Match social worker wages with other public service professionals, Scottish Government urged

Social workers in Scotland should be given pay awards to match other parts of the public sector, a professional body has said.

Substantial pay awards have been made to public sector employees in recent years, with NHS staff, teachers and prison officers amongst those to benefit.

In May, nurses, midwives and other healthcare staff voted to accept an eight per cent uplift over two years. Earlier this summer, three major unions – Unite, GMB and Unison – accepted a two-year deal giving council workers a slightly smaller rise of 7.5 per cent over two years. The agreement does not apply to teachers, whose representatives rejected the terms.

Now the Scottish Association of Social Work (SASW) has called for “parity of pay and conditions” between its members and their counterparts in other public service professions.

It says social work is suffering a “crisis in workforce recruitment and retention” caused by poor working conditions and increasing workloads, as well as demand for support services and decreasing funding.

It says some local authority teams are operating at 50 per cent capacity, which is increasing the strain on new and remaining social workers.

The call for change comes in its pre-election manifesto, which is published today and lists its asks for the next Scottish Government.

SASW director Alison Bavidge said: “Social work is central to Scotland’s public services and to thriving and safe communities. Our manifesto highlights that local government currently does not have the resource to support citizens who are struggling with crisis in their lives or to help people who just need a bit of help to avert a potential crisis. We need funding for local services that is based on fair pay and conditions for workers.

“Funding to local government must move from short term, one-year budgets to a position where people can rely on local support services year-on-year, in which local workers can be confident that they will have good quality jobs.

“The next Scottish Government must start the work to fix increasingly intolerable levels of poverty and hollowed-out public services created by nearly a generation of austerity.

“Our members are dedicated and skilled public servants, but they need the right support and tools to deliver the services everybody in Scotland deserves.”