11 February 2025
Social Work Scotland welcomes the 2025 Oversight Board report, recognising the positive progress towards keeping the Promise.
The wide engagement with stakeholders is evident. We see the work that social workers are doing clearly reflected here from direct practice with children, young people and their families through to the leadership and management of social work services. All of this helps set the profession on course for delivering on The Promise. We welcome the emphasis on family support as crucial in underpinning wellbeing and provide better scaffolding for parents, carers and children to navigate themselves safely through, with support from those around them.
What the report proves, for us, is that while change is possible, the landscape is extremely challenging for everyone involved in making that Promise real.
We believe it’s critical to acknowledge the context, and specifically the financial and human resource realities, in which social work professionals, and their colleagues, are trying to deliver the Promise. We will continue to represent the profession and advocate for the application of more consistent standards in areas of practice – with a specific role for national bodies like us to identify what these should be – and to highlight the crucial improvements to funding and resourcing necessary to aid the profession in delivering the Promise.
There are developments in place that, in time, we believe will support this work. National Social Work arrangements, as a joint endeavour between ourselves, COSLA and Scottish Government’s Office of the Chief Social Work Advisor offer an opportunity to support coordination of progress in keeping the Promise, whilst also being cognisant of, and informed by, what we know is needed in terms of workforce support and development across the profession.
As a national body and alongside others, Social Work Scotland is able to provide real connection and perspective from the social work profession and leadership which will be central to understanding what is needed for the next stages of implementation of the Promise Plan, and we look forward to working with partners to meet those outcomes.
