How many people did social workers REALLY help in 2021?

At about this time of year, in almost every industry in the UK and across the globe, people are reflecting on their accomplishments as 2021 draws to a close.

Sales figures are issued. Venues booked. Bonuses paid. And whether it’s been a good year or bad, there will be many hearty, back-slapping, fist-bumping acknowledgements of everybody’s best efforts. The early mornings. The late nights. The blood. The sweat. The tears.

But in social work we don’t do this. We put in the long hours, work late, and burn out, but we never reflect on what it all means.

It does pay off, though. You do make a difference. And here at Social Work News, we set off on a challenge to capture this in words - or to be more precise, in numbers.

We set ourselves the mammoth task of accounting for every single adult and child in the UK helped by social workers in 2021 - from the youngest infant, to the oldest care home resident.

Of course, merely totalling up numbers is a gross oversimplification of social work. People’s lives are so much more than numbers, but the numbers themselves are still astounding.

TO TAKE LAST YEAR AS A STARTING POINT, CHILDREN AND FAMILY SOCIAL WORKERS IN ENGLAND HANDLED 642,980 REFERALLS. ADULT SOCIAL WORKERS SUPPORTED 838,530 ADULTS IN CARE HOMES, AND A FURTHER 231,295 RECEIVED SHORT-TERM CARE. THAT’S A SMIDGEN OVER 1.7 MILLION PEOPLE IN ENGLAND ALONE.

Now consider the size of the workforce undertaking such monumental work. We like to think of social work as being a significant player – on a par with doctors, nurses, police officers and teachers.

But we’re not. Statistically speaking, we are but a minnow in the public sector pond. With just 31,900 children and family social workers in England, our profession is completely dwarfed by nearly all others.

There are almost 14 times as many teachers (461,088), ten times as many nurses (299,184), and four times as many doctors (122,446). In fact, pre-pandemic, there were more chefs working in London (38,000) than children and family social workers in all of England put together.

That’s crazy – but not as crazy as the numbers of adult social workers. There’s just 19,500 of these, a figure so small it seems almost ludicrous. And yet, as we will endeavour to show in these pages, the volume of work they undertake is real David and Goliath stuff.

Adult social workers, so often forgotten amongst the huge, creaking care system, have a weight of responsibility on their backs – as indeed all social workers do. Wherever you look when you start digging through the data, you will find a small body of people supporting infinitesimally more.

Nothing demonstrates this more starkly than the budget we spend. People think of the social care budget as being small and underfunded. It is underfunded, but it’s not small. It’s huge. The combined total for adult and children social care for 2019/20 was £32.4 billion – over twice as much as the police, and a massive headache for the government.

TO GIVE YOU SOME IDEA HOW MUCH MONEY WE BURN THROUGH, IF YOU WON THE MAXIMUM PERMISSIBLE JACKPOT ON THE EUROMILLIONS OF £220 MILLION THIS WEEKEND, AND DONATED IT ALL TO THE SOCIAL CARE SECTOR ON MONDAY MORNING, EVERY LAST PENNY OF IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SPENT BY WEDNESDAY LUNCHTIME.

£220 million is barely enough to keep the lights on in social work – the task of safeguarding the nation’s welfare is so huge.

This is the perennial problem for social workers everywhere. There aren’t enough of them, there isn’t enough money (despite social care being one of the government’s major expenditures), and there is never enough time.

Yet, somehow, the sector keeps going. How it does this is a good question. Grappling with austerity and then hit with a pandemic, 2021 saw some of the greatest challenges ever faced by public services.

Back in February, the Department for Education asked every local authority what they were anticipating when schools returned from lockdown. Some responded by saying they anticipated a big spike in referrals, some thought there would be a moderate increase, whilst others thought it wouldn’t make any difference.

The truth is nobody knew. But whatever came next, they had to be ready. Incredibly – and let’s take just a second to acknowledge this – they were. As it turned out, when the schools did eventually return, some councils experienced an increase in referrals, others didn’t.

Overall, though, we did see an increase in young people’s mental health, social, and emotional needs, and there was also an upsurge in domestic abuse. Whilst over in adult services? With hospitals at breaking point and huge swathes of the care workforce off sick or self-isolating, it has been turbulent to say the least. So, you’d have thought a profession already at breaking point, underfunded and with a workforce burnt out before the pandemic, would have been completely overwhelmed by the challenges of 2021.

Let’s not make light of this. In some places, teams were overwhelmed, and the struggle continues to this day.

Writing this now, it is reported that over 75,000 disabled and older people are waiting for help with care needs - a consequence of austerity that cannot be ignored. But what is the picture like overall?

If you could take a snapshot of social work today as we emerge from these bleakest of times, what did we accomplish? Answering this question is not easy. We can’t simply leaf through government reports reviewing public services in 2021 because no such reports exist – these won’t be published until spring next year.

WHAT WE CAN - AND DID - DO, HOWEVER, IS SIFT THROUGH ALL THE RAW DATA THAT THESE REPORTS WILL EVENTUALLY DRAW ON, BECAUSE EVERY LOCAL AUTHORITY SUBMITS MONTHLY UPDATES TO CENTRAL GOVERNMENT, AND THIS DATA IS AVAILABLE TO ANYONE WHO FANCIES TAKING A PEEK. IF ANYTHING, THERE IS TOO MUCH DATA.

With 29 separate spreadsheets alone about children in need, it took some time to locate the one we wanted – but we did find it: a spreadsheet listing how many referrals each local authority has received this year.

Adding these together should give us a starting point, but it turns out not to be that simple. Yes, we could probably have patched something together by cherry picking figures from a shedload of reports, academic studies, and press releases, but doing so felt disingenuous. A social worker’s work matters. People’s lives matter. We wanted to reflect that, knowing for sure that every adult or child we accounted for genuinely existed, and was genuinely helped. Brandishing statistics plucked from random reports wouldn’t do at all.

Ultimately only one path seemed to be left open – to contact every local authority in the UK to ask them directly ourselves: ‘How many people have you helped this year?’

WHEN YOU SAY ‘HELPED’...?

With 151 local authorities in England, 31 in Scotland, 22 in Wales, and five regional trusts in Northern Ireland, this would take some time.

And, as it turned out, it would also take some clarification, since a lot of local authorities responded to our initial enquiries with an inquiry of their own: ‘What do you mean by ‘helped’…?’

A very pertinent question. Social workers do so much. A child protection social worker we spoke to recently listed just a few of the things they must know to carry out their duties.

They need to understand child development, health, disabilities, emotional milestones, education, family law, criminal law, housing law, housing policy, the benefits system, different cultures… the list goes on. Every social worker needs a vast bedrock of knowledge.

Every social worker must engage with a case on many different levels. But the question remains – what do we mean by ‘helped’?

We can’t just rely on ‘numbers referred’ because not every referral ends up with support being provided. Many don’t.

After giving it some thought, we restricted ourselves to simply asking each local authority how many cases had been allocated to social workers. We took it as a given that, in the broadest possible sense, social workers will only ever be allocated to try and do something supportive – whatever that might be.

We also asked for additional information on workforce size, sickness rates, and budgets. With our queries sent off, answers started filling our inbox. We built a spreadsheet taking the data supplied so far, and using it to forecast how many people each local authority will have helped by the year’s end, if they continue allocating cases at the same rate.

As simple as this seems, it is far from an exact science. We can’t pretend to be statisticians. Nevertheless, as the blank cells of the spreadsheet filled, and the numbers mounted, it felt like we were finally on the right track.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

As the responses poured in, something became strikingly clear. Social work is different wherever you find it. Shetland Islands Council, for instance, confirmed they have just 40 social workers. Lancashire County Council meanwhile has 950. Correspondingly, the numbers of adults and children they have helped are vastly different (a total of 1,012 versus 39,688).

The social workers employed by both councils may share the same job title, and be performing similar duties, but they must be having very different experiences. They have to be. A social worker toiling away on a small island a hundred miles off the northeast coast of Scotland is not working in the same way as one covering the vast plains of Lancashire, or another crammed into the inner-city streets of London.

The differences go beyond local topography too. If we are considering the UK, let’s start with devolution, since the governments of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland all deliver their own social policy with inevitably variable consequences. (For the record, England is the meanest, spending just £300 per person on social care in 2019/2020 whilst the others spent £450 or more).

Then there are variations in local population. Almost all local authorities support more adults than children, but this isn’t universal. Suffolk supports over four times as many adults (18,769) as children (3965), and Norfolk reports similar rates, presumably reflecting an elderly population.

But in Gloucestershire, the ratio is almost exactly the other way round. There are also stark differences in staff sickness. In northern Scotland, the adult social workers at Moray Council were robustly healthy in August – with none on sick leave whatsoever. Other workforces are having a much tougher time.

MOSTLY, THOUGH, IF THERE ARE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOCAL AUTHORITIES, IT IS PROBABLY BECAUSE LOCAL AUTHORITIES ARE JUST VERY DIFFERENT - AS ANY SOCIAL WORKER WHO HAS CROSSED REGIONAL BOUNDARIES CAN ATTEST.

With their own management styles, team structures, computer systems, and information officers, we often received very different responses despite sending them all the exact same questions. Local authorities are like that. They behave independently. They do their own thing.

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE STATISTICS

If we are trying to paint a picture of social work in 2021, then we are not creating a large, expansive canvas with broad brushstrokes, but rather assembling an intricate mosaic of tiny, misshapen parts that are hard to fit together.

Moreover, within each of these fragments - shaped by cold, hard statistics - is a world of social workers living out their own, individual experiences. Some good. Some bad. Some harrowing. Some incredible.

To fill in some of the blanks, we asked our readers to write in. Thelma Jones of Liverpool said that 2020 was her worst year ever following the death of her 21-year-old son. She revealed that throwing herself back into work this year helped, saying: “We are human, we are vulnerable, we have real shit going on in our lives too, but through it all, we always remain professional.”

Annah Mackay from Texas (representing our worldwide contingent) succeeded in getting a food bank to donate supplies for three months to a mother and son who had been financially exploited.

Kiri Elberts oversaw the transformation of an 18-month-old starved of food and affection. Now he is happy, smiling, walking, talking, and progressing towards his forever home.

WHEN WE ARE TALKING ABOUT SOCIAL WORKERS ‘HELPING,’ THESE ARE THE INDIVIDUAL STORIES WE ARE REFERRING TO - A TAPESTRY OF TALES. TOO MANY TO LIST, AND IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPLAIN USING A SPREADSHEET.

Tilly Baden, a contributor to Social Work News and a team manager herself, explained that the thing that has impressed her most this year is how her team could create ‘something out of nothing.’

With resources depleted, no carers available, no formal support whatsoever, somehow, they found a way to deliver support - either by checking in on clients themselves or using informal support networks. Family. Friends. Filling the gaps. Social workers constantly do this. And this is what we saw in wider research.

Dr Laura Pritchard-Jones’ study into adult safeguarding revealed the creative solutions social workers have resorted to during the pandemic – you can read more about her work in the ‘Bite-Sized Lecture’ on P34.

Meanwhile, a project by Manchester Metropolitan University and Salford University into the experiences of over 5,000 social workers showed them working, on average, an extra seven hours a week. Lots of reports say the same.

he truth is: social workers don’t get something out of nothing – they dig a little deeper and pull it out of themselves. The same research also shows how they pay the price. They burn out.

‘AND THE NUMBER IS…’

So, what is this all for? How many people did UK social workers really help this year? Inevitably, we didn’t hear back from every local authority, but we did hear back from most.

For those that didn’t respond, we were able to fill in some of the blanks from last years’ reports, estimating that the numbers would be broadly similar.

Eventually, every cell on the spreadsheet was complete. A total was calculated. It won’t be perfect, but it’s got to be close. It’s the best we can do. By our calculations, you supported 1,544,170 adults and 843,161 children - an astonishing total of 2,384,331.

If this seems a lot, it’s because it is – equivalent to the combined populations of Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester. It will certainly have felt a lot for every social worker pushing themselves that bit further in 2021, and stretching themselves to meet needs where the public purse hasn’t.

Perhaps, more incredible than the numbers, is something else we uncovered in our research. Despite the immense strain, social workers are largely satisfied with their work. Yes, it’s terrifically hard – but it’s worthwhile. You do make a difference.

And, deep down, social workers seem to know this. We asked our readers: ‘Was 2021 a good year for social work?’ 72% respond by saying ‘yes.’ Collectively, they know it. They wrestled a lot of good from a very difficult year. They did. You did. And if no-one else says this as 2021 draws to a close – thank you.

A NOTE FROM THE WRITER

“Reaching that final figure leaves me feeling a whole range of things as a social worker. Firstly, astonished. I had to check the figures several times. We’re a tiny profession, but this represents a lot of people.

“I also feel proud of the monumental efforts of social workers everywhere – not to mention our equally hardworking counterparts in other professions.

“Finally, I feel humbled, and even just plain sad at what this figure really represents. The world could be a much fairer place, with many less people needing a social worker’s help, but it chooses not to be. It would have been far, far nicer to have arrived at a surprisingly small figure.

"Even so, thank goodness social workers exist. It makes me proud to be one.” - Matt Bee