SASW Team Weekly Roundup

Find out what the team in Scotland have been doing on behalf of members this week

This week has been a busy week for the team in Scotland, who work hard on behalf of you, our members, to represent and support the social work profession.

Our Chair, Jude Currie, Ian Jeffries, our Vice Chair and Alison met with the Independent Review of Adult Social Care Team. We are polishing our position statement and briefing, and will let you know more next week about how the meeting went and what SASW might do next to influence and support the Review. 

The SASW team met with the Scottish Government to discuss the implications of the adoption of the UNCRC into Scottish law.  

Alison attended the Social Care Wellbeing Group which looks at workforce issues that have arisen during the pandemic. The Health and Social Care Scotland Wellbeing Hub is available, here. 

The Rural Social Work planning group met this week. One of the things they’re looking at is a series of webinars highlighting issues in rural social work. Dates and more details will be published soon.

Plans continue to progress for Book Week Scotland, find out more about what we are doing for the week and how you can get involved, here. 

We launched our first ever Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Special Bulletin, which we plan to make a quarterly addition to your calendar. As part of this, we launched our survey, "Racism, Discrimination and Prejudice in Social Work", to gauge the experiences of BAME social workers of this in practice. If you are a social worker from a BAME background, share your views, here.  

MSPs have demanded that the Scottish government holds a public inquiry into Covid deaths in care homes.  SASW wholeheartedly supports this decision, and believes the scale of deaths in our Care Homes needs urgent attention and commitment from all sides to ensure there is no repeat in coming COVID waves.  The social care and social workforce is already stretched, taking daily personal risk, covering for sick or isolating colleagues, being flexible around patterns of work. They need public support and complete assurance from our politicians that they will not carry the can for decisions made beyond their control.