| UNISON City of Edinburgh Branch |
|
|
16 December 2003 No season of goodwill with 'intolerable pressures' on Edinburgh's social workers - UNISON alerts council to unallocated workUNISON Social Work members will present a Christmas list of unallocated cases to Edinburgh Council Leader Donald Anderson on Tuesday 16 December at 09.15 to demonstrated the 'intolerable pressures' children and families social workers are facing in the city. "At the season of goodwill, we are sad to say Edinburgh's children's social workers have lost all goodwill for the Council as they face heavy caseloads, large numbers of cases that can't be allocated and the spectre of having to divert energies into yet another reorganisation", said Lyn Williams, UNISON Social Work Convenor. The union says that the more it has examined the O'Brien report, the more it realises that a lack of resources were at the root of many of the problems identified. "Councillor Anderson has said that resources were not an issue. Yet we presented him with a chart showing the resource crisis over two years ago. We also took the biggest ever grievance, signed by 400 social workers, telling the council that the problems were not organisational but resource-based. We are now showing him the reality of the pressures at the sharp end. "Staff are working long hours, they are exhausted and they are worried that when things go wrong, as they surely will, they will be left carrying the can", added Lyn Williams. "We seem to have enormous difficulty convincing the leader of the Council of the seriousness of the situation. That is why members have decided to let him personally see the pressures social workers are under", added John Stevenson, UNISON Edinburgh branch secretary. "Before any reorganisation, they must get the basics sorted out - and that is money". Most social work teams in Edinburgh have vacancies. Where teams have new staff, many have not yet had the Child Protection Certificate training. In some teams there are only 50% of main grade staff able to do child protection work and in one there are none. The union says that senior social workers and team managers are overwhelmed by trying to manage the unallocated work. The list will show that unallocated work (usually dealt with through 'duty' systems or held by managers) includes child protection, children in care, children with special needs, reports for childrens hearings and children on supervision. LATE NEWS: The union presented coucnillors with lists of over 500 cases awaiting allocation, 10% of which were designated child protection cases. The latter are managed on duty or by managers working long hours. This is out of an overall allocated caseload of around 2,000 with approx 340 children on the child protection register. ENDS |
|
