You may remember that I was doubtful about the prospects for a College of Social Work, proposed by the Socal Work Task Force on the future of social work, published this year. One of the good things about the Task Force is that it’s turned itself into a body to implement its proposals. Keeping on going like this was one of the good things about the Wagner Committee on residential care in the 1980s – it gets things done.

Always provided that the proposals are not swimming against the tide, of course. One of the reasons was that I didn’t think much of the idea of a College of Social Work was that I didn’t think anybody but the government would pay for it. And in current circumstances, or ever, they would not be prepared to pay enough for it. Even if they did, it would dance to their tune, since no government ever wants anything that doesn’t do what they tell it in these on-target times. For palliative care, that means focusing on government-run adult services and children’s socal care, rather than the full range of worthwhile specialisms in wider social work; like palliative care. A bit of relaxed arms-length development is just not on the political map nowadays and it’s naive to imagine anything else.

Another reason is that we’ve got enough bodies wandering around opining about social work and social care – do we need and are we prepared to pay (a lot) for another one? Doctors pay for their Royal Colleges, but they get a lot more money to pay for them.

SCIE is now running a steering group to set the college up, dancing of course to the current government pied piper. Probably, like the Hamelin rats, right into the river when quango cuts get going later in the year, so they’ve got a real interest in doing what they’re told. But that’s all they’ve ever done anyway; they’re part of the evidence for government interference; they never bothered about palliative care either, even when NICE was trampling all over their territory because the government didn’t think to commission them to look at social work as well as healthcare.

The Steering Group website is: http://www.collegeofsocialwork.org/index.asp

BASW members have all received a letter asking them to vote ‘yes’ in a referendum to set up what the SCIE website says is a breakaway college. The BASW arguments are right: it wants a UK rather than an England body and something run by social workers not a government poodle. And look at all the directors of social care type people on the steering group; not a lot of people there with a record of real commitment to social work as an independent professional and academic discipline, compared with whatever the government is proposing at the moment or suits local government about something called social care. I don’t suppose BASW cares all that much about really good specialist social work that doesn’t make interesting political waves either (yes, I mean palliative care).

But this proposal is silly. BASW has a new Chief Executive, a former MP and community worker, no doubt good at campaigning and policy, who seems to reflect an unreal idea of BASW’s station in the world. As a life member, who has done a lot fo BASW over the decades and been helped a lot by it too, I regret to have to say that BASW does not have the intellectual and professional standing to lead on a College; or a director or senior officers with real credibility to take a lead either; it requires much wider representation than they can offer. The argument that it has intellectual weight because it owns the British Journal of Social Work (i.e. cops for royalties) is also laughable.

The best choice for BASW is to stick with the main proposal and try to develop it in the right direction, so I’ll be voting ‘no’.

However, they do have some good points that the government’s poodles should take note of. And the main point still remains: do we want to dissipate the resources available to social work, and real cash from social workers, into this organisation, or do we want to concentrate on getting better value for social work from the plethora of present bodies?

And what’s the evidence that they’re going to take note of the wide variety of social work going on out here (such as palliative care social work) and not just local government social care? Not a lot, whoever runs it.