- guardian.co.uk, Thursday March 15 2001 02.07 GMT
Recent scandals have left the image of social workers at an all-time low, with many members of the public seeing carers as interfering, ineffective and excessively bureaucratic, according to a survey published today.
The results coincide with the launch of a poster campaign by the Local Government Assocation (LGA) and Community Care magazine, aimed at restoring the public's confidence in the profession and turning round the spiralling crisis in social services recruitment.
More than one in six jobs in social care work is now vacant, while two-thirds of social services departments have reported difficulties recruiting staff to fill them.
Kevin Wilson, who heads the LGA's task force on workforce planning, said: "There is a clear and desperate need to address the manpower shortage in social services. This campaign demonstrates that social work is rewarding and satisfying."
The survey found that 46% of people in the UK believe social workers are "politically correct". Four out of 10 say they are bureaucratic and use jargon that ordinary people do not understand.
More than a third of the 1,000 people questioned for the survey believed social workers were ineffective and interfering.
But despite their concerns about social workers, two-thirds of those surveyed recognised that carers are overworked, and three-quarters believe they do help vulnerable people.
The survey, which was carried out for the magazine, which, was conducted in the wake of reports of highly publicised failures of social workers to act in child abuse cases.
They include the case of two-year-old Chelsea Brown, whose father Robert was last week convicted of murdering her after months of physical abuse. The trial heard that Chelsea had been on a child protection register since she was born and at the time of her death had more than 40 injuries over her body. Social workers had visited her more than 20 times but despite seeing bruises on her body and knowing her father had a history of violence, no action was taken. Earlier this year Marie-Therese Kouao and her boyfriend Carl Manning were convicted of murdering Kouao's eight-year-old great-niece Anna Climbie.
The little girl had been beaten, tied up, placed in a bin liner and left in a bath.
At the time of her death she had 128 separate injuries and a Home Office pathologist described it as the worst case of child abuse he had ever seen.
An independent investigation has now been launched into the failures surrounding the case.
