In my local authority a wellbeing survey was carried out to explore the reasons for low staff morale and recruitment/ retention. The questions were mainly tick-box with little opportunity for meaningful, detailed responses, apparently because this would make analysis more difficult. When the poor results came back, managers seemed surprised and rather than asking staff what the specific problems were and how they could be addressed they went off and had their own meetings to discuss and decide what should be done. But how would they know if they didn’t ask and let us speak (in confidence – I am a fan of anonymous surveys because this is the only way many people feel able to speak up)?

There is such reluctance on the part of senior management to listen, truly understand and address issues raised by staff as earlier commenters have said. Local authorities are so hierarchical – so many layers of managers – and staff are not routinely encouraged or invited to give feedback and suggestions and raise issues. Recently we had a system redesign which most would agree has been a disaster – loads of extra bureaucracy and inbuilt delays. I am sure this is because it was not collaboratively designed and trialled with frontline workers but rolled out too quickly to meet a deadline.

My team manager has openly said they feel intimidated by senior managers. I don’t think any manager should feel like this. A lack of critical thinking and challenge contributes to a toxic culture and inhibits positive change. All managers should be accountable to workers and service users and we should be asked to give feedback on the performance of managers as they do on ours. The PSW role is effectively meaningless in some local authorities where they are also a senior manager and it is simply an ‘add on’. They are often not approachable and don’t want to be!

Finally, my impression is that many managers just want to get out of frontline practice because they find it too stressful. This is unacceptable – all managers should carry a caseload, even if it is very small (but still including complex cases to reflect their higher pay!). I don’t care what grade they are, if they are not working directly with service users they are not practicing social work and arguably should not be allowed to use this title. Direct work will allow them to stay in touch with the reality of social work today, to understand our roles and the challenges we face and (in an ideal world) to be better managers.

What do social workers do when users of their services don’t understand what they are telling them? A: give up and curse B: repeat then repeat again C: Accept they aren’t being heard but use their skills to get heard, eventually. I have zero confidence in my managers but that doesn’t mean they are useless forever. Hope should be eternal.

Oh no, who will protect the children if we do?