Social Work Scotland response to Rule 8 Notice
Submitted 23 November 2023
Introduction
Social Work Scotland is the professional body for social work leaders, working closely with our partners to shape policy and practice, and improve the quality and experience of social
services. We welcome this opportunity to comment on Scotland’s planning for, response to, and learning from the COVID-19 pandemic. Our members were heavily involved in local and national developments throughout 2020-2022, and they continue to address the long tail of issues which the pandemic caused. Among which perhaps the most challenging is how to sustain a social work workforce which is not only exhausted (after a gruelling pandemic and the unprecedented demands which have followed) but also fundamentally altered, with some office closures made permanent and online, working-from-home normalised. The full impact of the pandemic is yet to materialise, and without a significantly different political response, responding directly to the current fragility of public services, we are at risk of pushing some into a terminal decline.
