Children and Social Welfare: Recent Changes in England and their Implications for Social Work

I began my social work career in England in the early 1970s shortly after a major national reorganization of social work services. Formerly separate local authority Children’s and Welfare Departments – the latter primarily dealing with adults in need of social work and other welfare services - had been merged to form unified social work agencies. For the last thirty years these Social Services Departments have provided the main organizational basis for the provision of social work services for children. While some NGOs provide social work services to children in the UK, their overall role in the provision of social work services is considerably less than in Hong Kong. Other children’s social work services are provided by the education welfare or education social work services of local authority education departments, although the role of education welfare officers or education social workers is largely confined to dealing with truancy – and often in a law enforcement capacity - and there has been little success in developing a wider school social work role as would be recognisable in other countries . The main reason for sketching in this background is that this system is all about to change, so children’s social work in England is currently in a state of considerable turmoi