UK Articles

This article by Jolyon Jones, SWAN West Midlands, analyses the threat posed to the welfare of children in care in Birmingham by social impact bonds. 'By the bye,' said Mr. Bumble, 'you don't know anybody who wants a boy, do you? A porochial 'prentis, who is at present a dead-weight; a millstone, as I may say, round the parochial throat? Liberal terms, Mr. Sowerberry, liberal terms?'From Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens Read More

How should social workers support children and families facing destitution and cuts to their benefits? Simon Cardy from SWAN West Midlands charts the local impact of poverty and examines the case for using of Section 17 of the Children Act that allows local authorities to make cash payments for children and families in need. Read More

In just under two weeks Isabel and Sarah Counihan Sanchez will be speaking at the SWAN Conference 2013 in the 'Alternative social care futures: radical social work in practice' session. Their story is told in this excellent short video which covers their struggle for housing and their institutional abuse by a local authority in the feverish grip of austerity (in this case, the London Borough of Brent). The Counihan Sanchez family's experiences are just one example of the injustice and brutality being suffered by working people simply wanting a roof over their heads both in London and across the UK. This is true across Europe and internationally too, as house and rent prices have skyrocketed to absurd levels, benefitting private landlords and property speculators at the expense of working people. Where there is injustice, however, there is resistance - a good example is the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) movement in Spain (there is a great feature on this in the latest edition of New Internationalist magazine).   Read More

Julia Warrener (@juliawarrener) is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire (@UoH_HealthandSW). Taken with kind permission from Social Work / Social Care and Media website. Original article can be found here: http://swscmedia.com/2013/03/social-work-and-me-by-julia-warrener-juliawarrener/ Read More

Jean Robertson-Molloy, from the Movement for an Adoption Apology (MAA) campaign, writes on the campaign and relevance to SWAN. MAA was started in 2010 to demand a cross-party Parliamentary  apology for past adoption practices. Read More

You may not have heard of Stan Cohen, who has just died, but you will certainly know something of his ideas, and their continuing relevance. Look at the current hysteria around ‘chavs’, ‘asylum seekers’  and ‘shirkers’ or the way Jimmy Savile has come to represent paedophilia  (even though we know that most child abuse takes place within the family), and we are likely to come up with the term ‘moral panic’. Read More

Below an activist from SWAN West Midlands writes on cuts to children's services in Birmingham. He rebuts the popular argument being used by councillors nationwide that residential care services are outdated and always inferior to other forms of provision (in this case, foster care). Read More

SWAN would like to support and share the following statement from colleagues in the disabled people's movement on the closure of the Independent Living Fund: Disabled people with the highest support needs have been left in fear and distress as they face the prospect of being denied the right to have Christmas in their own homes following a government decision announced this week to abolish a key source of independent living support. The government decision to close the Independent Living Fund and instead devolve responsibility to local authorities follows a consultation that disabled people claim is unlawful and on which an urgent hearing has been scheduled by the High Court to go ahead on 13/14 March 2013. Read More

UKIP's candidate for this week's Croydon North by-election, Winston McKenzie has sparked controversy this week by likening adoption by gay couples to "child abuse". In an article from Seen magazine, social worker Michael Dwyer gives his direct response to Mr McKenzie: Read More

Social Work Action Network (SWAN) London has recently become aware of the awful experiences of social and health care Daniel Roque Hall has received in the criminal justice system.  SWAN London urge you to support the Justice for Daniel Roque Hall campaign. This is an straight forward issue of defending this man's article 3 rights against torture, inhumane and degrading treatment. Daniel is a thirty-year-old disabled person from north London with multiple impairments, who nearly died from the abuse and neglect he suffered while imprisoned at Wormwood Scrubs. Daniel is in an advanced stage of Friedrich’s Ataxia – an inherited, degenerative disease which causes progressive damage to the nervous system. Daniel is still in hospital – where he has been since 22nd August – and it is unlikely that he will fully recover from the damage done to him. Read More

Last week the Review of Multi-agency Responses to the Sexual Exploitation of Children was released by Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board into the sexual exploitation of children in the local authority which dated back over several years. 9 men were jailed in May for grooming girls as young as 13. This story was accompanied by much national media coverage. Below Iain Ferguson, Social Work Action Network member and social work educator at the University of the West of Scotland, gives his analysis. Read More

A guest post by a member of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group and SWAN London shares his reaction to this week's report by the Policy Exchange think-tank on social housing. The report, Ending Expensive Social Tenancies: Fairness, higher growth and more homes, advocates selling off council homes in wealthy areas where property values are at a premium, attracting sympathetic comments from Grant Schapps, Housing Minister, and the suggestion from the Policy Exchange's Director that the poorest have 'no right' to live in rich areas. His experience of social housing and the realities for people at the 'wrong' end of the gaping social spectrum,  includes a valiant demonstration of collective action and resistance by people up against the worst impacts of this government's policies: Read More

The following letter was sent in response to an orginal article in the Morning Star newspaper Re: 'Pay day for the shonksters', Morning Star feature, Friday, August 10, 2012We reply to Solomon Hughes' feature 'Payday for the shonsksters' while anticipating Channel 4's Dispatches programme scheduled for Monday 13 August, 'Tricks of the Dole Cheats'.As Solomon Hughes observes, “Our taxes whiz past the unemployed, doing them little good, before they pay for [the Work Programme company Ingeus owner's £3m in UK dividends].” The Department of Work and Pensions has not only barred Ofsted from inspecting Work Programme companies that have proven pasts of under-performing. The DWP gives fraudulent Work Programme companies forced to pay back unmerited bonuses the advantage of 'no publicity', and maximum publicity plus criminal records to the tiny minority of fraudulent benefit claimants. (Of course, Atos Healthcare are never fined for what they have written of Employment & Support Allowance claimants who win their tribunals.) Read More