‘Burnout is real’: Rare access to the frontline of children’s social services
The sector is in desperate need of more money as demand for its service balloons, ITV News Investigations Editor Daniel Hewitt reports
“Typically, children's social care only makes the news when something's gone wrong.”
Spend time with social workers, or anyone involved in children’s social care, and you soon learn many have a low opinion of my profession.
“A child dies, and these are tragic events. A child dies and people typically in that sort of scenario say, well, where is children social care? Who’s to blame? And within that narrative, it's typically social workers who are in the firing line.”
I’m sitting in a council building, in the corner office of the man in charge of children’s social services in Lewisham, South London.
He has agreed to let us spend three days in his department, offering us rare access to the work of his team, who each day attempt to protect the borough’s most vulnerable children.
For Pinaki Ghoshal, it is about switching the perception of what social workers do, and going out to bat for a workforce that so often feel like the forgotten frontline.
“You know in the press people talk about pay for police, for nurses and for teachers.
"Nobody seems to talk about pay for social workers. So, it's not recognised in the same way that some of the other professions are
“There are not enough social workers coming through the system. The pay isn't great.
"Nationally there's been an increase in the number of children who are supported by social care. A lot of social workers work for a few years and then they burn out and they find something else to do.”
That is how Yolanda felt after the pandemic.
As we head to her car for a day visiting families, she tells me she’s been a qualified social worker for seven years.
Her first call of the day is to a mum of four. She is a victim of domestic violence and was referred to social services after she fled her ex-partner.
As we make our away from the council building to the visit, Yolanda receives a call.
“Is it a red?” she says to the person on the other end of the line.
“I am going to have to pull over, sorry."
After a back and forth that lasts only a few minutes, Yolanda establishes it isn’t an emergency, and we carry on as planned.
“In 2021, I was close to burnout. I was burnt out.
“Fortunately, I've had amazing managers who were able to see there's a way we can resolve this, and I felt supported, and I was able to get through the challenges. But burnout is real.
“I was case holding about 32 children at that time. Ideally, (I would have) about 15.”
Her case load is now much more manageable, but Yolanda tells me she has seen a big rise in referrals because of a family’s economic situation.
“In terms of sort of poverty, a lot more referrals to food banks. I'm getting that a lot.
“We're very clear on the language we use, so it's not that the family intend to neglect their children, but by virtue of the family being poor, it could lead to neglect, and it then sort of spills into the children, sometimes accessing education, healthcare.”
We arrive to meet the mum of four.
“Do you feel safe at the moment?” Yolanda asks her.
“Yes,” she replies.
But the woman has other concerns she hopes Yolanda can help with.
Since fleeing her ex-partner she was placed, with her four children, in a homeless hostel outside of Lewisham in another London borough.
The conditions, she tells Yolanda, are making her children ill. She then shows us the pictures on her phone of the severe skin conditions her kids have developed.
It is due to bed bugs, she says, but the red sores and scars on her young children’s arms and legs look much worse than that. The family’s GP is aware and has given them all medication to treat it.
As the woman’s social worker, Yolanda has helped get the family to a place of safety and is now doing all she can as an advocate to get them more suitable, less squalid accommodation, but there are limits to her powers.
“I'm sort of used to working with families when housing is a huge issue and we're trying to support, but as children's social care, we're limited.
“Our role is often advocating for the families…we're writing the letters, we're putting forward the case as to why we see as appropriate and necessary for the child to, and the family to, remain in their borough.
“In terms of a family being in temporary accommodation or emergency temporary accommodation, obviously there's a level of uncertainty about what happens next.
“Families are encouraged to seek private accommodation, but in some cases, people who can't afford it, their preference is to remain in social housing. The waiting times are humongous.”
This first visit shows the complexity social workers are dealing with. Housing, health, poverty, abuse - all of life’s crises crisscross their way to social services and into Yolanda’s in-tray.
After the visit, before moving on to her next one, I ask Yolanda what her biggest worry is when the caseload becomes unmanageable.
“Worst case scenario, a fatality, a child death.
“That's on every social worker’s mind. That's something we're constantly carrying.
"Sometimes it's at the front of our mind when a case comes in and you can see sort of all the hallmarks of a potential serious case review.”
Does she agree with her boss, Pinaki, that the media has made her job harder?
“100%, because there's no balance.
“It's created a situation where people are fearful of social workers. We're having to go into the homes of these families and we're having to, sort of, rewrite the narrative one family at a time.
“I'm very conscious that my interaction with any family is going to have an impact on the narrative they have around social work, so I make it my issue to try to make it a positive experience for the families.”
In England, there are 621,800 referrals to children’s social care every year.
Referrals to Lewisham social services are up 33.5% since before the pandemic. They now receive 4,189 annually.
In 2019, Ofsted determined the service Requires Improvement, as of 2023 is rated Good.
Yet with a vacancy rate of 33.5% for social workers, Pinaki tells me it is clear they have to do something different.
“It would be great for us to be able to recruit more social workers. That's not going to happen.
“So going forward we're trying to build more of a multi-agency kind of team that hold a family, keep them safe, keep that child safe, help that family to thrive, help that child to thrive.”
Lewisham is currently piloting a new government programme called Families First for Children Pathfinder.
Responding to recommendations from the Independent review of children’s social care, the pilot aims to bring together specialists in housing, health, education and other areas to work alongside social workers with the aim of keeping as many children as possible with their families and out of the care system.
“We know it works because already in Lewisham we've seen more children being supported earlier.
"We see fewer children being excluded from school. We see fewer children entering the youth justice system. We're seeing fewer children now on child protection plans. We're seeing fewer children coming into care.
“As I'm speaking to you today, I actually haven't got the guarantee of funding for the next financial year, although I'm pretty confident that's going to happen.”
One floor down from Pinaki’s office, I meet Yaz, who has arrived with her son to meet with their social worker.
Yaz was referred to Lewisham social services when she became pregnant with her third child. She was a drug addict, who has spent almost her entire life radar of children’s social care.
“I started smoking cigarettes at 9, started smoking cannabis at 10,” she tells me.
“Started taking amphetamines when I was 13. By the age of 15, I wouldn't be able to go to school without having amphetamines in the morning.
“I was a very unhappy child. It was a lot of emotional rejection, physical abuse, mental abuse, that kind of thing. I'd never been shown any healthy ways to kind of manage that and to deal with that.”
Yaz had two children with her ex-partner. Her drug addiction became out of control, and the children were permanently removed from her care and adopted.
This was in a different part of the country, and when she became pregnant with her third child, she was moved to Lewisham and placed under the authority of social services here.
“I got chances that people in my shoes don't normally get.
“I mean it was less than three years after losing my other children to adoption that I found out I was pregnant with him, and straight away social services were like we're going to support you.
“They paid for me to go to rehab. It's the only mother and baby rehab in the country that you can detox while your baby is in your care.
“It breaks my heart that I haven't got my older children with me. I know they've got a good life now. Hopefully one day they'll be back in my life. Obviously when they're eighteen I can reach out, but I'm just grateful to be where I am.”
Yaz’s meeting with social services is her final one. She has been signed off from their care. Her son is healthy, she is clean, and she is ready to begin her new life.
She has been a beneficiary of Lewisham’s new approach, to do all they can to keep children out of the care system, where studies show they often have poorer outcomes than other children in education, health, and employment.
The sector is though in desperate need of more money as demand for its service balloons.
Spending on children’s social care in England is expected to increase by £8.4 billion by 2030.
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The Independent Review of Children’s social care stated the sector needed a cash injection of £2.5billion. In the budget in November, the Treasury promised £250 million.
“I would welcome many millions pounds more money from central government coming to local government,” says Pinaki.
“I've got to be a bit realistic. I don't think that's going to happen.
“I can't change the world, but what I can do is I can make sure, in a local area in Lewisham, that we ensure that we use the resources that we have in the best way possible to meet the needs of the children and the families that we're working with, and that we ensure that the offer we make to them is of the best quality and we raise them in terms of their ambitions and their aspirations going forward.”
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