified and experienced social workers who would be paid at a Senior Practitioner rate. It did not appear to us that we were “human asset stripping” from Sandwell MBC for the reasons mentioned above, but appealing for staff across the West Midlands Region to join the pilot for a period of 3-4 years’.

As part of our regional SWAN strategy we also issued several press statements in support of the local UNISON branch that had vowed to boycott the scheme. These were carried by publications such as Children and Young People Now. The local UNISON branch also distributed the union’s national leaflet to social work teams in Sandwell. UNISON activists reported that many social workers saw straight away that SWPs were nothing but a privatisation scam. Furthermore, contrary to the claims made by SCCC, social work teams in Sandwell were not made up of agency staff. The Council and SCCC did not anticipate such resistance and, against their expectations, failed to persuade any of Sandwell’s social workers to join the cooperative.  

The council’s plans were then dealt a decisive blow when a disastrous OFSTED inspection of children’s services in Sandwell in February found that the children affected by the SWP had not been consulted about the sell-off.  UNISON told us that foster carers were also angry that they had been given no notice that the transfer was going to happen.  The SWP pilot was put on hold and abandoned altogether in August 2010. A small victory!

Whilst SWAN cannot claim credit for the collapse of the pilot- which was down to the UNISON branch and Sandwell social workers with a little unexpected help from OFSTED – SWAN certainly played a part in the war of position that developed on the web and in the national media coverage of the issue. This shows that, despite our modest resources, SWAN can and should play a key role in the ideological battle against privatisation and neo-liberalism at local and regional level. Of the 6 pilots originally planned across the country, only 4 now remain.

SWAN West Midlands have produced a pamphlet ‘Independent Social Work Practices: A Midlands Social Work Action Network briefing’ containing background history and further resources. Download a copy from the bottom of this page.

The attack on child benefits is important because it breached the state’s commitment to universal benefits. Osborne then went on to announce a £7 billion cut in welfare – on top of the £11bn announced in June and £6bn in May – £24bn taken from the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.
 
The government are slashing a third of council spending by 2015. That means a third of council jobs to go, a third of crucial services axed. It will mean social work and social care services reduced and outsourced. It will mean a poorer service for users, worse pay and working conditions for the remaining workers and a less safe service.
 
The increase in the state pension age has been rushed forward four years to 2018 for men and 2020 for women. The government want £1.8bn savings a year from public sector pensions. That will mean an average increase in contributions of £450 extra per year, on top of a freeze on pension rates for up to three years.

Money for social housing projects is being slashed by 60 percent. New council tenants will be forced to pay ‘market rents’ and will not have secure tenancies on their home. The University teaching budget has been cut by 40 percent from £7.1bn to £4.2bn. Student fees will rise to almost £7,000 per year. Students will be saddled with huge debts on graduation. Osborne claimed that the NHS and education had been ‘saved’ from the cuts. But this is a myth. NHS spending has been cut by over £20bn.
 
These draconian cuts are not about addressing the deficit. The crisis is being used as a cover for the wholesale privatisation of welfare services by a government committed to a ‘small state’. This is an ideologically driven agenda that will leave the poor poorer, that will create unemployment, that will abolish vital services and leave working people – those in work and those who are unemployed; those who use services and those who work in service provision – facing a much bleaker future.
 
The present crisis was caused by the failure of the banking system and by the madness of market driven forms of delivery – yet there is nothing in the ‘Osborne axe’ to tax the banks and their billionaire bosses.
 
But there is an alternative. In France, in Greece and across the globe there are growing movements against austerity. In Britain we are starting to see the beginnings of such a movement. On 3rd October SWAN was proud to be a sponsor of the Right To Work demonstration in Birmingham where we marched alongside 7,000 others to protest at the Tory conference. In the days, weeks and months ahead there will be more protests – at local, regional and national level.
 
SWAN is urging all its supporters to throw themselves into anti-cuts protests and movements. As workers, service users and carers we need to stand together: to strike, protest, march and campaign against the cuts and their effects, to stand together and shout that ‘there is an alternative’ – to the brutality of these cuts and to the madness of the market.

The people who will be most hit by massive cuts are those with least money and resources, least advantage and least power – poor parents, older people, women workers, disabled people, mental health service users, carers, poor people on benefits, black and minority ethnic communities, social housing tenants and those studying. The people and institutions most to blame for the financial mess we are in; banks, private sector and business leaders are largely left untouched. Instead they are likely to benefit ultimately from the regressive financial redistribution resulting from public service cuts.

It’s all a stark reminder of the failure of the Blair and Brown governments. They left us this inheritance by perpetuating new right economic policies and freeing the market. With a landslide election victory in 1997, Blair did nothing to challenge the powers that be. Meanwhile the Tories now with no political mandate and no majority of any kind, are forcing through the most radical reactionary political agenda for almost a century, foisting on the rest of us the most destructive and anti-social policies in living memory.

But faced with a reform programme that makes Margaret Thatcher’s policies seem tame, we will do well to take some deep breaths and not panic. These cuts and the policies they presage may truly contain the seeds of their own destruction. Admittedly we have a weak and complaisant media. Undoubtedly democratic safeguards have been weakened. Admittedly much has happened to de-politicise and disempower people. Divisions will be encouraged and increased. We are already seeing it happen.

There is no question that the lives of many service users will be made more difficult and miserable. Some will undoubtedly have their lives cut short or die because of the loss of essential support. Social workers and other public service workers can look forward to even more insecurity, loss of jobs and greater difficulty doing their jobs well. Supporting people to deal with the benefits system, for example, can only be expected to be a bigger nightmare than it now is. All can expect greater hardship, difficulties and uncertainty.

But the divisions between and narrow self-interest of the ruling politicians and policymakers also make them weak and vulnerable. Their ideologically driven, poorly thought through policies will be costly, create all kinds of unintended consequences and won’t work. They will generate their own opposition. None of us should act or think as though we believe they have the five years in power that they repeatedly tell us we should judge them by. They talk ‘big society’ and corrupt the meaning of ‘self-help’ and ‘mutuality’. Instead we, through rebuilding community and grassroots action, local campaigns, new alliances, inclusive and original forms of campaigning, will not only develop resistance, but also demonstrate that there truly are alternatives to the bureaucratized consumerist models of state and private sector which recent governments have sought to impose on us.

Each supportive social work relationship with a service user is a demonstration of the enduring value and power of this democratizing, equality based impulse. Each will have a value, influence and power way beyond those directly, personally involved. Couple this with collective action and alliances between our organisations, interest and identity groups and we have the chance to build a new reality, a different politics that will fill the vacuum left by the arid years of bureaucratizing managerialism of the new political right, New Labour and now Coalition politics. This isn’t just a fight back. It is a fight for!

Back in March 2009 we launched with some anxiety a campaign to oppose the transformation of youth work into little more than an agency of behavioural modification. In fact our desire to resist the increasing imposition of prescribed and predictable outcomes upon our practice struck a chord. So much so that on February 11 our first national conference held in Manchester brought together almost 150 students, workers, academics and supporters to explore such issues as the drive towards Integrated Youth Support Services; our increasing incorporation into surveillance and policing; and the insidious undermining of our allegiance to a voluntary relationship with young people. Of course, given the diverse character of Youth Work, we did not always see eye to eye. Nevertheless we did engender a collective and creative commitment to youth work as ‘an association and critical conversation without guarantees’.

Over the next six months we will be focusing on a pre-election strategy of challenging parliamentary candidates to explain how they see young people and youth work; on the reclaiming of National Youth Work Week as a vehicle for a young person-centred practice; and on the necessity of telling our own contradictory tales of our encounters with young people as a qualitative rejoinder to the State’s quantitative obsessions. During this period we also hope to deepen our relationship with the Social Work Action Network at local, regional and national levels.

For more information, see our website here.

In response, Glasgow City Unison branch has launched the Defend Glasgow’s Services Campaign.  The initial public meeting on 23rd January saw over 100 trade unionists and community campaigners come together to kick start the campaign.  Out of this meeting, a steering group was set up with Unison members, other trade unionists and community activists to develop the campaign’s work.  The local SWAN network is formally represented on the steering group and to tie in with the campaign recently held a successful open meeting under the title ‘Changing lives or rationing services? Cuts, personalisation and social work’.  

The campaign to Defend Glasgow’s Services is growing, with a petition and publicity produced, further public meetings being called and a rally in Glasgow on Saturday 10th April 2010. SWAN members need to be involved in this and similar campaigns across the country to defend public services and use our networks to help build the resistance to the cuts.

SWAN considers the eviction to be racially motivated. We are concerned that this reflects a wider pattern of increasing racism and discrimination against Traveller and Roma communities in the UK and across Europe. Such actions are encouraging a wider atmosphere of scapegoating and racism against these communities.

Travellers have lived on the Dale Farm site since the 1970s and, though the land has achieved Greenbelt status – a key argument the council is using to evict the site – it was formerly a scrap yard. Changes in the law have resulted in the systematic persecution of the Travelling community, particularly those wanting to settle on sites such as Dale Farm.

SWAN believes Basildon Council, in pursuing this eviction, is showing a disregard for the traditions and culture of the Traveller community and is failing in their duties to provide suitable accommodation to the residents of Dale Farm. SWAN urges Basildon City Council to respect the human rights of Dale Farm residents.

The proposed eviction will cost an estimated £18 million in a context of deep and unfair cuts to local services and will result only in increased homelessness and the persecution of the Traveller community.

SWAN stands in solidarity with those at Dale Farm, extends our support to the residents there, and condemns the actions of Basildon Council and the excessive force used by the police.

SWAN steering committee, 19/10/11

(adapted from statement by Kate Grant/Bristol SWAN)

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