Scotland’s social workers need to be able to get back to what they do best – helping people in difficulty – instead of firefighting and managing paperwork, according to a new report.

The Common Weal think tank argues that social work has now also been overlooked in the debate about a National Care Service, which should be used as an opportunity to refocus on prevention and better integrate social work and social care.

Author Colin Turbett, who was a frontline social worker in the West of Scotland for nearly 40 years, says the profession has become increasingly distant from communities as a result of funding cuts and decisions by successive governments.

He said: “Many within social work in Scotland – and this is shared in the rest of the UK - feel that our profession has become marginalised in the past twenty years – over-proceduralised, and concerned more with mopping up after crisis has occurred, than with prevention.”

Derek Feeley’s independent review of adult social care, which reported in February, called for wide-ranging changes, including the removal of care charges and the setting up of a national care service answerable to ministers.

However the review’s recommendations did not extend to social work, with the final report stating instead that ‘these will require careful consideration alongside implementation of The Promise review of children’s services, and any changes planned for criminal justice social work’

Common Weal’s report warns that a ‘postcode lottery’ for social work support has been allowed to develop in recent years.

Glasgow, with 29% of the most deprived areas in the country, has 115.9 social workers per 100,000 people in Scotland, down from 148 a decade ago.

But in Shetland, numbers climbed from 114 to 143 per 100,000 over the same period.

The report states: ‘In current local authority and Health and Social Care Partnership settings, social workers are instead focused on firefighting, public protection duties, assessment, brokering and review functions – all of which are organised on a highly bureaucratic basis and increasingly located outside of Scotland’s communities.

‘A genuine National Care Service would end present service inequalities across the country and deploy social workers (as with resources more generally) where they are needed.’

This week local councils and the Scottish government committed to developing a plan to end non-residential care charges “as soon as possible”.

This move will free up social workers to spend less of their time on assessments, the report argues.

Mr Turbett said: “Our paper, written after wide consultation with key figures in the professional associations, the trade union UNISON, and amongst front line workers and managers, concludes that urgent change is needed to take social work back to its roots. 

“Recent Scottish Government sponsored independent reviews of both child-care and the adult social care sector, highlight issues and talk of the need to rejuvenate relationship-based practice. Our paper makes some suggestions about how community social work-based approaches might achieve this."

Nick Kempe, a former Head of Service for Older People and Adults in Glasgow and chair of Common Weal's Care Reform Group, said:

“Government in Scotland appears to have a blindspot when it comes to social work. Neither the Independent Care Review for Children, published last year, nor the Independent Adult Care Review published in February, consider the role of social work in the care system.

“While both reviews offer implicit criticisms of the current role of social work, neither offer an analysis of the problems or solutions. This policy paper addresses the gap”.

Read more: Criticism as social care pay rise half that of NHS; Plan to end care charges “as soon as possible” Social care review: What does the report say?

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